I heart Tallinn

When Shawn first asked me if I wanted to go to Tallinn for my birthday, my first thought was: “Where’s Tallinn?” (I’m not so good at world geography.) When he told me it was in Estonia, my next thought was: “Where exactly is Estonia?” (Okay, I’m not good at all at world geography.) When his next statement was that he found flights for $200, my reaction was: “Whoo! We’re going to Tallinn!” (Most flights to Europe from Kyiv are hard to get for under $400.) Between the time we got the tickets and our actually departure, we talked to approximately 130 people who all said that they had never been to Tallinn themselves, but had heard that it was really nice. So I had hopes, but very few expectations – it was occupied by the Soviet Union at one point, so that throws any hope of it being too nice out the window for me.

But within hours, I was in love with the city. Tallinn has officially been entered on my list of favorite places that I’ve visited. Here’s why:

It’s not too big. I hadn’t realized how much the hugeness of Kyiv has been bothering me until I got to someplace smaller. You can get around easily and the traffic’s not insane. In fact, Shawn and I almost had heart attacks on the spot when cars stopped for us to cross the street. Common courtesy and a respect for traffic laws – you have to love it.

It’s beautiful. We visited a couple different parts of the city and it was all lovely. Old Town is amazing and has one of the best preserved medieval walls in Europe. It was fun just to wander the streets, get completely lost, and then find that we knew where we were all along. The second day we headed a little further from the city center, saw some great parks and beaches, and wandered through the ruins of a 15th century convent. Very cool and not quite like anything I’ve seen before.

It feels like a hidden treasure. With the exception of the cruise ship crowd that took over Old Town on Monday, there were very few tourists. We went in two different museums and found that we were the only people there. When we got to the above mentioned convent ruins, there was only one other couple exploring it. Burma is the only other place where I have felt like I was seeing something really interesting and wasn’t completely annoyed by all the other tourists there with me.

It’s in the EU. So a lot of the people speak English (although we did switch to Russian once or twice) and there are modern amenities. Our hotel was great – it had a nature theme, which I loved. And we got to see two movies – in English!

Yeah. It’s love.