Talinn, Estonia

I landed in Talinn around 1 am, Sagar picked me up and we went to his house in Kadriorg.

Kadriorg (Katharinenthal) is a park area where Peter the Great built a palace for his wife Catherine I. Nearby the palace is an old cottage in which Peter lived while the works on the palace were concluded. Some museums are also in this area and a lot of wooden houses date back to Peter's time.

The next day, I bought the Talinn Card and started to explore the city in the Town Hall Cellar and on the Town Hall Tower. In the cellar, the history of Talinn was on display with the different developments of the city wall. Afterwards, I climbed the tower on a very narrow staircase and from the top I shot a lot of pictures of the old city and the main square.

I took the bus to meet Sagar for lunch after a detour in the wrong direction. We ate something Estonian for lunch and then I made my way to the zoo and later to the Estonian Open Air museum, where there are farms and houses from all over the country.

In the evening, Sagar and me went to an American bar to eat and to watch the soccer match Poland vs. Austria.

Very early the next morning, I went to ... and the spa there. I swam some 500 m and returned to the city where I joined a guided city tour. The first hour, we went by minibus to Kadriorg, the Song Festival Site, the ruins of a convent and then the bus dropped us off near the Newsky Church. We walked the old city and heard a lot about the history of Talinn and its Soviet time. The old town of Talinn is surrounded by a city of which 1,9 km are still standing including a lot of towers, some of which I climbed up so that my muscles were aching afterwards.

In the afternoon, I did a tour with the hop-on/hop-off City Tour buses (from MAN) which took me around the city. Later, I went by tram and bus to our subsidiary in the outskirts of Talinn and had a cup of tea with my Estonian contact.

In Talinn, the middle ages are still alive in the walls, towers and the tourist restaurants where they serve old and new dishes and the waiters and waitresses dress in old-fashioned clothes. As a good tourist I went to one of this restaurants - the Peppersack. After caviar on toast and a main dished, it was time to pack my things and head to the bus terminal for my bus to St. Petersburg that was to leave just before midnight.