Helsinki – Day 3

Once again we enjoyed a hearty hotel breakfast before the events of the day began, this time, we were visiting Tallinn, Estonia.

During our pre-holiday research we discovered that Tallinn was just across the Baltic from our base in Helsinki and after a bit more Googling by Mrs Young she found it was a relatively cheap visit to make too. Booking in advance we paid just €22.oo each way, a massive €44.00 return (Prices as of October 2016).

So, with breakfast taken, a hotel beanie hat purchased to help against the forecast rain, we headed off down the road to the Viking Line ferry terminal to catch a ferry to Tallinn, Estonia.

The terminal was very busy, we guessed maybe with Estonian’s returning home for the weekend and whilst queuing to board the ship we were treated to a small cabaret of a dancing bear, chaperoned by some singing Viking Line employees. The staff and the locals queuing to board all loved it, but we had no clue whatsoever as to what they were singing and dancing about.

The trip to Tallinn was two and a half hours across the Baltic and then we would have four hours ashore before turning around and catching the boat back to Helsinki again.

Once the doors were open, we boarded quickly and soon set sail picking our way through the small islands in the harbour, surprised to see that a lot of them were inhabited. The ferry was absolutely jam packed with barely enough seating to go around. People were sat on the stairs, sprawled across landings and pretty much anywhere that there was an inch or two of space. It was noisy and bustling during the whole trip.

Tallinn, although very pretty was, we felt, weirdly characterless, like a forgotten film set. Locals were unsmiling and disinterested. During our planning of the trip we thought that perhaps four hours ashore was perhaps a little too short, but in actual fact it turned out to be way more than enough time to see what Old Tallinn had to offer.

First stop was St Olaf’s Church, the tallest bell tower in Tallinn and once the cities tallest building. Of course, being the tallest building, we just had to climb it! The 60m church bell tower has a steep and very windy staircase which eventually leads up to the roof. It was a heart stopping view, but an equally lung bursting climb to see it.

After catching our breath from the descent of St Olaf’s bell tower we found our way to the town square. This was rather attractive and lined with shops and restaurants. This must be a lovely place to sit out and dine during the summer, but today’s weather was drizzling and damp and the square was empty.

 From the square we walked around the remainder of the small old town finally finding a small  café off of the square where we enjoyed a cake and a local Tallin coffee, which turned out to be highly alcoholic!

On our return trip we paid to have the buffet meal in the ferry’s restaurant, for only €25 each. Billed as a Bistro Buffet offering a wide selection of hot and cold dishes, desserts with unlimited beer, wine and soft drinks included, we really weren’t really expecting it to be that good. But the quantity and quality of the buffet was truly surprising and really good. There was a huge selection of salads and starters. Great choices of main courses and a really varied offering of all sorts of desserts. All washed down with as much wine, beer, soft drinks and tea/coffee as you could manage. All of this was  included in the modest €25.00. Really rather good for just a daily ferry crossing. Not only was the food good, but restaurant was clean, quiet and very restful compared to our earlier crossing with the only downside being that we were thrown out about an hour before we docked forcing us to then find a seat amongst the hoards scattered around the boat.

Our ferry arriving back in port as predicted at 8:30PM, we headed back to the hotel for a beer and a freshen up.