Estonia, somewhere in the Baltic

We arrived at the boat dock yesterday without incident and were amazed to find that passengers were being boarded and taken directly to their staterooms.  The only other Seabourn cruise that we took left from Rome and we had flown in directly from Dallas with no buffer period to acclimate.  Then, after an endless taxi ride from the Rome airport to the boat dock at Citivecchia, we waited around forever before boarding the ship and then sat in the lounge for another hour or two before getting to our rooms.  This time no hassle at all. 

We have a lovely stateroom with a very fortuitous location—mere steps from the patio bar and grill next to the pool where food and drink are served almost anytime.  Not that that is an issue—we were greeted with a full bottle of champagne and a few lovely canapés served by Ana our Croatian “stewardess.”  Ana will be “taking care of us” for the duration.  And of course our room is stocked with libations of our choice. There is room for everything and after we were fully unpacked and settled, we changed and went to dinner in one of the secondary restaurants where we had delicious steak and lobster tail.  This morning we magically arrived in Tallinn, Estonia.

St. Mary's Church Tallinn

Architecture with Russian influence.  We will see a lot more domed churches in St. Petersburg.

Cafe scene as lively as any we've seen

These lifesize rag dolls were in front of many of the shops advertising local woolen and linen textiles and clothing.

Typical Tallinn street scene.  Many of the restaurant workers and even some of the shop workers were in costume, many depicting medieval times.  I think that is what this young lovely on the right is wearing, but I'm not sure the young ladies dyed their hair green in the 16th century.

Couldn't get enough of these fashionable rag dolls.

If you check a map, which I have to do regularly, Estonia is just opposite Stockholm on the Baltic Sea at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland and on the way to St. Petersburg where we will be tomorrow.  We set sail yesterday around five and arrived here this morning about ten.   I don’t know about you but Estonia is one of those countries that I’m never exactly sure where it is—is it near Hungary? Or Poland?  Or more south near Bosnia?  Well now I know.  It is right on the Baltic with Russia to the East, Latvia to the South and right across the Gulf from Finland to the North.  It was formerly part of the USSR but gained its independence in 1991.  It’s a small country, just 1.3 million, and losing population yearly.   We took a three hour leisurely walking tour through the upper and lower old town of Tallinn which has a lot of charm but even our guide said that winter can be pretty depressing with only a few hours of sunlight a day.  Now in summer it is the opposite, with just a few hours of darkness.  The guide commented that the locals drink to combat the dreariness of winter, but also drink during the summer to celebrate the sunshine.  So it sounds like a lot of alcohol is consumed in this part of the world.

As I write this, we have left Tallinn and are heading to St. Petersburg.  Tomorrow we have hired a private guide for the day to see some of the other sites in St. Petersburg besides the Hermitage which we will see with a group the next day.  Time now to put on the dog for the Captain's dinner.