Finsatsea: Tere from Tallinn!

Day One -

According to our guide today that means “Hello.” After a smooth sail last night we arrived here in Tallinn, Estonia around 10 AM. Before we had been cleared, the captain came on the tannoy (that’s PA for we non-British folks) to give us some bad news. It seems that due to high winds tomorrow we will be unable to make our passage up the Neva River to our berth in St. Petersburg. Because no alternate docking space is available, we’ll have an abbreviated visit. Needless to say Guest Services staff have been very busy helping people rearrange tours.

Anyway, back to Tallinn. This is the capital city of Estonia with a population of a little more than 440,000. Estonia has over the centuries belonged to Germans, Swedes, Russians and various groups of knights and merchants. In the last hundred years the country has only been independent for about 38 years, 12 between WWI and WWII, and 26 since the collapse of the Soviet Union. I found it very interesting that here the language is neither Germanic nor Slavic, but rather Finno-Ugric which is similar to Finnish and distantly related to Hungarian. I wonder how the latter happened. However, because of the long occupation by Russians, most people over the age of 25 speak Russian. During WWII more than 25% of the population died from executions and deportations.

We had a tour of the Old Town of Tallinn, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Divided into the upper and lower towns which were encircled by a wall (some remnants still exist), it is a very charming cobblestoned place with winding streets and dotted with a lot of churches, one of them, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral complete with onion shaped domes. Another, St. Olaf’s Church, was probably the tallest building in the world back in the mid-16^th century.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral - it would look nicer without the construction mesh there

View from the Upper Town (in the distance is the modern Tallinn)

This building houses the oldest apothecary in Europe dating back to 1422!

After a nice but fairly arduous 4 hour walk from the upper to the lower town we headed back to the ship for an overnight stay here. That’s because of our revised itinerary. I forgot to wear my fitbit today, but Al and I calculate that we probably put in a good 8 miles. I know our feet and bodies felt like we’d done a marathon.

Day Two in Tallinn –

After a good night we awoke to find we had company in port today, three more cruise ships in fact! This has been a good day for the economy of the city since there are about 10,000 cruise passengers wandering around. We’re glad our tour was yesterday. This morning we were able to go on one of the fun events Seabourn does, shopping with the Chef. We were a small group and we set out for a local market. While it wasn’t large, they did have lovely fruits and vegetables, a wonderful cheese shop, a local bread shop and a fish store. I think the Chef made the merchants’ day, maybe their week, with the purchases he made. Of course we got to sample the things before he bought them. I tried some interesting cheeses flavored with herbs I never would have thought of like lavender, rosemary and nettles.

Luscious berries!

The blue flowers in the little middle vase are cornflowers, the national flower of Estonia

Have you ever seen cheese this color? It's flavored with lavender, thyme and rosemary.

After the Chef had finished his shopping we boarded our bus. Tonight will be Scandinavian Market Buffet night in one of the ship’s restaurants and many of his purchases will be served then. It should be fun!

We opted to get off the bus in the lower old town and have lunch someplace and do a little more wandering. Amber is a big thing here in the Baltic. I’m not positive, but I think it’s the only place it can be found. We walked into a very nice shop and bought a few amber jewelry pieces as mementoes of our visit here. We asked the sales clerk for a restaurant recommendation and she pointed us to one nearly across the street. It was a fabulous choice!

The restaurant is in one of the oldest buildings in the town; it dates back to the 14^th century. Downstairs is the restaurant and upstairs is a 14 room boutique hotel. The name of the place is Cru and the cuisine is sort of modern Estonian. We had a delightful lunch of wild mushroom soup followed by whitefish for me and scallops for Al. They served us some of the most wonderful dark bread I’ve ever tasted. It was fresh out of the oven and had bits of apricots, plums and nuts in it.