Tallinn, Estonia

 Uneventful trip from Parnu to Tallinn.  No buses missed.  I managed to get my bag out of storage.  

I gotta be honest, I do not remember the city of Tallinn.  I think I spent a few days there?  I remember some stuff I did but not what order.  Again, to the photos...

I literally had to check my hotel dates.  I arrived the evening of the 6th.  Had a tour booked for the 7th.  And then left super early on the 8th.  

My hotel was near this old looking gate.  No time for a walking tour so no idea of the history of the place. 

My tour the next morning was into the Lahemaa National Park.  We met at 10 am at the Chimney Sweep statue.  

There were just three of us on the tour so we were just in the guide's car.  He was the company owner and had a bit of a chip on his shoulder whenever I said 'tour guide'.  He is not a tour guide, he is the owner, despite the fact that he is guiding us on this tour. Sure, whatever.  He knew a lot about Estonia.  

Estonia is very nice.  I looked at house prices in a realtor's window while I was in Parnu.  We can all buy a nice little bungalow for @ 400K CAN.  But I think we would have to learn Estonian so that is a drawback to this plan.  The country is basically empty.  Tallinn is a real city, from what I saw of it, but the rest of the country is sparsely populated.  

Anyway, back to our tour with our not-a-tour-guide.  First stop, one of the 'most beautiful waterfalls in the world'.  Having been in Iceland for a few days now, the land of the waterfall, this would not even crack the top 100 here but it was nice. And it was a nice little hike down to the bottom.  Good start to the day.

We arrived at the park.  It looked a lot like the park I went to in Latvia.  There was even a big walk.  

The barn swallow is the national bird of Estonia.

They are very proud of their rocks that were deposited all over by the glaciers during the ice age.  They were pretty cool.

That's a big rock!

Another town (or many) inside of a park. And a beach.

Included in the tour was lunch. Some pickled fish, homemade bread and some of the best soup I have ever eaten.  Pumpkin soup with crazy delicious toppings like bacon, pickled onion, mushrooms and more that I can't remember.

Then more park. There was lots of little hikes through the forest so it was really a lovely day walking in nature.

This was the beaver pond trail hike.  
No beavers :(

Three old fishing cabins sort of preserved.

At some point, I asked our not-a-tour-guide what the Balkan people are called.  Like people in North America are North Americans.  That led to a 20 minute lecture on how Estonia is not part of the Balkans, it is part of Scandinavia since they are much closer culturally and linguistically to Finland.  So, I never got an answer to my question.  So, I just started saying Balticians.  

Anyway, back to the park. 

This is what they consider a beaver dam in Estonia.  Bah.  

I am going to stop here because I am tired and we are having 'roommate drama' so I have to go protect my bed.   This is kind of short but I don't want to wait to post something.  I will do Helsinki as soon as I can.  

Jurmala, Latvia and Parnu, Estonia

I am again, so far behind.  But let's go through the pictures together and piece together my days in Jurmala and Parnu like the detectives that we all aspire to be.  

Jurmala is very close to Riga.  Maybe 30 minutes on the train. I have no memory of how I got out of Riga but I did manage to figure out which station I wanted in Jurmala.  They sell the tickets to the end of the line, or the last stop for 'this price'.  So, guessing how to find the train (I remember now, a shop keeper told me what platform in Riga and then a tourist told me which train to get on).  Anyway, I got there fine and even found my hotel.  This town is tourist town.  There are two types of hotels.  The new brash ones and the quaint old ones from before the corporations arrived.  I was in one of the quaint ones. I feel like the owner is the third or fourth generation to own it, has zero business sense, is not charging enough to maintain it and his kids will probably sell it as soon as as the hearse drives away.  But for now, I'm sure it is a piece of Jurmala history.  

To the pictures...

The main drag is a walking street.  

Ah, yes, why I went to Jurmala in the first place.  There is a national park there, Kermeri, and I had booked a Sunrise tour of the park for the next morning, 6 am!  But I got an email the day before that the tour was cancelled.  Apparently, I was the only one willing to get up at 5 am.  I was welcome to join the sunset tour but I declined.  

But the next day, I took the train to the park.  At like, 10 am, so not exactly the same experience.  

The park is very big, I discovered, as I tried to find the Bog Trail.  You know my tried and true method for finding stuff.  Follow other people.  Other people, once again, did not lead me astray.  However, what the direction sign did not indicate was how far it was.  

This makes it look like it might be easy to find.

As I entered these woods, there was a sign at some point, saying 5 km to the Bog Trail, which means an additional 5 km back.  And, spoiler alert, the trail itself was 4 km.  So, lot's o' walking.  

I finally got to the Bog itself.

This narrow raised trail encircled the entire thing. 
Very walkable

I'm sorry to say, at this point, I turned on some weird filter on my camera so everything is sort of turquoise for a while.

The viewing tower

Oh, there was a graveyard along the way but I did not go in. This was taking too long as it was. But I took some photos from the outside, of course.

Once I made it back to the train station, I decided to walk around the town a bit.  Do not ask me why there is a town in the middle of this park but there is.  It is the weirdest place.  So many of the houses look abandoned.  Maybe there are rules about maintenance like there were on the Curonian Spit that makes it near impossible to keep a house?  

Oh, here's my hotel, I guess I'm back from the park.

My hotel was a block and a half from the beach.  And what a beach!!  I wandered over for the sunset.

The next day I was heading to Estonia.  Tallinn is the capital and pretty much the place to go.  It is also where I needed to catch the ferry to Helsinki.  But I wanted to see at least one more city so I planned an early arrival in Parnu with a later afternoon departure.  So, the plan, take the train to Riga, walk to the bus station, take the bus to Parnu.  What could go wrong...

I get the bus to Riga.  I have an hour before my bus leaves.  I walk to the station.  I somehow realize, I am at the wrong station.  The right station is 27 minutes away by Uber and my bus leaves in 30 minutes.   Ok, I order an Uber.  It isn't going to get there in time.  I cancel the Uber and jump in a taxi.  Who takes me to the other train station with 5 minutes to spare!! A miracle.  I jump out of the car, get to the other side of the highway to the big building that must be the train station.  It was not.  By the time I figured out that the 'station' was just a stop on the other side of the highway, I crossed just in time to watch my bus pull away from the curb.  BAH!!

I book another bus.  I have to get back to the other train station that I started at in an hour.  But this very aggravating morning had already cost me a fortune just to end up  back where I practically started, that I refused to take another Uber/taxi.  I got on a city tram.  I was down to 1.85 euros since I had to pay the taxi scammer in cash.  So, I didn't even pay for the tram. Thank God no one checked tickets!  

Anyway, I was so pissed off by this point, but I found my bus (again, the info booth because I cannot figure out anything in these stations!) and got to Parnu without further incident.

And here is Parnu.  Another lovely little beach town. I had no idea why I had added this to my itinerary so many months ago when I was planning.  So, I stored my bag in the luggage storage and just started walking.  Oh, wait, there was another incident.  Of course.  I needed two euro for the bag storage.  I had to lug my pack back to where I had seen a bank as we drove in.  Took out some euros.  Back to the bus station.  Bought a beverage to get change and then went back to the lockers.  There were all full now!!  But the lady behind the desk for some UPSesque company let me leave my bag with her for the 2 euros.  I would lost my mind if she hadn't saved me.  Ok, back to a normal day again.  

I walked into town, with no idea why I was in Parnu.

I was hungry as usual so I ate two of these apples in a bucket
on the side of the road. 

I could not remember why I had added Parnu to my itinerary so I looked at Google maps.  I headed to the closest 'photo' icon which is usually something touristy.  this is what I found. An old Soviet tower. How is this a photo opportunity?.  Well, I guess it was because I took a photo. 

But tower did lead me to the beach.  And some grassland restoration area.

Then I found this jetty. I think this is why I decided on Parnu.  I walked about half way out before I remembered I don't have to impress anyone and turned back.  It was long, and slippery.  

More dunes!  

A Ladies nude beach. 

I decided to walk behind the dunes to give the nude ladies their privacy and discovered that behind the dunes is where the non-ladies hang out.  The entire area was just a jack in the box of nudes popping up everywhere.  

Parnu has a thing for elephants. I had to look it up.  
Five real elephants visited in the 30s.  In the 50s there 
was an elephant statue on the beach.  I am guessing more 
recently, there was a marketing decision to feature 
elephants on everything like the cats of Riga.  
There you go, the history of the elephants in Parnu

With that visit to the Russian Orthodox church, my time in Parnu was done.  I headed back to the bus station with plenty of time to not miss the next bus. Which I successfully did not miss!