Tallinn is so medieval, you can find the old medieval wall everywhere in the old town area, but it is also very touristic compared to the Baltic cities that we have visited (got the feeling that the old town is dedicated for tourists...hmm like open air museum hehe). We had early dinner in Olde Hansa, a very pretty medieval style restaurant (told you everything in Tallinn is so medieval), they even have a medieval toilet and wash basin (seriously, it was like going back to medieval time :-P). We walked around the old town and did some souvenirs hunting (but the price for souvenirs in Tallin is unbelivable expensive, kind of warming up to Finland's price maybe..) and we reserved a bike tour (yes biking is addictive :-P) to Laheema National Park for the next day.
We started our bike trip using minibus to Palmse around 9am and it was foggy in Tallinn and was even more foggy in Palmse :-P. There were five of us in the group, Aneeka from Germany, John from England, and Shinichi from Japan (yup five people from five different countries :-)). We visited its visitor center and watched a 17-min movie about Laheema National Park there. Then we officially started our bike tour after stop by for a photo shot at the misty Palmse manor. We headed for Sagadi, and had another photo shot in Sagadi manor with a pretty souvenir shop, then we passed through Oandu and Altja. We have been recommended to have lunch in Altja because it has a very nice old tavern, but unfortunately it was reserved for a private party when we were there, so we decided to have our lunch in Vergi after did a bit walk in Altja. It turned out that the only restaurant in Vergi was located at its port which was a bit far from the main road in the middle of nowhere and ... yeah it was still foggy. After lunch we continued our bike trip to Vosu, stopped by at its beach before cycled to Kasmu, our final destination where we would be picked up with the minibus to return to Tallinn. It was still around 16 when we arrived in Kasmu (which is a pretty village with again a lot of timber houses), in our meeting point we met the girl from the City bike who arranged the trip and and she encouraged us to take another route to Vana-Juri and Palganeem (errr that's if we were right reading the map, because we just followed the road in the wood). It was a nice additional trip since it was more like doing mountain biking inside the wood. All in all we did around 40km bike trip and we returned to Tallinn around 19. Shinichi decided to join us for a dinner in Clazz, a classy restaurant in front of the Olde Hansa. We had a nice dinner together and kind of funny to realize that day was 17th of August, Indonesia's independence day and I spent that day with a Dutch man and a Japanese man, a proof that we can live in harmony now :-P
The next day we went to Kadriorg park to visit Kadriorg palace which has a lovely small garden. We walked to Russalka monument and had a bit walk along the famous Pirita tee, before taking bus to Pirita beach. Too bad that the monastery was closed for visitor that day, so we directly walked to the beach which was almost completely deserted that day (it was a chilly Monday afternoon). We had a drink in a cafe called Velvet (which has a strange luxurious bathroom :-P), spent some time there and then decided to return to the old town. After a bit walking (hmm did we really walk in the old town that day? :-P) we dropped by at Kehrwieder, a nice cafe at the Raekoja square (oh yes it was raining, that was our excuse to have cafe hopping that day :-P). But at least we managed to visit the medieval street called Laboratoriumi and its Ukranian church. We had dinner around 18:30 at Venaejema Jures which has old decoration and cave-like interior, then left to the Raekoja (town hall) to see the Chamber music festival which was a beautiful performance.
After breakfast the next day, we visited the market behind the train station which reminded me of Indonesian market with better cleanliness (and different things to sell for sure). We planned to walk through the secret tunnel below Kiek-in-de-Kook, a tall tower built in about 1475 , but they only had group guided tour and the only available group that day would be done in Estonian. So we decided to visit Museum of Occupation which has an interesting display of Estonian history during German and Soviet occupation. We stayed there until around 13:30 and had our lunch in Kompressor, a budget restaurant famous of its huge and delicious pancake (had strawberry, whipped cream and chesse pancake there .. yummy). After lunch we picked up our luggage and walked to the Lindaline port for our ferry to Helsinki at 16:00. It was a nice time we had in Tallinn, a bit more relaxing than what we had in the previous cities but still we had to say good bye to the lovely medieval Tallinn that afternoon.
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