Tallinn, Another Hanseatic City

There’s a lot of the Hanseatic “thing” going on in this part of the world. Turns out that Tallinn was one of the players of the time. It is unsurprisingly a UNESCO World Heritage Center. (We’re racking up an impressive list of UNESCO sites on this trip.)

Estonia is a very small country. They have a population of only 1.4 million, about one third of whom live in Tallinn. They call themselves “the little country that could.” Russia has ruled them repeatedly, and they have been independent most recently just since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. They have modernized rapidly and are definitely a wired country. We were told that many refer to Estonia as e-Stonia. They have free WiFi throughout Tallinn and are scandalized at the notion of charging people for WiFi or some people not having access to WiFi.

We had a brief visit to this pretty city on Thursday. We walked first through the upper town, known as Toompea. The old city wall is still here, with towers sprinkled along it. The area also houses the Estonian parliament and the delectable Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The Estonians have a rather challenging history with their Russian neighbors. So, even though this is a stunning cathedral, there’s no soft spot in their hearts about it.

Two of the towers on the wall. The one on the right is known as Kiek in de Kok, which means “peek in the kitchen” because the guards in the tower could do just that to the neighboring houses.

The pink Toompea Castle, now the parliament building, and the tallest tower in the castle wall, called Tall Hermann (flying the black and white and royal blue Estonian flag).

Across the way from the parliament building is the beautiful Russian church. We were able to go in and see icons and artwork, but no photography is allowed.

We headed down to the lower town and wandered its narrow cobblestone streets.

The 1633 clock on the wall of the Church of the Holy Ghost.

The Great Guild Hall, home of the most powerful and wealthy of the Hanseatic guilds.

We came out into the big Town Hall Square, rimmed with pretty old buildings.

And the 15th century Town Hall, of course.

The Town Hall was flying both the Estonian and Norwegian flags, because the 100th anniversary of the Republic was being acknowledged by a visit from the Crown Prince and Princess of Norway. Some lucky folks on our ship got to see the Estonian President (a young woman) and the Crown Prince and Princess come through the market square just after we left.

St. Nicholas Church—dating from the 13th century, but rebuilt after Soviets bombed the area during the German occupation.

We had been promised rain for our morning walk, with the weather relenting in the afternoon. We started out in 40 degrees with strong winds, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only person wondering if I should have added another layer or at least a scarf. But we got very lucky. We had no rain at all, and, by the time we reached the market square, the sun had broken out.

We stopped at one of the many sidewalk cafes on the square and had lattes—expensive, but very good and hitting the spot. It was fun to sit in the sun and watch all the activity in the square.

We still had some free time after our coffee break, so we followed some of the curvy little streets off the square and did some window shopping. This is an area where you see a lot of Baltic amber (which I left behind) and lots of linen items (which I didn’t).

As we walked back toward the ship, we passed a busy flower market. So colorful and cheery.

I couldn’t get Jerry to agree to pose with this fellow. No fun!

Then it was time to sail away again. The good part of cruising (to which we are pretty new): We get to see a bit of a lot of places, many of them places we might not see otherwise. The bad part: In most cases, we get only a tiny taste of these places. Tallinn was one of the these. But it was fun to see and experience it, even if only for a few hours.