Day 3 Tallinn - a few small things

23 October
Day 3 Tallinn

Since today is Monday pretty much all of the museums are closed. So I used the few hours I had left of the Tallinn Card to check out a couple of the non-museum things in the old town.

I went and climbed a guard tower and walked along a section of the city walls that are opened to the public.

Then I went and climbed the 250 odd steps to the top of St Olav's church tower.  The steps were pretty big at the start and it was just a constant spiral.  But I got to the top without a break again!  This is becoming a habit.  The view was pretty good at the top and I was lucky enough for the sun to be out.

After that I went for a walk around the outside of the walls for a different view of them which was pretty nice.

This took me to about 11.30am so I headed down to the Tourist Information Office to take a free walking tour of the city.  Since it's off season I figured there wouldn't be too many people doing the tour.  But since the tour was free and everything else was closed there was about 50-60 people there.  I wasn't really expecting much from the tour but the girl giving the tour had some funny stories and was a bit of a performer so I ended up quite enjoying it.  Mostly covered all the ground that I'd already walked but it was definitely more interesting with someone giving some commentary.

You should go look at Estonia's history on Wikipedia or something.  This country has been royally shat on for quite a long time.  They're going great guns now though.  The government has heavily invested in technology and making Estonia a modern and future-sighted country.  At one point Heli proudly whipped out her ID card and told us all the cool things they could do with it (passport, taxes, medical records, ONLINE VOTING).

After the tour I had a late lunch at a nice Estonian restaurant.  Had some local fish soup, an elk stew and a glass of their version of mulled wine.  Was tasty though not particularly exciting.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet.  I went over to a market area and had a look around, played some Ingress then did a bit of shopping.  I was getting colder so I decided I needed to get a couple of extra things.  I didn't end up finding some of what I was looking for but did get a very nice wool scarf (let's not talk about how much it cost ... If it keeps me warm it'll be worth it) and a pair of wool lined leather gloves which are a bit more stylish than the ones I picked up in Russia.

Finished up the evening with a few beers and late dinner at a craft beer place in the old town.  Another great list of Estonian beers.  The Estonians are doing some really nice craft beers.  And it's nice to see plenty of breweries doing European styles rather than only the IPAs which seems to be the focus in Australia.  Don't get me wrong - they do plenty of IPAs here as well but there are dubbels and schwarzbiers and altbiers and all sorts of stuff.