Tallinn, Take 2....

So I'm not sure if you remember from my last post about Tallinn, Estonia, but when I got off the ship I pretty much had time to see the beginning of what looked like an incredible city... Well, today I got to find out that it indeed was an incredible city!!!

Sue had asked me to go out with her in Tallin to grab lunch - so we had arranged to meet at the gangway at 11:45AM. Low and behold what I thought was going to be a nice girls afternoon out ended up being a lunch with all of the senior officers - and then me (so not a senior officer). I tried my best to be polite, but all I really wanted to do was back out of it. Jann (the guest relations manager), Sue (cruise director), Keith (incoming cruise director), Raul (chief house keeper), Daniellenn (some marketing guy from shoreside), Julian (the hotel director) and I ended up being the party of 7. I should point out the hotel director is the second highest ranking person onboard and there are only 2 other people at his level. It's a big deal. So clearly I ate across from him - I have never been so nervous about my eating manners in all of my life. We all sat down at an outdoor patio. I had an amazing proscutto and melon salad. Everyone else got much pricer entrees. And we all had 2 rounds of local beer. Nice.

Then the bill came. And for some reason we ended up doing the "split it evenly" system, even though I had only spent about 14EUR and everyone else had spent about 30EUR. I only had a 20 and that was all they got. I make a small fraction of what any of them make, I was a little bit flummoxed that the issue had even arisen. And secretly half expected Sue to pick mine up. But that was selfish of me.

Cool steeple as we approaced the town square.

This building was awesome.

Headed back after lunch. Keith is in the stripped shirt on the left (my new immediate supervisor). Julian is on the right (the hotel director/bigbigboss).


If you look at the pink building with one reddish windown, the patio area right outside of there is where we had lunch. It was actually quite lovely. Though I do think my salad was twice as good as anyone else's food and half as much.

Another street shot.
It really is quite stunning there.

Funny little building at a tight corner where the street splits. Its actually really cool how steep up the street goes to the left, and steeply down it goes to the right.

I tried to get a picture of this church. The windows are really cool, but everything here is so narrow it's next to impossible to get far enough away from something to get a half-decent picture of it.

If you look at the last post I made about Tallinn, when I barely peeked through the archway to get a glimpse of old town, this is the opposite picture taken on my way out. It's nice when things come full circle, sometimes.

All in all, a lovely afternoon. It was nice to get to know some of the officers. Mostly, I am really going to miss Sue when she leaves. Though I certainly have nothing against Keith who will be taking over on the 7th.

Tallinn, Estonia

I managed to get off the ship for a grand total of 1 hour in Tallinn. Which was long enough to walk right to the entryway of old town, turn around, and return to the ship. Once you get off the pier, the port sidewalk is lined with little shops and stuff, like a miniature bazaar. You could tell that most of them rely on it being really to help sell their merchandise (mostly scarves, hats, gloves, etc.). There were some AMAZING natural wooden bowls and serving dishes. I almost got one, and then I realized I would have absolutely NO WAY to get it back home. And I don't know how much they cost, but that's neither here nor there...

Getting to the old part of town was about a 25 minute walk from the ship.


This steeple was my beacon. I just followed it and figured it would be surrounded by cool stuff, or, if nothing else, it would be cool on its own.


I walked up what felt like a million stairs (speaking of which, my stair tolerance is slowly going through the roof right now), finally arriving at what looked like a giant citadel (that's probably not really the word I want, but it sounds good and the internet is too slow to look it up). I had no idea what I would see as I slowly walked around it to peer through the archway...


Only to begin to see beautiful buildings on the other side...


Honestly it looks like something from a happy Harry Potter movie. Beautiful side-by-side quirky buildings. So unique. Right as I saw this, it was literally time for me to turn around and start walking back to the ship or I was going to be late for rehearsal. So next time, I know which direction to head, I will walk faster, and I will leave earlier. Because now all I want to do is explore what's there.

On my way back I overheard an older woman trying to find someone who spoke English. I piped up and asked if I could help. She was lost, trying to find the shuttle stop to head back to the Constellation. I explained that I didn't even know there was a shuttle (nonetheless where the stop was), but that I was about to walk back and she could join me if she cared to. So she obliged, and I walked back with a very lovely Canadian doctor who explained to me that her two middle-aged sons had taken the shuttle map and somehow managed to ditch their own mom. She was peeved to say the least. It was nice to have a real conversation with someone who doesn't work on the ship. By the time we were walking back through the bazaar, she stumbled upon her husband and we parted ways. It was definitely my good deed for the day.