Another new country for us- Estonia. Only 1.4 million people living here including about 450,000 in the capital of Tallinn. A lot of visitors to the Balkans only visit the 3 capitals (Tallinn- Estonia, Riga-Latvia, and Vilnius-Lithuania). We found ourselves planning the easy route like everyone else, so we decided to add on the smaller beach town of Parnu. Our 5 nights in Tallinn and then 2 in Parnu worked well for us. Lets start with the beautiful old old town of Tallinn – an UNESCO heritage location.
Estonia spent over 40 years as part of the Soviet Union, but we didn’t see any Soviet architecture downtown. The old town was beautiful with many medieval buildings and reminded us of many other small European old towns. We stayed right on the edge of the old town, near the market and train station, in the neighborhood called Telliskivi. The market wasn’t a copy of the same markets you see all over Europe. It had the produce, meat, fish and cheese stands, but it also had some 2nd hand clothing shops and antique shops. Much more interesting than the markets we always we walk though and rarely buy anything. The best part about this neighborhood were the local restaurants. Many different types of food at reasonable prices and it wasn’t the touristy stuff you see in the old town. We could have stayed many more nights here to try all of the Estonian and European food.
We did our “free” walking tour on the first day to get wowed by the old town buildings. We heard the sad history of Estonia, which included years of being controlled by other countries. Tallinn also has some excellent museums and we visited an Estonian art museum and a history museum showing the Soviet occupation years. The highlight of Tallin was the old town complete with old city walls and several lookout towers. Everything was in great shape and the town wasn’t super busy except for 1 day when 3 cruise ships were in town. This town usually has only 1 ship at a time so this was probably the busiest day all summer. We still had a great time and enjoyed the old town atmosphere on the days without cruise ships. One major highlight was a meetup with another fun nomad couple for dinner which led to drinks at a Scottish pub where we had some fun conversations with some Estonian locals with some whiskey. These are the type of experiences we are looking for but I didn’t take any pics :<(
In our quest to see something of the Balkans besides the capitals we headed for the small beach town of Parnu for a couple of nights. It happened to be a festival weekend and the town was filled with folk dancers. Hundreds of dancers from all over Estonia descended on this small town of 40,000 people to show off their dancing in traditional costumes. We often see traditional dancing all over the world but it always seems like it is done for tourism. Not here…. we felt like we were the only tourists watching this. This dancing was for Estonians. Another experience to remind of why we like to travel….
Parnu itself was a very interesting town. Sometime in the 1800’s a circus came to town and the townspeople became enamored with elephants. I don’t fully understand this because I don’t speak Estonian but I think I’m on the right track. They built a elephant slide on the beach that became very popular. At some point the slide disappeared and people were sad. So they built another slide and then went a bit overboard. They put elephant statues all over town and created an Elephant Street with even more cement elephants. Even the bike lanes have elephants painted on them. This is the first elephant themed town that we have been to. :>)
Estonia was great but it is time to move on to our next Baltic country – Latvia. We are heading to the capital city of Riga which is currently filled with a lot of nomads whom we look forward to meeting up with. We are ready to be a bit social and experience another new country with some new friends!