Tallinn, Estonia

 We travelled from Riga to Tallin with our guide, Andra and Ivas our driver. The distance again is 290ks.

On the way we stopped at Parnu, the resort town on the Balatic sea, where all the Latvia people holiday.

Pedestrian street in Parnu

Our first glimpse of the Baltic Sea.

We arrived into Tallinn early afternoon, checked into our hotel, then went off to explore.

Estonia's population is just over 1,000,000 and Tallinn is 440,000 people.

They get over 2,000,000 visitors a year.

Estonia is the birthplace of Skype, which they sold to Microsoft, but a lot of the production is still done in Estonia.

Our hotel is a short walk from the old town and we did our city tour with a guide, we did not learn a lot about the history, but a lot of the buildings were discussed.

In Tallinn downtown there is a long and short street, we climbed many steps to get up the top to the Danish King gardens. The long street (top) was used by the rich and the short was the peasants, they were not allowed on the long street.

I just loved the pose of this beast.

These etchings on rocks are dated from the 13th century 

Everything looks very medieval in Tallinn.

The old town is surrounded by a large wall and turrets.

The Danish King gardens

There was quite a few monk statues in these gardens, a great view overlooking Tallin.

Russian Orthodox Church and DH, always in the way of my photos.

Parliament building

Oldest church in Estonia, which holds over a 100 coat of arms.

We walked quite a few steps on our tour.

Apparently all the dead cats used to be thrown down this well.

Tallinn freedom monument.

Plaque dedicated to Yeltsinn, no explanation needed, in English.

Thus is a statue of a chimney sweeper, we were told he was put there as Tallinn did not have enough statues.

This concludes our Eastern Europe and Baltic country tour, for tomorrow we go by ferry to Northern Europe, Helsinki.