ESTONIA

Saturday 2^nd August 2014  Day 22 (day 7 of the cruise).

Tallin, Estonia.

Tallin Old Town is a very well preserved Medieval city dating back to the early 13^th Century. It is full of lovely old buildings, cobblestones of the horrid kind, Onion Domed churches, towers, spires and much lovely stuff.  It really was pretty – and such a pleasant sight after the gaudiness of St Petersburg. It was a fairly savage place with a lot of torture happening over the years and is quite Gothic. It was a walled city with much of the wall still intact. 

It was very funny that up until 10.30 am we were unable to find a coffee place open – many had displayed opening times of 12 noon.  But there were dozens of pubs and beer places open at 9.30am.  Funny.

We also ventured out of Old Town and into the modern section of the city and had the chance to look around the shops.

Our last few days in Russia had eight cruise ships in port. Eight ships – with an average of 2,500 passengers each is a lot of tourists even in a city of 5 million.

Today is Estonia there were only six ships – 15,000 extra tourists in a place of this size!!!!!!!!. As you can imagine Old Town was like coming out of a football game at full time.  Wall to wall people.

Yah.  We got another much needed nap before Concierge Time.

We are drinking with some lovely people up there.

Tom and Albert who are both retired flight crew, really dry funny Pommy guys who are so interesting.  They have been EVERYWHERE. They even flew on Concord.  But Andy – they HAVE NOT BEEN TO JULIA CREEK! I asked them!

As we were sailing out through the Swedish Archipelago the Captain announced that the was one of the most attractive in the world. Two hours in Tom says to our group “Where is this Archipelago, I haven’t seen it.” “Another person who was neither Australian or a Pom says “yes, where is it. I want to see it!” Hahaha.

And Paul from New Your City.

And Rolf and Goodie from Germany. They are quite hilarious and Goodie has us laughing lots at her stories.

Rolf grew up in East Germany (he is 60ish) and escaped to the West by hiding under rubbish in the boot of a car. It is fantastic to hear first hand accounts of what life was like on both sides.

We continue to have fun…….and continue to not have god enough internet to put up photos.  So keep looking back of very the other pages to see what we have been able to add – maybe tomorrow we will find Wifi.

Now click the Latvia tab.