Our day trip to Tallinn was a great chance to experience a new city, see some more great sites and get into the Christmas spirit. Tallinn is about a 1.5hr boat ride from Helsinki and is the capital of Estonia. I almost got sea sick on the ride over and it was awful. We spent our day in the older, more famous part of the city known as Old Town. Old Town is a medieval town that is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
After WWII Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and later occupied by Nazi Germany from 1941-44. After the Nazi retreat, it was occupied again by the Soviets in 1944. Although extensively bombed by Soviet air forces during the end of WWII, much of the medieval Old Town still retains its charm. With the fall of Communism and the Soviet Union, Estonia became an independent democratic state. Tallinn has developed a successful IT sector and some people refer to Tallinn as a sort of Silicon Valley of the Baltic Sea. Skype is one of the best-known Tallinn IT start-ups.
This was my first time on old Soviet territory. We had a great time walking around the town, seeing the sites and ducking into stores full of unique trinkets and gifts. We also wen
t to a
great lookout point that had views of the Old Town against the backdrop of the high rises of the newer part of the city. I heard people speaking Russian everywhere as there is a very large part of the Estonian population that are ethnic Russians. Tallinn is a wonderful city to v
isit if you're into war history or just enjoy visiting a beautiful and intriguing city tha
t is not often visited by many Americans or other travelers to Europe for that matter.
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