June
14, 2017 Helsinki-Tallinn, Estonia
Breakfast
across the street again and then a tram ride from the train station to the
Viking Ferry Terminal for our ride to Tallinn.
We bought round trip tickets because they are cheaper than a one-way
ticket, and Trip Advisor is full of posts telling you to do this because nobody
ever cares that you use a round trip ticket while carrying luggage. It seems goofy to me, but once again they
didn’t ask me. I imagine anyone who has
taken a cruise is familiar with the boarding drill. We assembled in a boarding hall. We got off the tram with the crowd who all
were on our ship, but we were about the first people into the hall, where there
weren’t many seats; we got a seat. We
asked the ticket person why people were waiting outside and she said that once
you were inside you couldn’t leave. But
where would you go? Eventually the room
was full with lines at the boarding gates.
We marched in with everyone else.
The regulars new where they wanted to go. The ferry has at least four levels for
passengers. There are some prime seats
in one area at the front with views out the front. There is another area with a full service
restaurant, a shopping area and a café area where we sat. There was even more I’m sure. We sat at a table with a young lady who took
up the three seats on her side of the table.
She had a sketch book that she was drawing in for most of the trip. She started sketching some kind of diagram
that could have been some kind of fortune telling effort, it was strange. She then started making a drawing of lines
and circles that I actually liked. We
had a sandwich and a dessert. The ride
took about 2.5 hours. Leaving the ferry
was the reverse of boarding. The number
of trucks coming out of the ferry was impressive. It was a short Google Map walk from the
terminal to our hotel in Tallinn. Google
put the marker for our hotel just around a corner, as we approached the corner
a young man was trying to interest us in his hotel restaurant. I brushed him off by telling him we might be
back later. We go around the corner and
there is a walkway back to where the Google marker indicates are hotel is
located. We are now at the back of our
hotel, we walk around to the front to meet the same young man. He was hawking our hotel! At dinner that night he admonished me for not
paying attention to him. I didn’t
explain that Tallinn, and every tourist area, is full of guys trying to get you
to come into their restaurant, etc.
We
dropped our luggage and did NOT go to a museum.
It was closed today, we would visit it tomorrow. The Old Town of Tallinn is tourist
central. There is a large square where a
market was going on when we arrived. The
square is ringed by restaurants, bars and stores. Tallinn is a big cruise ship stop. We walked around and took it all in. Sue just couldn’t make up her mind what kind
of amber jewelry she wanted, so she didn’t get any (I’m joking). There were also many stores selling wool
clothing, I guess that is an Estonian specialty. We of course had a beer, and then went back
to our hotel.
We
had another great dinner our hotel. Our
young man, who it turned out was a student from Bangladesh had just started
working at the hotel because he spoke English.
He was very nice, but the real star was the maitre d/sommelier whose
English was as good as the young man’s, but she wasn’t at the hotel all
day. She was so enthusiastic about the
food and the beer! It was just fun
talking to them both during dinner about all kinds of stuff. We had a great time, don’t we always?
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