I mentioned in my previous blog that I lost all the pictures I had taken of the end of Stockholm, all of Tallinn, and the morning of St. Petersburg. Thankfully, since we were traveling with friends I was able to get pictures of some of the things we saw. So all of the pictures on this blog belong to Jeremy Moll. He also has a better lens and eye than I do so they're probably better than my usual shots. :) Plus, he's more selective (so there's not as many pics), and we're not in any of them because we toured Tallinn as separately (kind of by accident).
We started our tour of Tallinn by entering through this gate. The huge rotunda on the left in known as "Fat Margaret Tower". It dates from the 1500s. Once inside we headed straight up this road where Danish, Swedish, and German merchants had their businesses.
It's funny--Jeremy and I had many of almost exactly the same pictures. Naturally, those are the ones I asked for to make this blog. When we went through this gate, I took a picture of Mike and the boys right where that couple is posing for a picture.
LOVED this beautiful clock on the side of the church building. It wasn't in the guide books, but Jeremy and Rachel noticed and admired it as well.
This in the Town Hall Square.
According to the little Tallinn map we were using, this was called "Cats Well". Oddly enough, there was a cat there when we came upon it. The name came about because medieval Tallinners believed there was a ghost living in the well that could only be appeased by the occasional feline sacrifice tossed down the well. I'm not sure what that might have done to their water supply... I took this picture, but from the opposite side of the well.
This was a very narrow street at the end of which was a LARGE, studded oak door. It is one of the two gates in the wall separating the upper from the lower cities. This passage is still the ritual meeting point of the mayor and prime minister whenever there is an important agreement between town and country.
This is the Russian Cathedral built in 1900. It is beautiful both inside and out, but to Estonians it was a Russian "slap in the face" of their national identity.
I took this EXACT picture! However, what Jeremy didn't get that we did was a picture of Jonas and Ezra posing with Shrek and Donkey just to the side of the cathedral. We paid a Euro for the privilege of taking that picture!
Although we made it up to the top of the city, somehow we missed this look out point. But I got it from Jeremy anyway as it is a beautiful view of the Old City.
This is the Viru Gate. If you go in the gate and follow the wall to the right, there is an amazing portion of the old city wall.
So minus the Shrek and Donkey picture with the boys, and a picture I took of the traditional Estonian cheesecake we tried at a coffee shop near the cathedral, the inside of the Russian cathedral, and a couple of other pics I was sorely missing, this was basically Tallinn in a nutshell. It wasn't as noteworthy as our other ports, but it was a really cute town, easy to walk, and get a good feel for midieval Estonia in just a few hours.
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