Riga to Tallinn - From the Baltic to the Nordic

The general view of those who have travelled in these parts seem to be captured in the words of a blog post: 

Estonia is quite different culturally and linguistically to its Latvian and Lithuanian neighbours and therefore you will an eclectic mix of Baltic and Nordic tendencies. 

But before we look at our journey from Riga to Tallinn, a little about the morning.

Morning

I woke at 4pm and continued to work on the pictures from the last two days. Busy days are really fun, but they don't leave a lot of time for updating and uploading photos. It is a hard call - do less, see less, but take more time on tech? I think we've made the right call and put the seeing and doing before all else. This has meant that updates have taken time so, for example, the impact on this blog is that it is now eight days behind (and has been more at times). As I've said earlier in the holiday, I love looking back at these blogs - but a live report they are not, so apologies if you have been expecting that. 

Breakfast

We had set the alarm for 6am and it went off as planned. We both abluted and packed our cases ready for breakfast at 7am. 

I mentioned in yesterday's post that this wasn't Drew's favourite breakfast given the lack of sweet items. In terms of savoury items it had a good selection, including two forms of sausage - one called Hunters Sausage, a form of smoked sausage that was very tangy, the other called Boiled Sausage which reminds me of polony in taste and texture. I had both types - for comparative purposes, only of course!

Heading to the Bus Station

The plan was to leave the hotel at 8.30am and walk the 10 minutes to the bus station for our bus at 9am. It was a good plan, but we aren't as good in our doing as in our planning. With no one else at checkout when we went downstairs we were leaving the hotel at 8am and arrived at the bus station at 8.10am!!

Luckily there is a pleasant coffee shop where we waited until the bus arrived at 8.30am. With luggage loaded, the journey started on time at 9am.

Route

Due to the Baltic Rail work going on around Riga Bus Staion the route the bus took was a little different than that on the map above until it got to the outskirts of Riga where it joined the planned route. 

As well as water and a toilet, this Coach also has a coffee machine - a new experience for me on a coach!

We went through the border with Estonia at the seaside town of Ainaži. The road was a good two-lane highway for most of the way. There were some areas of major road building along the way, but a contraflow meant we weren't delayed significantly.

The coach stoped at Pärnu for passengers to exit and moves on after five minutes.

We arrive at Tallinn in perfect time at 1.30pm.

Arriving in Tallinn

Given our previous experience of Baltic towns we decided to walk from the bus station to the hotel. This was a gentle walk which meant we arrived at 2:02pm, which was convenient as it was just in time for check in which opened at 2pm.

Out and About in Tallinn

Our hotel, the Rixwell Viru Square is right in the heart of Old Tallinn. It is beside the Old Town Walls near the Viru Gate, one of the ancient gates of the Old Town. Once we had checked into our room we decided to make good use of the afternoon and head out to see what the Old Town had to offer.

A Town of Two Halves

Tallinn is a fascinating city, because it displays geographically the tradition of many medieval towns. It is often the case that parts of the town were for the rular, government and church and others for the merchents and other population. Well in Tallinn this isn't only a way of describing areas of the town, it is that the town is made up of Upper and Lower parts. The former where the seat of power lay, and still lies, in the area around Toompea Castle and the latter where the merchants and others did their tasks.  

Lower Old Town

By this time, having travelled from Riga and facing a temperature in the middle 80F I was ready for some fluids. Just up Vene, the main street from the Viru Gate and the Old Town I saw a sign advertising coffee. This lead into a small courtyard which was very quite, I went inside and ordered coffee while Drew started saying this is the wrong place! It turns out that what this store was more interesting in selling wasn't Coffee (though to be fair to me they did sell that) but rather cannabis in both leaf and CBD form is available. 

[Co-pilot's note: For the record, dear readers, this store had a very interesting designed leaf, as its logo, had a sign saying 'We sell CBD' was called a Coffee Shop rather than a Cafe and sold lots of associated paraphernalia. I struggle to see how someone could confuse it with someone else. I said: 'We don't want to go in here' prior to entering but was told I was being silly as it sold coffee!!]

We apologised for our ignorance, well mine anyway, and went elsewhere for coffee!!

Real Coffee

The real coffee was had in a delightful shop up one of the many side steets called the OA Coffeeshop, here we had an Americano and a Latte, not anything more exotic.

Wandering the Old Town

We continued to wander through Old Town, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe! Every step gives you a feel for the cramped busy existence of medevial people with their trade and relationships with their church and the people from the Upper Town. 

The route was like this:

St. Nicholas' Church

There has been a church on this site since the 13th Century, though the current one was burned out due to Soviet bombing when Tallinn was in German hands in 1944. It still stands as a central point in the Old Town and is used as a museum of Church Art. We had not long arrived and wanted to make the most of the lovely weather, so we didn't visit the museum on this occasion - something to look forward to on a future visit?

St. Peter and St. Paul's Cathedral

The Catholic Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul is a very different chruch. One of the smallest cathedrals in the world it is the home church not of a Diocesan Bishop but of an Apostolic Administrator appointed by Rome as a missionary bishop. Apostolic Administrators are more common in Africa than in Europe but in Estonia with its less than 1% Catholic population - the whole town switching to Lutheranism at the Reformation - it is a missionary territory.

While the Cathedral is small, it is pretty and a door from within it leads to one of the most special places in the city - the cloister of the Dominican Monastery than was in this area in the Middle Ages. 

Town Hall square

From the Cathedral we walked the streets further and saw more of the amazing medieval architecture of the town. We came to the centre of the Lower Town, the Town Hall Square (Raekoja Plats) a few moments here in this tourism haven with restaurants on every sides lets you imagine the hubbub of the medival city, when this square would have been full of merchants from the city and the other Hanseatic ports trading in goods of all kinds. It is truly remarkable to feel a part of so many centuries of history.

Back to the Hotel

We arrived back in the hotel at 6pm after three hours in the Old Town. We changed and dressed and went to dinner at 7pm.

Farm Restaurant

Yesterday evening we had looked at places to eat in Tallinn and found one that looked very attractive called the Farm Restaurant - we decied to book a table, as we had so little time in the city. When we arrived it was a surprise to find where the Farm Restaurant was - on the bottom floor of our Hotel! So we didn't have to fo far for dinner.

The Farm is focussed on serving the best of Estonian Cuisine, and it certainly seems to do so. It is smart, well laid out location, with the chefs, clearly visible - as you'll see behind Drew, in the kitchen behind glass screens.

We began with Rukkileib, the black bread made from Rye which is so famous from Germany, through the Baltic nations and in to the Nordic Nations. It tasted delicious, full of the earthiness which rye, a flour we use a lot at home, brings. 

For his started Drew had Lohitartar - Salmon Tartare with fresh apples, pickled pearl onions, horseradish-mustard sauce and brioche crisps was served in such a beautiful way that it seemed like a shame to mess with it - but he managed and really enjoyed every monthful.

I had Kuohkea turskanmaksa vaahto - Cod Liver Mousse with trout caviar and quail egg. When I was a child people used to joke about COd Liver Oil being good for you as it tasted so bad, well this Cod Liver Mousse is nothing like that. It does have a tart flavour but that is combined well with the salty cavier and the gentle quail's egg. A combination of tastes I've not had before, it feels like we are eating authentically Estonian food. 

For mains Drew choose Mehevä ankanfilee - Duck Fillet with smoked Jerusalem artichoke cream, blackcurrant-cabbage, marmalade, carrot confit with nuts and red wine cherry sauce. The duck was cooked pink and the vegetables and sauces accompanied it perfectly. Not a morsal was left at the end of the meal.

I had Grillattu saksanhirvifilee - Grilled Venison Fillet with boletus orsotto and red wine-blackberry sauce. The tangy sauce provided a great foil for the delicious meat. The combination of sharp, sweet and earthy worked so well. I could easily have eaten a whole extra plate of it.

For dessert Drew had Samettinen ruismallaskerma - Velvety rye malt cream - the mix of the rye texture with the fresh fruit made for a refreshing palette cleanser, though probably not enough for Drew's sweet tooth.

Unusually, but because I was still hungry, I ordered a dessert too - I tried Virolainen klassikko - An Estonian Classic with bread pudding with sour cream mousse, blackcurrant sorbet and fresh berries. As I hoped this was not to sweet with the bread pudding being solid and bread rich and the cream truly a sour cream setting my tongue to tingle. The sorbet was sharp and the fresh berries delightul. It was all served on, what appeared to be, a rock - which I'm told is the traditional way

Overlal I feel we have had a real tour of the distinctiveness of Estonian cuisine - I can't think I have eaten any dishes which combine these ingredients in the same way in any of my other visits to tasty restaurants. 

After Dinner Walk

With Dinner over at 8.30pm we decide it is to early to go to bed so we check the route to the Ferry, so we are confident tomorrow. We wouldn't normally do this, but there is a lot of work (Rail Baltica again) going on around the Ferry Terminal, so some of the bus and tram links are cancelled as the route is being remade. 

As it turned out we were at the Ferry terminal in 15 minutes from the hotel - Tallinn is a pretty town, but very compact, so much smaller than the other two Baltic capitals. Indeed, as it often reminds one, it is as much part of the Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen Nordic network, here in the North of mainland Europe, as it is of the Baltic states.

On our walk we also encountered a self-driving delivery device - it crossed the road at the traffic-light controlled crossing - it was a surprising site to find it coming towards us.

We went back to the hotel and were in bed by 10.15pm.