Tallinn, Estonia

My flight left around 7 am the next day for Tallinn, Estonia.  I was meeting my mom – we’ll call her Amelia – for a ten-day tour of The Baltics.  She had been traveling for something like 20 hours, so was pretty exhausted when we met.  We found our AirBNB, and after climbing two long flights of stairs up, made a collective decision to move to a hotel which was much more accessible.  We were just 15-minutes outside of the Tallinn Old Town and our hotel was much more comfortable and spacious (and we got most of our money back from the AirBNB).  We had dinner and slept for 12 hours that night, a much needed rest!

The next morning, we ventured out to explore Tallinn.  Estonia declared their independence in 1991, and much of Tallinn was new.  The total population in Estonia is just over 1.3 million, and less than half of that population lives in Tallinn, so it’s a very small city and can easily be seen in a day or two.  We took it slow, stopping by a produce market for some fresh fruits, and slowly wandering through Old Town, which was full of classic Estonian buildings and restaurants.  Oh, it was also full of cobblestone, so when I suggest that we wandered through it slowly, I mean slowly.  It was not an easy journey.

The city itself was very accessible

Estonia is one of the most educated countries in the world, and their people know more languages, on average, than any other country in the world.  They are also the least religious country.  The people are very blond and light-eyed.  The culture appeared to be one of respect as the streets, public spaces, and the people themselves were well-maintained.  The sun set each night around 10:30 pm and rose at 4:30 am.  It never got completely dark outside, given the position of the sun with Earth at this time of year, and fortunately, the hotel had blackout curtains that blocked most of the light.  The weather was rainy and sunny at the same time, with smatterings of rain coming and then going, just like that.  It was not a hot place and we wore jackets most of the time, realizing that it was summer and we were lucky not to be trapped in the brutal cold that comes in their wintertime.