Regretfully once we reached Estionia ( and again in the evening when we left) there were no border controls, not even a bored officer lounging around so no stamps in our passports and we needn’t even have taken them with us.
Our sobering entry to Tallinn old town was the symbolic memorial sculpture (Broken Line) to the 852 people who died in a ferry sinking the Baltic in 1994. We then went on in to the Old Town, a well preserved medieval city, via the 1380 gate tower. Our first stop was St Olavs Church, where we climbed the 210 steps up a very narrow winding staircase to emerge on a very narrow ledge at the top –very hot and quite dusty but the view from the top more than made up for it. In 13th century this church was once the world’s tallest building at 159 metres high!! We wandered the old town, which is being gradually restored tho has still some areas that look original 1300s, stopping for lunch in Raekoja Plats where we were entertained by a youth folk orchestra obviously rehearsing for a performance. We made final climb up to Toompea, the highest part of the old town where there is the huge 19th Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox cathedral as well as the Lutheran Toonkirik, Estionia’s oldest church dating from 1219. On the way out, as aficionados of the spy novel, we had to call by the building that was the KGB Headquarters during the time Estonia was part of the Soviet Union.
There is another whole modern part of Tallinn (well some looked like old soviet era apartment buildings) which we did not get to see but is supposed to have some very fashionable shops.
Our sobering entry to Tallinn old town was the symbolic memorial sculpture (Broken Line) to the 852 people who died in a ferry sinking the Baltic in 1994. We then went on in to the Old Town, a well preserved medieval city, via the 1380 gate tower. Our first stop was St Olavs Church, where we climbed the 210 steps up a very narrow winding staircase to emerge on a very narrow ledge at the top –very hot and quite dusty but the view from the top more than made up for it. In 13th century this church was once the world’s tallest building at 159 metres high!! We wandered the old town, which is being gradually restored tho has still some areas that look original 1300s, stopping for lunch in Raekoja Plats where we were entertained by a youth folk orchestra obviously rehearsing for a performance. We made final climb up to Toompea, the highest part of the old town where there is the huge 19th Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox cathedral as well as the Lutheran Toonkirik, Estionia’s oldest church dating from 1219. On the way out, as aficionados of the spy novel, we had to call by the building that was the KGB Headquarters during the time Estonia was part of the Soviet Union.
There is another whole modern part of Tallinn (well some looked like old soviet era apartment buildings) which we did not get to see but is supposed to have some very fashionable shops.
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