Thursday night we left Klaipeda around 11:45pm. We went to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, first. It was a long drive and they guessed that we would get there around 8am on Friday. The trip was funny because everyone was really excited so they didn't want to sleep but at the same time we all knew that we would need all the energy we could get to make it through the next 2 days so we tried to sleep as much as possible.
We got into Tallinn as planned and hit up breakfast then we took a guided tour around the city. Tallinn is really cool. It is right at the northern tip of Estonia, the most northern place in the Baltic States, right across the water from Finland. People started living there as early as 8000 BC so thats crazy! The city is built in and around a castle on a hill which had walls that go around all of the old town. It was really cool walking around the old town because they were these really skinny cobble stone streets and every so often you would go through a what was a door of the castle through a thick castle wall and you were on another street. We got see all different kinds of parts of the castle, churches, government buildings, etc. We grabbed a tiny bit of lunch and then explored some more of the city that was around our hostel. Our hostel, by the way, was right in the middle of old town right by the square. We went to a place called Kadriorg Palace, it was amazing! It was a palace of Peter the Great of Russia. We walked to the sea which was only about a half a kilometer from the palace.
For dinner, the program payed for dinner at a medieval restaurant just off the square called Old Hansa. It was easily the coolest restaurant I have ever been too! Seriously. It was amazing! The inside looked like a banquet hall of a castle and all the people were dressed in Estonian attire from the 1300s. Our waiters came out and announced that the feast had begun and they brought out the first course. There were 2 kinds of bread one was whitish but crumbly and had tons of spices and the other was kind of like pumpernickel. After that they brought out a cheese dish tasted a lot like pizza cheese. It was melted and really soft and they told us to eat it fast before it hardened up. Then the main course came out. Baked sourkraut (which I tried a no thank you helping, it was better than the regular stuff but still nasty), dill turnips, and lentils both with sauce (which tasted kind of like bbq sauce) and with out sauce. They also had what they called Arabian Beef, it was a stew with dried beef and some sauce that I don't think I could even explain and sausages. The sausages were really good. And get this: They were bear, wild boar, and elk sausages. I ate bear! So cool. For dessert they had the lovechild of apple pie and apple strudel. After dinner we were free to do what we want. In the square there were people dressed in classy 1800s costumes with Christmas lights around them. There were musicians with the lights and the people were dancing to it. It was really fun to watch!
After dinner, a few of us decided to explore the city and experience the culture. So we went to some pubs. The first was a really cool looking Irish pub which wasn't experiencing the culture but looked really cool so we hit it up. After a beer there, we walked around some more and went to a place called the Beer House. It was a micro brewery right in the heart of the old town. It was really awesome. We walk in and there are were a ton of long wooden table with benches where people were just chilling, drinking, and watching because there were people doing traditional Estonian dancing in traditional attire. We went into the second room we got a cool table that was in a tiny room that had a gate into the main room so we could still listen and see but it was a little quieter. The place made 7 beers in house and everyone got a different a different kind so that we could try all of them. Every single one was better than any beer I have every had! A guy came up to our table with an accordian and asked us what we would like to hear so we asked him to play an Estonian song then he asked if we were Americans and when we said yes he played When the Saints God Marching In. We then went to the table in the tiny room next to ours and started playing and we heard a ton of guys singing along. Estonians love music.Almost everyone sings and plays an instrument. Their revolution against the USSR was called the Singing Revolution. So we left there a wandered around ducking into a couple of other places. We chilled there a bit then headed back to the hostel.
The next morning we woke up and went to the Baltic's version of Starbucks then wandered a bit and in the early afternoon we got on the bus to head to Riga, the capital of Latvia. Estonia was really cool because we felt really welcomed there. Many places had English names and I didn't see a single place that didn't have an english menu. In Lithuania, it is weird to hear English on the streets but in Estonia it is not very uncommon.
We got into Riga around 8 and checked into our hostel. We were then free for the evening so I went out with a few people to go looking for dinner. We went to the first place that was not terribly priced (the Latvian Lat is much stronger than the US Dollar a little bit over 2 to 1). It was a pizza place, it was ok. Not bad but not what I would call great. We then walked around for a long time. Riga has a ton of beautiful old churches.Again our hostel was right in old town so it made exploring easy. We went to a couple of parks and shops and we went to a really amazing lounge. It was in the Radisson on the top floor we got to take a glass elevator up to it and it was a bar/lounge that was full of couches and comfy chairs and it had big windows the whole way around it. It was a great view.
Sunday morning we woke up and I went with a group to an English speaking church. It was really good. It was really small in terms of people but it was close knit and I got to meet some cool people because they serve cookies and coffee at the end. In fact, I got to meet the Canadian ambassabor to the Baltic States there. After church we went to the Occupation Museum which explained all about the occupations from the 1914-1991 by the Soviets then the Nazis then the Soviets again after that it was raining a little bit so I didn't get to do much photography but we explored any way. At 3 we got on the bus and went to a restaurant that my Latvian roommate calls the Ultimate Latvian Food Experience. It was all you can eat and full of all different kinds of traditional and modern Latvian food. It was all delicious! We then returned to the bus to come back to school.
It was a great weekend!
Pictures to come!
