Day 10 Tallinn, Estonia
Guess what? Free wifi at the Tallinn port. :) Sitting here trying to figure out why you all can't see the pictures. I have added the link to each days pics at the bottom of each blog, so go back and scroll to the bottom to see the pics. But I just figured out I hadn't made the pictures available to the public. Sorry about that. You should see them all now, espcially if you click on "My Album" I think. :) Just have a few minutes, but will blog later about Tallinn, as there is too much to say at this moment. Will post more later tonight. :)
Day 10
Today we were in Tallinn, Estonia. I had no idea what to expect, but like Helsinki, was wonderfully surprised. When we woke up we were just docking. I went out on the balcony and saw the adorable medieval town. Then I looked to the left and saw the "new" Tallinn. Glass sky scrapers! What a strange sight. I took a picture and will add it to today so you can see the contrast between old and new. Beautiful and not so beautiful.
We had a leisure breakfast (the usual for me - waffles) and headed to the room to get ready. It was raining some, so I sported my hat and we grabbed our umbrellas. We caught the bus into town and headed for "Old Town". When we started to get close, we saw all these flower shops, one after the other. At first I thought they were all one owner, but each one appeared to be separate. They all had the same stuff! I can't imagine any of them making any money. So as we passed all the beautiful flowers and entered the entrance of the old part of town, we were welcomed by a big old stone wall with a turret on one side. It looked like a fortress. Once you walked in, there ahead was a McDonalds. Not that I don't occasionally splurge calories on that fabulous double cheeseburger and love every minute, I just don't want to see the golden arches in a medieval town. Kinda ruined it for me, ya know?
So as we walked around the town we hit all the highlights; the church, castle wall (kinda), and the town square had the most fabulous market. (Tallinn and Helsinki tie for the best shopping). Prices were pretty good for a tourist trap. The fun thing about this market is most of it was handmade goodies, but the people were dressed in costumes of some kind, which we are guessing were cultural/medieval clothes. Some looked sorta like swedish type clothes, but most looked like peasants. So that was cute. I bought a few goodies and we laughed at a couple of the stands because they were wooden torture devices, like in medieval times The chains with the ball on the end with spikes, giant axes, cross bows, etc., all made out of wood. Then there was another stand that had what appeared to be smoked wild game. Just sitting out in the open...I think the prey here is actually the person who ate it. Anyhoo, it had chickens right next to what I guess to be quail, but they looked like little tiny chickens. They also had something behind it that at first I thought was a squirrel, but was more the size of a cat. THAT freaked me out. I wanted to ask what it was, but we moved on to the next spot since the guy was selling someone some bacon or something.
Did I mention we passed by the museum of medieval torture instruments? We saw the craftsman selling them in the market, but apparently they had some real ones on display. We decided to go ahead and pass on that this time, but if we come back, we'll be sure to stop in an take a look-see. One place we did stop in at was a restaurant that had no electricity. Dave from Warnemunde had told us about it. He said to be sure and stop in because everything was lit by candlelight and of course they were all in costume and were famous for their cinnamon beer. It did smell cinnamon-ish when we peeked inside. It was really cool. One of the best parts of this town were the fabulous shop signs. They were really creative and hung beside the doors. I took several shots of course, just to remind me later of how fun they were.
Speaking of shots, today was not a good picture day. It was rainy, overcast and often crowded. I did get a few shots, and like every rainy day we've had so far, the sun usually peeks out enough to warm you up here and there (today we had to shed some clothes). I got a few shots with the sun out, but being the dork that I am, I inadvertently hit a wrong setting on my camera about half way through the day and was over exposing everything by 1.5 stops. Photoshop can fix it, but still....duh. So over half of today's shots are bad to look at for now.
After walking up and down most of the streets of this town we decided to get a snack and hunted for a bakery. We found a couple and bought some chocolate crumb cakes and sipped some Aqua Panna water (Guy's fav). We had the option of tasting some canned EEL, but like the museum I mentioned earlier, we chose to pass this time. Even tho we only had a few hours in this town, we knocked it out in a couple of hours and headed back for the boat. Having over an hour before the ship pulled out, I came back to the cabin to grab my ipad and bolted for the free wifi at the port! It was fast, too, compared to what I've been dealing with on the boat. I had a nice conversation with a lady from New York on what a rip off the internet on the ship is. You only have a few hot-spots around the boat and you pay for x amount of minutes. So when there is horrible internet that is coming and going, your countdown of precious paid minutes are quickly ticking by regardless of the service. The lady said she was on a ship that had wifi on the entire boat and you still paid by the minute, but it as really fast and more consistent. We agreed that if WE ran the ship, we'd charge one price and you could use as much as you wanted. Am I ranting? Sorry. But the funny/interesting part of the story is that the outside of the port had people sitting on the curb all around the wifi spot. About half passengers and half were ship employees. A ship employee (assuming from India or the surrounding area) plopped down next to me and asked which wifi to pick as several options came up. I showed him the one I was using and finally it worked for him. The first place he logged into was Facebook. I guess that is how they all stay connected to home and friends. Crazy, huh? Facebook...
Back on the ship we had lunch and came back to the room to rest/blog/nap (me/me/Guy). It is about 6pm now and I think we get to put our clocks back again tonight. But tomorrow is a day at sea and I can't tell you how many people I've overheard saying they were exhausted and thrilled to be doing nothing for a day. Two days of touring in St. Petersburg just about whooped everyone, young and old. (ok, it's a cruise ship...so mostly old). Really the weather hasn't been horrible. It has been pretty chilly with mostly overcast/off and on drizzle type stuff, but certainly bearable. Right now I'm looking out the window and we are socked in with fog. Since it is daylight most of the time, it hasn't been hard for the captain to see other boats. Right now, I hope the radar is working!!
Well, tomorrow being a day at sea...and probably nothing to report except how far along I am in my book and what I ate, I will probably take a blog break until Monday after seeing Copenhagen, Denmark. After Copenhagen, we have another day at sea then back to Amsterdam. So three days left on the ship, but only one more port. After the cruise we are going to train down to Berlin for a few days. Hopefully the Westin will have better Internet and Berlin will have some sun. :)
xoxox
