Walking a Marathon in Tallinn

I am worn out. Traveling to Riga and Tallinn the past two weekends, preparing to teach an entirely new language level, plus the ongoing recovery from my sickness has taken everything out of me. Thankfully, we’re going to be staying in Lithuania for the next three weeks before our first nine day vacation. But the good news is that now we’ve visited all the Baltic States!

Friday night, we took an overnight bus to Tallinn, Estonia. Is it even possible to get any sleep on a night bus? I probably got 45 minutes total. Luckily, I’ve been pretty good at running on adrenaline throughout this entire trip. Because we were going from 6:55 AM till around 9:00 PM on Saturday. When we got to Tallinn, it was completely abandoned. So at least we got to walk around the city and get a taste of it before all the tourists came out. Speaking of which, Tallinn is a complete tourist trap. It seems to be mostly locals in Vilnius and Riga. However, I guess a lot of cruise ships stop in Tallinn. There were thousands of people to navigate between the entire day.

The whole group

Pretty philosophical right?

After dropping our stuff off at the hostel, we went to get breakfast at McDonalds. I ate my first sausage egg mcmuffin in over a month. It was delicious. We have eaten at McDonalds in every single country we’ve visited. But seriously, it’s the best thing you can get out there. European food is always either super weird or really expensive. Then some of the girls in my group wanted to look around the shops and markets. I don’t know how they do it, but they have literally bought tons of crap every place  we’ve gone so far. Not even cool souvenir stuff. Just like bracelets, rings, purses, gloves, magnets, etc. Sometimes, I just want to say, “You’re really just going to shop again?.” We’re in Europe for crying out loud! This is the same cheap crap you can find in every single shop in the Baltic States. But to each their own. I hope they run out of money by the time we get to the cool places like England and Italy. Thankfully, one of the shopping girls met up with her cousin around noon. So then our group broke off, and I went with Paige, Rusty, and Alona again to go on a walking tour of the city.

Town Hall

Town Hall Square

First off, we visited the Kiek in de Kok and Bastion Passages Museum. It’s located in an old fort-like thing, and it’s all about the medieval weapons. I’m not really into that kind of stuff, but the layout of the museum was really cool. You kept going up a spiral staircase to each level where they had all kinds of old weapons and little tibits about medieval life in Estonia. It also had these cool little glass lookout points in the middle of each floor so you could look down into the preceding levels. Even just the windows in the wall offered fantastic views of the city.

This reminded me of The Book Thief

One of the views from the museum

After that, we visited a few cathedrals. My favorite cathedral was still the one in Riga with the courtyard. The rest are pretty much variations of the Russian style you find in all the Baltic States. But they were still beautiful. It’s always fun looking at a cathedral. One of the churches has this really cool tower that offers the best views of the entire city of Tallinn. In medieval times, it was the tallest tower in the world. We paid the three euros to talk about. 280 steep stairs on 45 minutes of sleep was not fun. But the views were awesome.

Alona and me

Remember The Three Brothers in Latvia? This is The Three Sisters. Dedicated to Katie and Jessie. 

Some lemon cotton candy I bought

After that, we tried to go to this really cool maritime museum. But we got there too late. You had to get there at least an hour before closing time, and we got there like 53 minutes before closing time. So that was lame and disappointing. So we just went back to the hostel to meet up with the other girls. The hostel was so weird. Hippie central. Saturday night just happened to be some music night. So we got to listen to the fellow boarders strum their guitars and sing hits such as Happy, Can You Feel the Love Tonight, and The Hanging Tree. Plus there were all these candles everywhere, bright colors, and words such as “The University of Life” painted on the walls. It was even called Euphoria. So weird. We were all pretty thankful we were only sleeping there one night. But the girl working there was pretty funny. As we were leaving on Sunday, we told her we would come back at 7:00 to pick up our bags before we got on the night bus. She was all, “Cool. Maybe I’ll see you again, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll see you when I come to Utah.” She was so funny.

On Sunday, we went to the Estonian Art Museum. The name is pretty ironic, because it was mostly Dutch art. But it was all still so beautiful. I love going to art museums anywhere. It was even located in an old palace in this gorgeous park. We also got to see the Baltic Sea! 

The Baltic Sea

My roommate Camee and me

And the group likes to do weird things like climb in trees

The Thai Embassy in Estonia Jessie!

The art museum

After that, our group broke off into the same two groups again. I have a feeling this is going to be a recurring theme. But all they wanted to do was shop again, and we went back to the maritime museum. It’s called Lennusadam Seaplane Harbor. Honestly, it was one of the coolest museums I have ever been to. I’m not even that interested in old ships and submarines and stuff. It was the museum itself that was awesome. It cost seven euros and you were given this little black card. You swiped the card to get in. Then whenever you read a sign in front of something that looked cool, you could swipe your card, type in your email address, and they would send you all the information. It was awesome. They also had amazing interactive displays you  could play with. One was a simulation of a sinking ship. It was one of the most terrifying things I have even been in. You go in and it looks like a regular hallway. Then all of sudden, the lights start flicking in and out. Then the floor starts tilting and alarms start blaring. You have to grab onto the railing before it almost went back 90 degrees. The lights are flashing on and off and you can hear waves crashing against you. It was pure emotional manipulation. Before us, there was this group of screaming Asian tourists which was pretty funny. Way better than shopping.

We all live in a yellow submarine....

Right next to the maritime museum, there was this old prison called Patarei Tallinn Prison. It was no Alcatraz I’ll tell you that. It was just this abandoned building full of junk. But it was still really scary. Something could have literally jumped out and pulled a knife on you. It was also full of graffiti, some of which was actually pretty cool

I Love Lucy!

After that, we went to catch our overnight bus. Tallinn was really cool, but I am getting exhausted. We walked 26 miles this weekend. 26 miles! That is ridiculous. It is still hard traveling with a group of strangers sometimes. The homesickness still creeps in at the most unusual times, even just going through an old prison in Estonia.  But hopefully the next few weeks will be pretty chill. I start teaching elementary and prelanguage this week, so I’ll be sure to update on that.