{"id":58,"date":"2014-10-20T22:07:52","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T21:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=58"},"modified":"2014-11-21T17:56:40","modified_gmt":"2014-11-21T17:56:40","slug":"monday-tallinn-estonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/monday-tallinn-estonia\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday – Tallinn, Estonia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today, we arrived in Tallin, Estonia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With all the information we’d read about how beautiful the city is, we bounded out of bed at the 8am alarm, donned our fleeces, grabbed our cameras, and eagerly dashed upstairs to see our arrival in port. Unfortunately; when we got there, you couldn’t see anything through the thick fog. Our approach was slow and silent, and slightly spooky, with the quayside barely visible through the gloom. The lack of views was a bit of a shame, but there was, of course nothing we could do about it except head for Marco’s Bistro for breakfast.<\/p>\n

After breakfast, we went ashore. By this time, the fog had more or less lifted, only to be replaced by rain, so we were togged up to the nines, hoping to avoid getting as drenched as we managed to get in Copenhagen. If anything, however, todays rain was even more persistent.<\/p>\n

I’m pleased to report that Tallinn didn’t disappoint. While much of it is modern, the best bits, the bits we were most interested in, are to be found in the Medieval Old Town, an area which is, in turn, split into two sections; an Upper Old Town and a Lower Old Town. There are churches, catherdals, walls, moats and palaces galore; the most prominent being the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. With its golden onion domes, the cathedral stands high upon the upper old town, alongside the Parliament Buildings. We also paid a small fee to look around the Church of the Holy Spirit, and climb to the top of St. Olaf’s Church Tower; notable for having been hit by lightning around ten times and having been burned down three times during its history; its gothic spire is over 400ft high (and between the 1549 and 1625 was the tallest building in the world, apparently). From here, the views across the city were extensive, and quite impressive, and well worth the climb up spiral stone staircases that seemed to go on forever. I must confess; it was far more impressiive than I’d expected, and had expressed resistance against paying the 2 euros each to make the climb. How wrong was I?<\/p>\n

Many of the streets in the Old Town are cobbled, and the buildings pot-marked and looking their age (it was designated a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site in 1997). Much of the city walls still stand, though, as do many of the towers that punctuate it, and these formed some of the best views, looking down upon them from the viewing platforms in the highest portion of the city. The rain was with us for most of the day (which was a short one as we had to be back onboard ship by 3:45pm). At times, it was so heavy that the rivers of water seemed to half-flood the streets, and steps became a deluge. We took shelter wherever we could; a warm, dry restaurant provided us with a temporary respite from the weather at lunchtime, on another occasion we were huddled under the archways of one of the oldest entrances to the city.<\/p>\n

Inclement weather aside, we liked Tallinn very much. It reminded me vaguely of Dubrovnik, and some of the cobbled streets felt Meditterranean… not so the weather.<\/p>\n

On our way back from the town, we made a slight diversion to take a look at an old Russian monument that appears to have once been a stadium of some sorts. It’s a little difficult to describe, with many steps leading up the front of it, onto a large flat area, before cllimbing more steps that lead you higher, until you feel like you’re standing on a flat roof. Many stairwells also lead downwards, into the building, that is now all locked up with rusting iron, massively overgrown and covered in graffiti. It feels like a very unloved and uncared-for monument from an era that the Estonians would almost certainly prefer to forget.<\/p>\n

This evening, in the Show Lounge, we’ve been entertained by Melvyn Hayes, who combined a little stand-up with stories from his days on ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ and his other TV and film work (‘Eastenders’, ‘Summer Holiday’ and many others besides)… excellent!<\/p>\n

Tommorrow, we arrive in Russia….<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, we arrived in Tallin, Estonia. With all the information we’d read about how beautiful the city is, we bounded out of bed at the 8am alarm, donned our fleeces, grabbed our cameras, and eagerly dashed upstairs to see our arrival in port. Unfortunately; when we got there, you couldn’t see anything through the thick fog. Our approach was slow...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}