Despite our big dinner the previous night we were craving a breakfast for this morning. Since we’d be stuck on a ferry for a couple hours and with no idea what kind of food/drink might be available during that time it seemed like a good idea to eat a real breakfast. We went to a buffet breakfast in the center of town at Fazer Café. Fazer is the name of a local chocolate company – we saw their products everywhere in Helsinki. The price of the buffet was quite reasonable and included plenty of good coffee to go along with it. I stocked up on bacon and eggs, the cheese plate was nicely laid out with several different kinds of cheese, and of course the dessert and cake section was impressive. I had a beet salad there that was exceptionally good – they know their beets in this part of the world.
While eating I noticed that all of the staff, and about 80% of the customers were blonde haired. There are a lot of blondes in this city – all that Scandinavian DNA I guess. We bought a few chocolates to go for a taste test later on, and then went back to our hotel to pack up and check out. It was a short taxi ride to the harbor (I didn’t want to drag our poor suitcase the whole way) and then we arrived at the terminal building with a giant ferry (185 m / 607 ft. long) waiting alongside. The terminal building was quite active when we got there – it had been dead the previous day when we bought the tickets. We checked in at a kiosk which issued us two cards with magnetic strips, and then we slid the cards through the gates upstairs to be allowed into the general waiting area. There were already a lot of people there even though we weren’t scheduled to board for another 30 minutes or so. We stood in line in front of the boarding gates – there were three big doors with a digital clock above showing the boarding time. As we waited some younger passengers started to do some entertaining – some juggling and dancing to make a little money while they waited. Soon enough they opened the gates and we went onboard, rolling our suitcase behind us.
We weren’t alone with the luggage, and they had a good system to handle it. There was an optional “luggage room” where you could put your bags on racks, and then just as the ferry left they locked it for the duration of the voyage. It was a relatively secure way to deal with all the bags, and luckily we didn’t forget anything we needed in our suitcase.
After dropping off the suitcase we set out to explore the ship. It was quite large and really more like a small city than anything. The lower floors had plenty of room for trucks, cars, and cabins that people could rent (but for only a two hour voyage it didn’t make sense for us) and the upper floors had a surprising amount of shopping – kind of like a duty free area of the airport. There were small game rooms and casino machines sprinkled around, and several big restaurants, at least four bars that I saw, a nightclub (that seemed to be doing good business even at noon), and a large kid area in the front of the ship for them to play and be entertained. We spent much of our time on top of the ship on the sundecks sipping local beer and enjoying the scenery.
As we slipped out of the harbor and cruised past the fortress island I took some more pictures, and soon enough we were out to sea with Helsinki and Finland fading away behind us.
Since we had time to kill we walked around to see what the shopping areas were like. By far the most popular store was selling alcohol – lots and lots of alcohol. Not only beer – they had premium wines and spirits on a scale that was impressive. More kinds than Costco, and people buying it like it was going to be illegal tomorrow. I thought the prices were similar to duty free prices at airports – that is, not such a great deal really – but most people didn’t share the same opinion and were lining up to fill their shopping bags. This alcohol was not to drink now – most people were taking it home.
We spent some time at a restaurant below decks sipping red wine and going through a chocolate tasting of the Fazer sweets that we had bought earlier that morning, and soon enough our two hours was up and we started to approach the city of Tallinn, Estonia. There was a big group of people waiting at the doors to disembark, and once we got our suitcase we joined them. From there it was down a long passageway and then directly onto the public streets of Tallinn – no passport or immigration check at all. We had done a passport check when we bought the tickets the previous day and I guess that is enough for the EU zone.
Again, Kuniko had planned the hotel location well and it was a short walk into town from the harbor area. The hotel was located on the border of the Old Town of Tallinn, and that made it easy to walk there without fighting crowds of tourists. We checked into the Hotel Bern, stashed our bags in our room, and then went out to see what the Old Town was like.
Our first reaction to Tallinn’s Old Town was “charmed”, I’d say. The buildings are historic and well-maintained, the streets are cobblestone and there are cathedrals and interesting buildings around every corner. When we arrived there were quite a few tourists walking around gawking like we were, and lots of people sort of naturally migrated to the central square that was lined with restaurants featuring outdoor dining.
Also on the central market square was a big cathedral, with odd dragon heads sticking out near the top. The market square was also used for the occasional “historical re-enactment”, which meant that some poor schmuck in a medieval costume would shout about something now and then. They even had girls chained to wagons going by sometimes, which I hope was just a re-enactment. We thought it was pretty cheesy, but with the beautiful architecture and all the outside dining and beautiful weather we were willing to overlook it.
Our first stop was to make a reservation at a highly recommended restaurant but unfortunately they were all booked up for both that day and the following day. It was much more popular than I had expected! Luckily we got a reservation at my second choice restaurant for later that night.
In the meantime, we did some sightseeing around town, enjoyed the views of the city from the overlook, and generally tried to settle into this new atmosphere. Helsinki was a big city and this was much smaller and more touristy, and that took some adjustment. We stopped for some prosecco on the square – I think it was an Italian restaurant but the staff had to wear some odd orange costumes that looked more like monk’s robes and I couldn’t really understand the significance. I asked our waitress, and she just said, “They told me to wear this so I didn’t ask any questions.”
Our dinner was at a place a few blocks from the central square called Leib (which means bread in Estonian). The restaurant was located in the back yard of a historic building with tables on a patio and in their garden. The garden was really comfortable, in the shadow of an ancient stone church and near the entrance was a statue of Sean Connery’s head which made for an interesting discussion point. The focus at Leib was local, natural foods. We started with a dumpling appetizer that was unique – the wrappers of the dumplings were made from shaved radish and filled with salty buttery squash. There was black bread served as a side with butter and green onions. The green onions combined with the quality butter was a new taste for me, and the butter is served from a wooden spatula that we saw elsewhere in Tallinn. Kuniko ordered the trout with various vegetables, and I had the roasted quail on salted kale leaves. Both dishes were really good and you could tell they put a lot of care into the menu. The wine selections were excellent as well, and we left feeling refreshed rather than stuffed.
After dinner we had the craving to eat some cheese, preferably local, and so we ended up at a small restaurant closer to the center of town (memorably called “Tabula Rasa”) that featured an Estonian cheese plate on their menu. We also ordered sprats on toast, which came served with a soft-boiled egg on top – the sprats were great. The cheeses also were interesting – there were six different kinds including a smoked goat cheese, one with rosemary, a sheep’s milk manchego imitation that I liked, one that interestingly tasted like it was embedded with nori, and the cheese came with breadsticks and clumps of a tasty berry jam. We had some prosecco and red wine with our “second dinner”, so we were feeling pretty happy by the end of it. Our blonde-haired waitress was really helpful and spoke excellent English so we were in good hands.
Finally, after these gastronomic accomplishments we strolled back to our hotel. The sun was still hours from setting but we were tucked into bed and getting ready for a full day of looking around Tallinn tomorrow.
