Tallinn

The old town of Tallinn is gorgeous – I can see why so many people holiday here. The streets are cobblestoned and there’s not many cars, just people walking the streets and a few bikes/scooters here and there. It’s filled with bars, cafes and souvenir shops all selling amber, Estonia-emblazoned items and the occasional felted woolen hat or linen clothing, plus dotted with Medieval towers to add flavour.

Basically while we’ve been here spent a lot of time walking around looking at pretty buildings, sitting in bars and cafes so R can try local craft beer, I’ve had a few ciders (there are a few nonalcoholic ones, too!) and checking out food and historical sites. We took a turn through the overwhelming “antik” section of the Balti Jaama market, which felt like 100 estate sales had been crammed into one room, with strange Soviet paraphernalia and more random pieces of crockery than you could poke a stick at If you wanted a piano accordion so you could join the buskers, this was your spot.

One of the many bars we’ve popped into here is the DM bar, dedicated to Depeche Mode. All the cocktails are named for DM songs, there is continual DM music videos playing… lots of fun.

We booked a food tour with traveller.ee, which ended up being an hour or so of historical info (in self-deprecating Estonian style) before we hit the food section of the Balti Jaama market and started trying delicious freshly smoked pork, sausage and bizarrely, tinned beaver meat, which is apparently a thing. There was dark rye bread for R, and also a Georgian pastry. We also treated our sweet teeth with icecream (the tar and spruce flavoured icecreams weren’t as weird as they sound: the spruce vaguely piney and the tar just a bit smoky) and cheese curd sweets flavoured with various things like berry jam or chocolate. Stuffed to the brim, we wandered back to the hotel to digest.

After three nights, we’re off again, this time on an intercity bus to Riga, in Latvia.

Good places we ate/drank:

• Ulo – lots of vegetarian and GF options, friendly staff
• Kompressor – the most amazing pancakes (it gets v busy, with a queue out the door). GF options
• Drink bar & grill – lots of non-alcoholic options to drink as well as alcoholic. A solid bar snacks menu
• Hell Hunt – not many GF options but a very long bar snacks menu and lots local drink options
• La Muu – icecream including tar and spruce flavours