The Last Day in Tallinn

Thursday was a hectic. We were planning to go to Saremaa island and after some contemplating decided not to come back to Tallinn. It was time to go to Vilnius anyway. So we had some logistics to take care off – rent a car, tell our trusty agent Audra (gelminta@delfi.lt) that we would be coming on Tuesday, pack. The plan was to arrive to Kusseare (the capital of Saremaa) on Friday, go sightseeing on Saturday, and leave early on Sunday to drive through Latvian castle area and stop there for the night.

Between the packing we also worked, paid last visit to Pelmeni place and the talented artist in the cellar, discovered an interesting way to walk through the textile row near St. Catherine’s. The first day of 4-day Medieval days festival was going on in town as well. However for the first day, it was not very impressive: it looked like Wednesday market folks just came back on Thursday dressed in traditional clothes. A few workshops opened up near the Nigulist church.

Speaking of traditional clothes, locals wear them and wear them well. Clothing is clearly very thoroughly done – it is really clothes, not cheap carnival gear. Ladies have 2 layer dresses with beautiful under dresses, and very elaborate upper dresses with interesting drooping sleeves. Men wore laced up leather booties and similarly complicated overcoats. Hats represented all medieval periods and social-economic types. Just beautiful to look at. We even saw a few “beggar kids.” Their faces were smeared with “dirt” and clothing consisted of linen tunics all ripped up.

At night Dan and I walked around and made a few final discoveries as we were saying goodbye to the city. The first was finding the abandoned Dominican monastery. I saw it from the window of another monastery mentioned in this post (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). I looked around and tried to find it but could not. We walked into a restaurant on the street where Master’s Courtyard is located to see it closer – it was enormous. And inside, there were glass doors right onto the monastery. Amazing sight!!!

The second discovery was the way up towards Parliament building tower. There was a staircase from the ponds below the city wall directly towards the tower. We walked around that area all the time and never noticed it. We passed a bunch of people sitting in the niches of the wall and having a picnic and watching the sunset. We wish we found it earlier.

Finally, we randomly walked into Reval café located near the Victory square. Turns out that it is giant, cavernous inside. It is filled with comfy red armchairs, pictures of views from NYC Greenwich village. And they sell the best deserts. Finally! It was great to sit down inside for a bite. And some closing thoughts about the city. We had a great time!!!