For our final day of the trip we decided to throw in one more country and go to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. We’d heard it was a not-to-miss destination if you’re that close, but we were worried about the long ferry ride (about an hour and forty minutes). I don’t do so well on boats, and Finn had had some pretty rough motion sickness this trip. But we decided to go for it. You can tell from this shot of Finn right after we got off the boat that it didn’t go smoothly.
Thankfully, once we were off the boat we both recovered fairly quickly. After exiting the ferry, we were immediately at this place called Linnahall. We hadn’t read anything about it ahead of time, but it seemed like a very strange, very large, Soviet-era venue of some sort.
We later read that it was originally built for the 1980 Summer Olympics, and its first name was the V.I. Lenin Palace of Culture and Sport. It has obviously fallen into a bit of disrepair.
After that interesting little time warp, we walked into Old Town Tallinn, which is even more of a time warp. But a gorgeous and charming one.
After lunch, we walked to a medieval wall.
And then, just to totally switch gears, we went to a store that sold marzipan and had a marzipan gallery.
It was another instance of creepy/cool.
Next we went to what we thought was a hands-on science museum. It was … mostly. There were some great exhibits that we really enjoyed, but there were also a few that were clearly propaganda for the energy company that paid for the museum. It was pretty comical. Here are some photos from the parts we liked.
That was our last stop before heading back to the ferry for the ride home. We were all a little nervous about how bumpy it might be, but Finn managed a smile anyway.
As it turned out, the ride back was much smoother and a bit faster, and we all arrived back in Helsinki in good shape. We stopped at the market square (Kauppatori) for a dinner of delicious salmon and potatoes.
We walked back to our hotel but stopped to see this fountain …
… and for ice cream along the way.
The boys thought it was hysterical that a bird was on the top of this statue’s head.
Finally, we made it back to the hotel and got packed up to go home the next day. It was a pretty great last day in Europe!