Estonia is a very small and often forgotten country (by Americans at least), but Tallin was absolutely a dream. Everything was like a movie set- I expected to see Cinderella around every corner.

We got there by boat, and I can remember one thing, really, about that:
kareoke.
It was loud, it was bad, and completely hilarious.

Here's me on the ship:

Our hotel was amazing, the Bern, and it was right in the middle of the Old Town, which we explored during our stay.

This isn't the hotel, but the view from outside it.
I forgot to take a picture of the hotel itself...

Here's some photos of the town itself.

This was taken in the town square. We ate lunch here the first day.

the town square. We shopped at this market, and on Saturday there was a festival where everyone was in traditional Estonian clothes and danced and sang. It was really interesting, and I tried elk sausage.


Friday night we walked outside the Old Town to eat a cafe, and that was a great experience.
The cafe had only been open 3 days, and we ended up spending 2 hours there because it was so slow. So we hada lot of time to talk and giggle.
I felt awesome and really smart talking about housing prices with Esa.
We all talked about 'bunnies'. Apparently Sari had looked up the plural word for 'buns' in her dictionary and found it to be 'bunnies', so the family called sweets 'bunnies', and therefore I did too. When they found out that bunnies were actually rabbits, we all could's stop giggling.
I think maybe that story is one of those 'you should have been there' things, but it was really great, and that along with several other stories like it made the evening completely amazing.

But more pictures!
sari in a tallin hat:

me in a tallin hat

A beautiful russian orthodox church at the top of a hill.

Up the street from it is this church:

which I completely love. If I ever get married, I want everything to go down there.



FAFA and Petry!!! I am MEANT to live in Tallin!!!


Here's me in a shop door. They had the neatest shops, many of them were in little basements and under staircases and stuff. This one was filled with gorgeous and expensive hats.

Here's a photo of a little cellar coffeehouse. You can't tell very well, but the ceiling is rounded, and the couch is gorgeous. The whole place was like the inside of a hobbit house. I was trying some of Esa's tea, which tasted like marzipan.
and speaking of marzipan, we went to a marzipan shop, and saw these amazing displays, all made of marzipan.


Although the Old Town was gorgeous, the rest of Tallin was very different. It displays a lot of modern russian architecture, which is really like big cement blocks.
We stopped at an outdoor farmer's market-like place, and bought some Polish strawberries.
WHICH WERE AMAZING.
Good job, Poland, you have the best strawberries I've ever eaten.

We went to an outlet store for ribbons, yarn, and beads. What a wonderland....


(I looked for some rad beads, Val, but didn't find anything totally amazing. Sorry!!)

So, walked around a bunch, saw some pretty amazing sights, and I felt like a princess.
That pretty much sums up my experience in Estonia.