Baltic Explorations: Estonia

From Scandanavia we continued our travels to the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. We caught a ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, which was only a two hour journey. 

Tallinn

Once we arrived in Tallinn we were met by one of my high school friends - Matt, who has featured in several of my past blogs. He is currently on a work-cation (my invented work), so joining us for some traveling but still dedicating a fair amount of time to working. 

Michael and I were wandering around looking for food when we arrived in Tallinn and we stumbled across this amazing rooftop cafe (on the top of a huge shopping complex) and decided we had to return to grab some coffee and take some snaps. 

Tallinn - rooftop cafes feat. Matt. 

From here our explorations continued to the Old Town of Tallinn, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and supposed to be one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe. 

We started by climbing the city walls, which are really well preserved and a good vantage point to get a feel for the Old Town of Tallinn. 

Exploring the towers and the well - featuring a very picturesque view of the red tiled roofs of the Old Town. 

Michael honing his selfie skills while walking around the walls of Tallinn. 

From here we wandered through the winding streets of the Old Town and managed to stumble across a medieval street known as St Catherine's Passage (below). 

The passage even has giant tombstones hanging from the wall.

Next, still in the Old Town, we wandered into the Town Square - the big building behind Michael and Matt is the Tallinn Town Hall. 

The Town Square is typically European: cobblestones underfoot, cute, colourful buildings and stores surrounding the square and restaurants (perfect for people watching).  The sky in my photo couldn't have been more perfect - a snippet of blue sky on an otherwise cloudy day.

After grabbing a pretty affordable but amazing long lunch (featuring a lovely Estonian waitress who was moving to Melbourne), Michael and I resumed our wanderings - this photo is just one of the gorgeous little cobblestone streets in the Old Town of Tallinn.

Next stop: the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral - another Orthodox cathedral. This is a really beautiful cathedral, although really difficult to capture a good photo of. We didn't end up going inside because the entrance was swarming with people on walking tours.

After taking the longest possible route to get to some of the viewing platforms (we took the 

'scenic route' we managed to finally find some amazing views of across the Old Town of Tallinn.

Michael and I both admiring some really amazing views of the Old Town - all the beautiful red roofed houses and spires look very medieval, you do kind of feel like you're looking over a city from another time. 

Only a short walk away was another viewing platform - this one featured a super evil looking seagull that seemed to have decided this was his ledge for the day.

Scary seagull didn't stop us from enjoying the views - although he does feature in nearly every photo haha!

By this point we had quite literally spent hours immersing ourselves in the Old Town of Tallinn - one of the most authentic old cities that I think I have had the pleasure of visiting. 

These final shots are just some of the more authentic streets and corners of the Old Town.

When we had had coffee at the lovely rooftop cafe at the beginning of the day I had made Michael promise to take me back for some cake - apparently they're famous for their cakes (and they looked amazing). 

Back on the rooftop cafe and fortunately the cakes tasted as good as they looked! Estonian food was looking to be pretty excellent :-) 

The following day Michael and I decided to get a little off the beaten track with our explorations. We walked through the Old Town and out the other side (probably about a 40 minute walk) to a whole new part of Tallinn - it was really retro and hipster. There were heaps of cool, rustic looking cafes and, as an added bonus, because we were no longer on the tourist trail the prices were super cheap!

Estonians know how to do food. Michael and I got an amazing snack platter of Estonian cheese, meats, breads and other antipasto style snacks - oh, and also some char grilled corn! I was quickly falling in love with the high quality food in the country!

Finally, Michael let me take a half decent picture of the two of us!

Lastly, we got even more of the beaten track, which included even more walking as we made our way to Patarei Prison. This is a really strange prison, it is open to visitors but it is not very well preserved and very little work has been done to ensure the prison is well maintained. I got this little piece of information from their website:

"Patarei prison constitutes a monument for victims of communism and Nazism and a powerful symbol of resistance of the martyrs of the Republic of Estonia"

Although there is an official website, there isn't a whole lot of information about Patarei online (about prisoners or conditions in the Soviet era) and the information available is quite vague. 

Patarei prison was built during the 1800s but wasn't actually used as a prison until the early 1900s and it remained in operation right until 2004 - which is a little shocking. While Estonia was occupied by Soviet forces they used Pataeri as a prison to house the most violent prisoners and also political prisoners. Based on the feeling of complete incivility and hauntedness I got while inside the prison, I can assume that it was quite possibly a frightening and terrible place to be kept. 

One of the first rooms that we walked into was the 'Hanging Room'... I think the incredibly eerie and creepy photo below says it all.. Dark tourism at it finest. 

According to a blog I read (while scouring the internet for information on this mysterious prison) the bodies of the prisoners that were hung were then carried to the nearby cliffs and tossed into the ocean.

The prison is abandoned, desolate and eerily quiet - the whole atmosphere of the prison is very somber and almost haunted. Some walls are completely covered in graffiti, whilst other entire sections of the prison have been left to crumble. 

Many of the prisoner's rooms and staff rooms were abandoned, with everything left in place (rather than cleaned out): bare mattresses, mugs, old typewriters, books with their pages ripped out, broken lighting fixtures, old chairs and bunk beds and a random assortment of other furniture - it was incredibly dark and creepy.

The most frightening section of the prison was the old medical and operating rooms, it smelt like a strange combination of dust and disinfectant... there was a huge ceiling lamp hanging over an old operating table - incredible sinister and frightening. It was like a scene from a horror movie... I could imagine all kind of horrific medical experiments and psychological tortures taking place in these rooms - I was incredibly freaked out. 

Well, that was a fairly dark ending to our trip to Tallinn, from here, onto the sleepy beach town of Parnu!

Parnu

After a two hour bus journey from Tallin, we arrived in the sea side town of Parnu - located on the south west coat of Estonia. Thanks to its beach location Parnu is known as the 'summer capital' of Estonia and is known for being filled with beach-going tourists each summer. 

Unfortunately for us, the weather was not exactly 'summer' or being going weather... 

Michael walking through one of the many beautiful parks in Parnu - ahhh if only the weather was sunny enough to lie in these parks and enjoy some sunshine!

Michael enjoying the lovely (and incredibly windy) beach weather in Parnu - the beach actually looked amazing and would have been absolutely amazing if the weather had been good, I can definitely imagine it completely buzzing when the sun comes out!

We took the rubbish weather as a sign that it was time to head to the best restaurant in town and grab some more quality Estonian food. Ironically, we went to a Japanese restaurant for Sushi, I figured that being a town close to the ocean that the fish would definitely be fresh. 

Again, the delicious food... Estonia did not deliver on the weather front but I will definitely not complain about the food!

After dinner Michael and I went for a walk along the main street of Parnu - as you can see the weather pretty much drove everyone indoors. 

On our last day in Paru, the sun decided to make an appearance - yay! Unfortunately, even though it looks really beautiful and sunny, it was still pretty cool - not sun bathing weather (although there were definitely people willing to endure the cold). 

Matt and I on the beach promenade in Parnu - enjoying a rare moment of pure sunshine!

Finally, a good shot of the almost deserted beach - it would be so beautiful to visit this beach and town if the weather was being cooperative. 

Despite the lack of summer weather, I did really enjoy visiting Estonia (good food always helps), fingers crossed for better weather as we move south to Latvia. 

xx