We awoke after the New Year’s Eve celebrations to a blanket of snow in Tallinn. It was roughly zero degrees when we had breakfast and then slightly warmer when we ventured out.
We walked up the steps close to the hotel that allowed us to access the upper town. We saw some great views of the town below, all covered in snow. There was a flurry of activity in the upper town area of Toompea too. There were small snow ploughs in action, getting rid of the snow from the road and making huge piles of the white stuff on street corners.
I wanted to go back to Alexander Nevsky’s Cathedral to see what it looked like in the snow. By the time we got there, most of it had melted from the rooftops. However it was still a spectacular sight to see. We got talking to a family from Singapore who asked me to take a photo of them in front of the cathedral and they did the same for us. They did kind of say that the weather was a bit different from where they’d come from!
We then wandered about Toompea for a little while longer, and then went to the Danish King’s Garden. There are some pretty impressive sculptures of three bronze monks in the garden: Ambrosius the “Waiting Monk”, Bartholomeus the “Praying Monk” and Claudius, the “Observing Monk”.
We then walked down the steep steps of Short Leg (Lühike jalg), avoiding the slippery snow that was now becoming more slushy with the rain.
Our next stop was Nunnatorn (Nun’s Tower), a tower that was built in the early 14th century and forms part of the wall section that encircles the St Michael’s Cistercian nunnery. In the next three centuries, it became one of the largest and strongest defence systems in entire Northern Europe.
We walked further towards the town and to Freedom Square, where all of the previous night’s show equipment was being dismantled and transported away. The rain was getting pretty heavy at this point so we made an executive decision to see if we could bring forward our reservation at Olde Hansa. Despite being 45 minutes early, our arrival time didn’t bother the staff. We were asked to go to the top floor (third) and take a seat. The room was very dark, only illuminated by wide candles and limited light from outside. Like Peppersack, the staff were dressed in medieval costumes. The menus were also medieval style. There is a “delightful menu” which is basically a la carte, with game soup, tasting plates, herb and juniper cheese with bread and bags of dried game on offer. There is also a “Grand Chef’s Feast”, which is an all you can eat style menu for €58. Thirdly, a “Royal Hunting Feast” is available which will stretch many budgets at an eye watering €95. We would have never gone for either of the all you can eat menus even if we were really hungry, so stuck with the a la carte menu. Service was quite slow so it was a good job that we went earlier. I had the juniper cheese and JC had the game soup.
I had to pay a call to the toilets before we left which was quite interesting to say the least. The toilet had a wooden seat with a flusher that looked very old. The hand wash basin was also basically a water jug that you had to tip to get the water out. It was quite quirky but I didn’t think that the hygiene was brilliant in there.
Anyway, by the time we left, the whole place was full and they were turning people away at the door. We went in the old shoppe next door, which sold nuts, herbs, spices, glassware and different types of soap. It was only somewhere to keep us out of the rain but we didn’t stay long.
It was then time to head back to the hotel and pick up our bags, before getting a Bolt taxi to Terminal D and our two hour ferry ride back to Helsinki. We departed at 16:15 (15 minutes early) and the ferry wasn’t as busy as when we travelled to Tallinn. Maybe New Year’s Day is just when people choose to stay at home and sleep off the hangovers or stay with loved ones.
On arriving at Helsinki, we jumped in an Uber and ten minutes later we were back at Lapland Hotels Bulevardi. We checked in, declined paying an extra €50 to upgrade, and went to our room in the second floor. We realised straightaway that this was smaller than the room we had stayed in before we went to Estonia. It was very narrow and we could hardly get the wardrobe door open because of the small gap. JC was too tired to argue about it but, on principle I went back down to reception. We should have had the same sized room that we had before, the hotel had price matched with booking.com. The receptionist used the excuse that not all rooms had been prepared since Sunday (three days ago??), there was a restructuring of the rooms across the company blah blah. I said that out of loyalty to this hotel we had changed from the one we had booked because of the price match, but still the receptionist refused. Eventually she said she would upgrade the room, to the one she had offered for an extra €50 but at no cost. She should have done that in the first place if the correct sized room wasn’t available, never mind downgrading the size!!
I thanked the receptionist for doing this, saying it was much appreciated. We moved rooms as soon as I got back to the first room. It was a really pleasant surprise that the new room had its own private sauna!
We freshened up before heading down to the hotel bar for a drink. We hadn’t booked anywhere to eat, so opted for the hotel’s Kultá restaurant again for convenience. We didn’t expect too many places to be open on New Year’s Day.
The restaurant was busy when we arrived and we were quickly shown to our table. Being somewhat familiar with the menu, we had an idea of what to choose. We also went for a red wine from Georgia which was delicious.
We were looked after very well by our server and thoroughly enjoyed the evening.
We then went back to the room to get wrapped up to go for a late evening walk. It was about 21:45 when we ventured out into the cold minus four degree air. It was quiet, not many people were about and we had a nice walk. We walked down to the harbour, just being careful underfoot as some areas weren’t gritted. It was nice to get some fresh air in our lungs before heading back to the hotel.
jctraveller 
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