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March 22, 2005
Jen and Lisa's Baltic Adventure - Day Eight
We are in Tallin! The capital of Estonia, Tallin is a little smaller, a little uglier, and a little more expensive than Riga (Latvia) and Vilnius (Lithuania). We only have two days here, and I'm not sorry we chose to minimize our time in Estonia in favor of an extra day in Finland.
We caught the noon bus from Riga, and it was a breeze to get here. We even got our passports stamped at the border! Arriving almost an hour early, we were able to check into our hotel (a nice, but a dingy two-star place) and walk up to Old Town while there was still light.
We stopped in to an old Russian Orthodox Church (pictured above), where a service was in progress. Well, I think it was a service. A stout man with unwashed shoulder-length hair and a beard was reciting something from a book (rather like the Jewish bat mivah I went to years ago) in a sonorous voice. A dozen or so people were gathered in a haphazard semicircle around him. At key moments they all bowed and crossed themselved (but going the opposite way across the shoulders). Throughout the church, there were also supplicants walking around and kissing various portraits and crosses. It was weird, but interesting.
After that, we walked around another section of Old Town, but there wasn't much to see, other than the view, which was spectacular:
Finally succumbing to the bitter cold, we found a cozy Greek place where we filled ourselves with kebab, french fries, cabbage salad, Diet Coke, baklava, and lattes. Sated, we made the long, long, long walk back to our hotel.
We were hoping to have internet access in our room, and indeed, there is a broadband outlet right next to the TV. But it doesn't seem to be working, and the receptionist is clueless (between the technology and the language, we can't seem to communicate the problem adequately). So in the end, we plugged our laptops up to the computer in the lobby, where I am now sitting on a couch with a Latvian drama playing in the background.
Tomorrow, we'll go see the other portion of Old Town (we just saw a nook off to the west)--it looks like we'll easily be able to cover it in a day, assuming our toes don't freeze off mid-walk. And then, it's a helicopter ride to Helsinki!
Comments
Ooo! Helicopter! I am very excited for you.
Posted by: La at March 22, 2005 09:51 PM
Love all these red roofs!
Posted by: Anonymous at March 23, 2005 12:23 AM
