James Went To Tallinn

I’m tallinn you, I had a good time in Tallinn.

It was the first stop on my next three city/country tour of Europe, Estonia was a completely new country to me – having never visited a Baltic country. Plus I had an accomplice this time too.

I had a feeling that Tallinn would be my favourite city of the trip – spoiler (because nobody is going to read all 3 reviews anyway), it was my favourite city of the trip.

I loved how Tallinn mixed modernity, art deco cool with medieval history too.

Just how stunning is this building?

Yet just how stunning is the view of the old town, with one of the best-preserved medieval structures in Europe in terms of the city walls and towers:

Oh and there was a sizable hipster area too. Yep…Tallinn was totally my vibe.

The Old Town of Tallinn

You could walk around for ages in Tallinn’s old town and get lost in the atmosphere. Sure, there’s lots of tourists but hey, so am I.

The buildings varied from more medieval structures, to communist vibes, churches and spires feature plenty too.

We had a guided tour who was actually pretty hilarious, it was an interactive story-telling vibe featuring mostly stories from the medieval days – do I remember any? No.

But if you go, then do book on the tour.

Russia, and the distaste of Russia stands out whilst visiting Tallinn.

I appreciated the redecoration of the outside of the Russian embassy:

The other thing we really enjoyed was a tour of the KGB museum in the Virtu hotel – which was the hotel open to westerners to visit and explore just how wonderfully modern (lol) the USSR was, back in the 80’s.

And on the top floor, the KGB were listening in to what was happening in your room. The main office is still pretty much as it was when they left:

We did also visit the Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom, though I wasn’t so into it there. It was an audio guide tour and you’d spend 12 minutes in each room listening to someone…it felt slow and I ended up clicking to fast forward most of it.

Telliskivi

And then there was Telliskivi.

This is totally my kind of area, an old industrial area which is slowly being taken over by cafes, bars, markets and some cultural activities too. Kind of a shame that we visited Sunday to Tuesday rather than taking in a weekend there, as I would have loved to have seen it busier.

Also I would have loved to have come in better weather – we left 25’C and glorious sunshine in London, to come to 16’C and heavy rain/showers in Tallinn. It wasn’t quite Baltic, but it was notably cooler than I was used to!

But we did luck out with some sunshine for an hour or so in the afternoon, and had a couple of beers outside – and then we got stuck in the third place when it started pouring down again.

Another beer? Oh how terrible.

We also went to the Fotografiska museum, which was excellent, though I was a bit tipsy at this point.

They had two really well done exhibitions, one from general photographs of life, which was often quite amusing – and kind of made me want to be a photographer:

The other…well…not so much. This was a totally different vibe from the previous floor, and much darker.

All his portraits were all people who look scarred by life:

Really, really striking photography though.

Where To Drink?

So…where to drink good beer in Tallinn.

I don’t think I had a bad beer whilst in Tallinn. Then again, I do tend to go to craft beer places where possible.

Probably also worth mentioning that it wasn’t actually that cheap – again, I’m drinking in the “me places” and not your bang average lager. I’d approximate that once you round up the prices to a pint, then it is similar to London prices for a craft beer in Tallinn.

The best range was arguably in Põhja Konn, with Pudel also doing some good beers too…they even had cask beer.

Though I think the tastiest beer I had in Tallinn was at Kivi Paber Käärid, also in Telliskivi.

Where To Eat?

I don’t think I ate anywhere really outstanding in Tallinn, it was all a bit of a hotch-potch.

Balti Jaama Turg is an indoor market in Telliskivi, and well worth a wander around – we had a vegan stew there which was decent enough, and I needed vegetables so it ticked that box.

Kivi Paber Käärid served some banging sweet potato fries whilst we were waiting for the rain to stop.

I had a good fish dish at Restaurant Pegasus – nothing outstanding, but very pleasant.

Probably the best meal I had was at Odesa Restaurant, with a proper chicken kiev, where the chicken is wrapped around the sauce.

It was a Ukrainian restaurant:

And probably the worst meal was a pretty average chicken curry at a restaurant called Chakra. Vegetable pakoras were pretty dry and tasteless too.

Really, I probably should know better than to eat Indian food outside of London (except in India, of course).

Somehow I spent £40 there too.

Overall Thoughts on Tallinn

Some places I go to and don’t feel like I’ve really got to understand it, but I think I gained a good grasp of what makes Tallinn tick.

It seems a city rooted further into modernity than many others in Europe I have been to, with a perhaps disparaging appreciation of a Soviet past, and a thorough welcoming of a Medieval history. There’s a few layers to Tallinn, and I appreciated and touched upon them all…well, at least the layers I noticed.

It was super easy to get around, we ended up getting rather a lot of Bolts, though it is a walkable city, and the trams were cheap when we used them too.

Everyone spoke good English, though I did learn the word for thank you in Estonian, which always pleasantly surprises the locals (away from western Europe) when you can manage that.

Overall I really, really rated Tallinn – it’s totally my kind of city, and I’d happily go back there. I could even live there, though maybe only in summer months…and this summer apparently the weather was rubbish, so maybe not every year either!

I didn’t fall in love with it as much as say Strasbourg or Ljubljana, but it is well up there in my rankings.

Maybe I might go back when the Rail Baltica project is finished, and do a train tour from Poland through the Baltic countries.

So then it was time to get the ferry to Helsinki…