Hello, hello!!!

We are here. The summer of fun and gastronomic excesses is back! We'll spend the next 3-4 weeks here followed by 3-4 weeks in Vilnius. It's our 4th day here. The time is going by really fast and our only regret is not being able to share it with anyone.

Arrival is always the scariest. Finnair took away our stroller in NYC - I think they are the only airline with such annoying practice. But plane ride to Helsinki was super smooth - we got the seats with the legroom. So Georgia slept in the legroom and steward brought a crib for Isabella. It was a bit short for her but she managed to stay asleep most of the way. 

I spoke with a Lithuanian lady from the Midwest. She has amazing life story. She moved to Indiana with 2 Master’s degrees in math and music. Went to 29 interviews before landing the job at a school of the type that has armed officers manning the floors and most teachers don’t stick around longer than 2 weeks. She told interesting stories about taming the kids by taking them to see the Nutcracker and spending time in their church with their families.

It was amazing to see someone who really loves her job and makes a difference in other people’s lives. Interestingly she does not seem to think it is such a big deal. She said that her calling was the number of days off that teachers get. In her spare time she paints, knits, plays violin in an orchestra. And 2 years ago she got pregnant and gave birth to little girl at 45. And last year she bought a run-down farm near Ignalina that she was planing to bring back to life.

 

Flight to Tallinn was 20 minutes. There was more fuzz going through the passport control, waiting for our connection, getting on the little bus that took us to a little plane than the actual flight. In retrospect, a better way to go would be to stay in Helsinki for a few days and then take a boat over to Tallinn, but we wanted to get situated and make sure that we can stay here.

At BookingEstonia office we spoke to a helpful young girl Elvira who took us to our apartment that was in the building located on the town square. Apartment is really big, but one of the bedrooms does not have any windows. The rest of the windows face a little side street with a night club. That night club is especially enjoable when it rains.

The people who are in the upper town could possibly look inside some of our windows from one of the viewing areas there but they’d have to use binoculars to see anything good. There are few minor issues in the apartment like the lack of the washing machine and a microwave. There was also no soap, dishwashing liquid, and there were precisely 5 plates. But all of these things are fixable.

We got a bike chain to secure the stroller inside the building, got all the necessary household things, and even bought the microwave for which the apartment manager paid back. Initially she tried to convince us that microwaves are dangerous to kids. She got more agreeable after Dan tried to warm up some Chicken Kiev on the convection stovetop and fire alarms went on and cops showed up (albeit 20 minutes later). They were very friendly by the way.

We are still not adjusted to the 7 hour time difference. We sleep until 9 am and go to sleep at 1am. The kids are doing a little better – they go to sleep a bit later than usual but sleep until 9-10 am as well. So schedule is a bit strange. We have lunch at 2pm, and dinner at 8 on. 

 

Speaking of eating, I don’t think there would be too many interesting inputs on the gastronomic side. It is a lot more expensive to eat out here than in US on average, especially for the 5 of us. Well, in the name of tradition, here is the current run down:

We had several meals in Lido @ Solaris mall. It is a pick your own type of the restaurant. Consistently good on every single item and one of the most affordable options.

Saw another pick your own place in Viru mall. It is called Magic Buffet. Inside it was surgically clean: in part due to in-your-face cleanliness, the lack of customers, and meager food choices. We were not ready for its magic.

We had the run of the menu at Taco Express. What I really loved about the place was menu translated to Russian (and English). In Russian, the translation seems more liberal and funny. In Russian, Jalapeno sounded like Yalopeno and Nachos became a much macho nacho. Here is a pic.  In the true fashion of a fast food place, we first got our small burrito, after we were done, 2 piece quesadilla, then pizza (standard sized), followed by a cheeseburger.

Today we had lunch at a Russian Restaurant on Lai street. Very interesting, standard menu items like pelmeni and blini but somehow tightened up, gourmetized, and in very small portions. Prices as usual here. Don’t know if it was the lunch menu but we tried almost everything between the 4 of us – Isabella missed out on account of sleeping. Great service, but we would probably not come back just on account of that.

So we will try to eat out for lunch and eat in our breakfast and dinner. And we will check out the bar scene during our night walks. Hence the microwave.

There is one place that sort of intrigued us to the point of having a dinner date. Leib Resto Ja Aed. We were looking for a place to eat dinner fast and found this place right below the city wall. It is gated and has a sandbox! In addition tables with huge sloppy peony bouquets were lazily laid out  on the lawn spattered with more peony flowers. Turns out the place was booked that night, and the following night, and on Friday, Saturday, the following Monday. So I put my foot down and said we will eat there on Tuesday next week or we will stake them out. And fortunately they were not fully booked for Tuesday.

So now that I’ve written a whole page about food a little about the town. We really did not do it justice on all our prior visits here. We keep discovering new hidden courtyards and nooks. The area outside the city wall has many beautiful playgrounds with really great equipment, pretty parks and lakes and ponds. We still did not go around the entire old town.

Today we went to a Stroomi beach. Pretty long walk but it was worth it. It was the best beach and park infrastructure I had ever seen. There must be at least 5 different playgrounds within meters of each other. Beautiful forest-like park is good for walking with a stroller and there are multiple easy bike paths. The water covered in algae does not seem very promising but everything else around, including the multiple ice-cream cabins was top notch. Kids were amazing – we were walking for a good 5-6 hours and Georgia spent most of the time on her feet. Isabella was pretty good but in the end after expressing her frustration a little bit went to sleep for her first nap in 4 days. 

Locals are really friendly. Many speak multiple languages. Tallinn is as clean as some of the towns in Japan, if not cleaner. We see people on the streets at all times. You would be hard pressed to find a cigarette butt on the ground in the old town. Store windows shine bright.

We went to the local market. It is different than the one in Vilnius. We were there at 8am and most of the stalls were still closed. We could not find the good farmer cheese lady. Most have the milk-product stock that is smaller than what you would find in a Russian store in NJ. That means 2 kinds of farmer cheese – with raisins and without. Cured meats do not look very interesting also.

We saw an interesting street performance yesterday. A band of 4 people wearing straw basket hats (not straw hats – real straw basket hats) were performing interpretive dance to the sound of Bohemian Rhapsody. After that they asked for a moment of silence to pay respects to the nine issues they would not be covering, starting with extinction of Panda, e-coli, and more. After that kids lost interest and we moved on. I am sure the rest must have been a view to behold.

We found a lot more galleries and museums. Hope we will have enough time to cover all that.