Tallinn - wow we could actually afford to buy beer!

The Amazing Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral - a gorgeous Russian-style church

Since Estonia is only a short ferry ride from Helsinki, it's quite common for Finns to pop across for a day or two, especially if they want to buy cheap booze. We took a day trip to Tallinn while we were staying in Helsinki and fell in love with the place straight away. Old Tallinn is a gorgeous little medieval walled city with lovely colourful old buildings, heaps of pretty churches and narrow cobbled little streets.

This is the fast ferry we took: from Helsinki to Tallinn in 1.5 hours!

There were lots of cute buildings.
This one is the Town Council Pharmacy which has been a chemist since 1422. And that's probably the chemist having a smoke outside....
We climbed up a really steep and narrow church tower to get amazing views of the city.

Lots of the towers along the defensive wall had names. This as we were walking into the old city in front of Fat Margaret's Tower.
This is the side of the parliament building and Tall Herman's Tower
And this one had the best name: Kiek in de Kök which means Peep in the Kitchen but actually sounds like something far more sinister...

Because we could actually afford food in Tallinn, we treated ourselves to a two-course lunch with drinks in a lovely leafy courtyard overlooking the lower part of the old town. And no wonder Matt looks so happy in this pic - he is about to eat apple pancakes...

Just checking out some alleys in TallinnThis little street was especially cool - it was historically full of artists' houses
We did actually venture outside the old part of Tallinn too - to go to the Museum of Occupations - a terrific museum about the history of Estonia from about 1935 until 1995.

And no story about Tallinn would be complete without some pics of some of the gorgeous painted doorways we saw.....