Thursday, June 20, 2019

Scandinavia Day 2 Boat trip to Tallinn Estonia

Day 2 was a long but great day.  We took a ferry over to Tallinn Estonia to see the old town.  We had slept ok, but we had a relatively early wakeup call to make it to our 9 am boat.  After quick breakfast in the apartment we were off
The entrance to our apartment

It was about a 40 min walk to the ferry terminal.  Part of the walk went through what looked like an old warehouse district they were cleaning up.

Cool harbor on the way including some sauna boats

Cruise ship terminal finally!

Our boat

We first tried sitting on the deck to eat our breakfast, but that quickly got pretty cold with all the wind

Also there were very agressive seagulls

So we moved to the back of the boat to watch from the inside

After about 2.5 hours we saw Tallinn old town 

While we waited to dock Lincoln discovered the play room that the Tallinn science museum had put together.  He loved that place!

A short walk and we were right into old town

Much of old town is actually from the 14th century and the houses are all painted fun colors!

There is also some pretty cool looking newer  buildings mixed in

We had to make a quick stop for a cookie and coffee before our free walking tour

Lincoln slept through the first hour of the tour

Started our tour with horses going by and nice views of the city

First stop of the tour was this old church they rebuilt after ww II bombing.  The Soviets let them use it as a museum to atheism, but it is now a medieval art museum.  The Estonians are the least religious people in the world with something like 18% of them saying they are religious.

Freedom square and the monument to soldiers who helped liberate Eastonia

Short walk up the hill to see some of the towers in the city walls.   Here are some cannon balls still left in one of them

Russian Orthodox church

Another church, this one was Catholic (is?). 

Great view of the city from the first overlook we visited

Lincoln was not all about taking the family picture

He was a happy kid though

Yep we carried the stroller down all those steps

And final stop was the town square which was hosting some sort of music festival for the weekend

Decoration on town hall

Lincoln getting a piggy back ride

A cool looking church we passed on the way to lunch

Lunch was amazing!  They had local beer lots of good organic local food and they let us have the balcony mostly to ourselves

One of our dishes

Name of restaurant

Next stop was the tram to see the big park with the presidential palace

First we found a cute little playground for Lincoln.  He mostly wanted to play in the sand as usual

Presidential palace guarded only by these 2 guys

Nicely decorated building on the other side of the gardens behind the palace

I didn't get the best pictures of the gardens here, but they were nice looking!

Little forest we walked through on the way out

And Lincoln got in another 45 min walk while we walked out and then got coffee

Very good almond/apple pie of some sort we had

Iced coffee helped revive us from the jet lag + 20,000 steps exhaustian

And finally back to our boat

We got the buffet on the way back.  After some issues finding our table we finally settled in.  It was ok food but the price was sure right.  26 euro each for all you can eat and drink 

The desserts were the best.  I especially like the aland pancack because it was full of cardemon

View of buffet

After dinner Lincoln spent a lot of time in the kids play room, mostly building giant towers

Right at 9 pm they let us off the boat and we had to do the 40 min walk back because there wasn't much transit on the Sunday night

Nice view of the harbor on the way back

We finally got back to our place around 10 pm, exhausted but we did have a good day!

Next up is a day to walk around Helsinki before taking the night train to the Arctic circle



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