[The missing post! Forgot to write this one up at the time...]

15:50
Location: Sun deck of the ferry m/s Romantika
Weather: Overcast & cool

Saturday morning we got up at 8 a.m. and went down for a wonderful breakfast buffet in the Hotel Viru's restaurant. I delighted in a hardboiled egg and some tasty meatballs, along with a couple of glasses of reasonable orange juice and a cup of strong coffee. Leaving the group, I went down to the lobby to write some postcards and continue working on the diary.

At 9:30 we assembled and split into two groups for a walking tour of Tallinn's old town. Our guide was a young man with a gentle deep bass voice, rather unsuited for a large group as it didn't carry very far, but he was very nice and knowledgeable and had some very witty lines so he was quite acceptable.

Tallinn is a very pretty town. At least, the city centre where we walked is very pretty. Set on a hill, with the town hall and a couple of churches lifting spires up to the sky but otherwise a consistent three to fix or six stories in height, the town features an elegant market square, quaint alleyways, a robust but not overbearing set of walls, and a fresh pastel paint scheme. It's a popular holiday spot for the Finns, with lots of little boutique stores selling local arts and crafts, including glasswork and woolenware, woodwork and pottery. We pointed Howard and Maggie in the direction of the one of the antique stores that feature the type of orthodox gilded icons they collect. [They later went back and had some successful shopping!]

The tour wound through the downtown, stopping for short visits into two very different churches, the Russian Orthodox Alexander Nevski Cathedral, opposite the parliament building (Toompea Castle), and the Dome Church, Lutheran, just down the street. The guide told us that the parliament has 101 deputies and almost 30 political parties, since it only takes a couple of thousand signatures on a petition to start a new party. (The joke is that any three Estonians will be members of four political parties.) From the old fortress' viewing platforms we had a great view across the city and the port, and we took some pictures before walking down to meet our buses.

The bus tour took us past some city fortifications below the old town, featuring the squat tower "Fat Margaret", destined never to attract her love, the castle's tower "Tall Hermann". From the old town and the port we drove east along the waterfront, then cut inland past some Soviet-style apartment blocks to the Song Festival Grounds. Here, a huge bandshell with hundreds of rows of seats holds some 30,000 singers during the annual Song Festival -- that's 2% of the Estonian population in the choir -- while 100,000 more crowd onto the hillside facing them for the concert. Really. They have pictures to prove it.

From there, we continued east to Saint Bridgedine's Monastery, a ruined catholic monastery whose walls have been recently reinforced to prevent further degradation but whose floors and roof are long since gone. Finally, we returned downtown and scattered from the buses. I was content to spend much of the rest of the afternoon at the hotel, updating my diary on the Internet and writing more postcards.

In the evening the whole group reconvened and walked back up the hill to the market square, where we had a great dinner at the Karl Freidrich restaurant. For a change from the beer my table ordered red wine -- Sangre del Toro, a familiar bottle much appreciated at home -- to go with our beef stroganoff entree.

Back at the hotel after dinner we assembled for martinis and wine in Lanny and my room, using olive juice sourced from the hotel bar to make Ngaio's martini dirty enough for her taste.
posted by Tom at 4:15 PM | link |