We start this day in Tallinn and will spend the
morning
exploring the historical center with its fantastic Old Town until the
time to board the ferry back to Helsinki at 1:30 PM.
In the same Helsinki terminal we’ll just change to
a bigger boat where we’ll spend the night in our trip to Saint
Petersburg.
The spots marked at map are:
0- Hotel L'Ermitage
1- Ferry Terminal
2- Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
3- St Mary's Cathedral
4- Town Hall Square
5- Holy Spirit's Church
6- St Olaf's Church
7- Kiek in de Kök tower
8- Fat Margaret tower
After
We want to go early for our visits in order of having as
much time as possible to explore the Tallinn’s Old Town, so we’re
leaving the hotel around 9 AM. We’re soon at Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
after the short walk we know from last night. Photos are not allowed
inside.
Then we go to St. Mary’s Cathedral nearby but it is
closed. We soon find out everything opens at 10 AM here. We go to a
lookout point marked in my map but it results to point to the modern
city and the sea, it is nice, but I’m looking for the views to Old Town.
We’re in a hill and when we find a big map standing in the
street I can locate there the only lookout to the Old Town, so we’re
going there. It is between the 3 and 4 in the map above.
As it is 10 AM now we can buy some souvenirs and go to St.
Mary’s only to learn we cannot do any pictures inside and admission fee
is 2€. As we’ve already seen the interior we leave the cathedral and
the hill to get into the walled city.
The medieval city is charming, with stoned streets and colorful facades.
We are visiting every church in the city but all of them
are closed. The Town Hall Square appears in the maze of streets as a
beautiful space surrounded by restaurants. Here is the world oldest
pharmacy.
We explore every corner within the walls because there are
no long distances here, and then we leave the old city to go back to
the hotel.
We order a taxi where we can confirm the scam in the one
yesterday: we pay less than 8€ for the same trip we were charged 27€
yesterday. In the boat, as we’ve got the experience, we go directly to
the hall at the front to take a sofa for us. From here we can see the
way the boat is following.
Today is a sunny day and I can do my pictures to the Tallinn skyline from the sea.
The change of boat in Helsinki is easy and, as we leave
from the long pass way for the Tallink ferry, we check in and get into
the long pass way belonging to St. Peter Line. We must pass a passport
control here, though.
This ship is huge, with casino, swimming pool,
restaurants… We’re happy with our cabin but when we go up to dinner we
find the restaurant closed at 8:50 PM. They explain restaurant time is
from 5 PM to 8 PM in Finnish times, as we learn Russia is one hour over
it because they don’t change time in winter, so this weekend both
countries will be at the same time after European time change. About
the dinner, we can spend our tickets in any of the other a-la-carte
restaurants. We do it to enjoy a magnificent sushi meal before going to
bed.
