Tallinn!

Hey guys! So I had limited access to internet while I was in Finland, and only two days after returning from Tallinn I left for St. Petersburg, where it was impossible for me to write anything since I purposely left my phone in Finland. So I'll just pick up where I left off:

We decided to go on a day trip to Tallinn since it's only a 2 hour boat ride away from Helsinki, and it would give us something else to do since we were spending so much time in Finland. Unfortunately, in order to spend the full day there we had to wake up at 5:30 to catch a 6:45 boat, but that was the only downside to the day, other than the sub-par cheesecake that I ate on the boat for breakfast.

We exited the boat at around 9 o'clock and made our way to the old side of the city, walking through a big shopping center along the way. It pained me to listen to the ads for the Regina Spektor concert which was happening in a couple of days and that I wouldn't be able to go to because I would be in St. Petersburg, but let's move past that...

If you've never been to the Old Town of Tallinn, it is absolutely gorgeous. It's one of the very few areas in Europe where they've kept a lot of the Medieval buildings intact, yet I don't think all the tourist shops were around when people lived there back in the Middle Ages. We walked around for ages admiring the buildings and walking into various shops. I also got to ride a Segway for the first time in my life, and now I want one even though most people look stupid riding them. My mom's host sister from Finland ended up crashing the Segway into the sidewalk and breaking it, ending that bit of fun.

Overhead view of the Old Town of Tallinn

Riding the Segway (FYI that's not me)

Most of the day was spent just walking around, as the old cobble-stone roads twist and turn seemingly leading in no direction. I went to a couple interesting museums and had a sub-par massage as well, but walking composed at least 50% of the time.  Because of this, I got to see a lot of traditional Estonian shops and cuisine, like McDonalds.

Probably one of the most interesting parts of the visit was going on the KGB tour at the Viru Hotel, especially since our tour guide was hilarious. If you're going to Tallinn for some reason I would highly recommend going on the tour. I would also not recommend going to the zoo as I heard it was quite sad and disappointing.

It started drizzling towards the end of the trip so luckily it was time for dinner. We went to this amazing restaurant with incredibly food that was surprisingly cheap. I think I had chicken for the main course and tried their frozen cheesecake for dessert. It definitely made up for the dry, stale cheesecake I had had in the morning.

Apparently I did not take any photos of my meal, but for some reason I took a picture of the restaurant

We started making our way back to the dock at around 9:45 since we had a 10:30 ship.

I don't know what I was thinking but I felt compelled to take this photo of a pidgeon

Unfortunately, the ship did not leave until 11:30 for whatever reason, but of course it had to involve the ship violently shaking for 20 minutes making me think the ship was going to sink, which is my biggest fear behind being murdered. Obviously that was not fun. Eventually the ship took off and we arrived in Helsinki at 12:30. I had tried sleeping on the ship by curling up between two chairs, which did not work as I woke up with a huge knot in my neck. It's safe to say that I slept well that night.

I have a lot of shit to write about so please bear with me if not a lot of it is out soon.