Day 11 - Oct. 01 - Thursday

TALLINN, ESTONIA

My day started with a very relaxing swimming at the hotel's spa. What a wonderful place! I wish I could spend the whole day there. Breakfast was also good. The Meriton Grand Hotel is a 4 stars hotel and it cost less than 30 euros a person a night. Pretty cheap for European standard.

We left the bags in the hotel and went back to the old town. It was pretty cold, only 8 degrees, but it felt much colder because of the windchill.

A scenic view from the top of the old town.

The sun was shinning in the morning, but close to noon, a huge black cloud took over the sky. But the heavy rain never came. We took this opportunity - the rain threat - anyway to have lunch at a traditional Estonian Country style restaurant. Wow, what a good choice!!!

We all had the thick pea soup with smoked meat to start. The appetizer was a meat pate with very hot mustard and potatoes and the main course of lots of pork, chicken, ribs with vegetables and potatoes. To die for!!!!! And the drink? An Estonian beer, of course! I don't have to say that we were dead after lunch, right?

Back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and last internet checking (I was very frustrated because I could not upload any picture in the blog) and off we went to the ferry boat terminal.
Just one side note about Tallinn: before this trip, I never paid too much attention to any of the Baltic countries and the only reason we ended up in Tallinn is because I wanted to get a ferry boat to Helsinki and could not figure out how to do it from Russia. Anyway, we are so glad that we were kind of force to stop in Estonia. Tallinn is absolutely charming and I wish we had more time there. I strongly recommend at least a day in the old town. I definitely would go back.

We left beautiful Tallinn at 5 pm in an express boat that took only one hour and half to get to Helsinki, the capital of Finland. It normally takes 2 hours and 20 minutes.

We settled in a simple but functional hotel right in downtown, called Anna. My parents decided to stay in resting, but I was determined to update this blog and I am very happy I am being able to do it. Hopefully in next trip the technology will be even better and I won't waste this much time to tell you, my friends, about this fantastic experiences.