1st day. 2nd Group. Same, same, but different. Breakfast in the buffet room. Sweet little notes with our cappuccino! Then onto the bus – which is an actual full size bus, brand spanking new with only 15K on the odometer, Wi-Fi, outlets, the works. Plus, with only 21 people, plenty of room to spread out. Oh, and we’re back to seat rotation. Eh, it works.

First stop this morning is the Kadriorg Art Museum, located in a lovely park with a little pond and fountain. Once the summer residence of Czar Peter the Great, the building is a beautiful baroque palace with a fabulous statue garden in the rear. We are only here for the scenery – no entrance – but it is very pretty to walk around the exteriors.

Back to the bus, a quick little ride up into the hillside brings us to the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. Singing is an important part of the Estonian heritage, and all through the oppression and invasions, the people sang to keep their spirits up, maintain their culture and dream of hopeful things. The Song Festival was established in the 1860’s and is given credit in large part for the Estonian National movement. Festivals are held every 5 years, and the current amphitheater was built to celebrate the 20th anniversary in 1959. The stage can hold up to 15,000 singers! The grounds are nice, what you would expect from a HUGE amphitheater like that. And there is a great statue of the “beloved” Estonian composer, Gustav Ernesaks, that we get to play around upon.

Heading back toward town, we pass the ruins of some church which looks really cool – but I’ve no clue what it is really. Then onto to the shoreline, where we can “walk in the sand” and get a good view of the busy harbor. We also pass the Russalka memorial, a bronze statue commemorating the sinking of the Russian warship of the same name, Russalka, which means Mermaid. Next we stop at the Ferry terminal for a “rest” break and find lots of literature for Ukrainians who may be taking the ferry over to Helsinki. There is a whole sheet of instructions and helpful numbers of social services, health services, etc. Really incredible the systems that are in place to help.

Then it is onto our walking city tour – with a local guide as well as Ieva, our tour guide – taking us to all the places we have already been – but it has been 13 years, so it’s all sort of new to us.  We pass the churches and the old gorgeous medieval buildings, stop at a fabulous overlook where we can see down into the town, then end up in the main square across from the gothic Town Hall. All I can say is it is a good thing we had a local guide as well as Ieva – who could be at the back to keep the stragglers from going astray!  LOL. If this is any indication of the days to come….well….it’s a tour. What to do?

Oh, and we also walk by the Russian Embassy where they don’t mind us taking pictures – mostly because it is filled with Ukrainian support posters, banners and scarves.

Ieva gives us lunch recommendations, including an old world medieval restaurant right in the Town Hall that is famous for Elk soup, then walks us along a few more beautiful streets, showing us the city walls we can walk as well as the location of the restaurant where we will eat this evening. And we are free! For the rest of the afternoon until our group dinner.

It’s a lovely day, cool, but nice and sunny, as we make our way back through town for a bite to eat. Ed decides he really wants to try the Elk soup, so we go check out The Draakon, the medieval pub, and what an experience! The place is completely dark with no electricity, only candlelight. It’s medieval, you know. The Elk soup was delicious, but no silverware, we just had to drink the soup out of the bowl and use a roll to scoop up the veggies at the bottom! We dutifully bought a cabbage roll for the veggies at the bottom, and it was fabulous on it’s own. I could have eaten a dozen!  The “landlady” was equally fabulous, a total hoot – just talking loud and telling you what to do with your food and how to get refills.  Excellent “appetizers.”

Still hungry, we then strolled back up into the old town, stopping once again at The Beer House for our “real” lunch. Not our normal behavior to go to the same place twice, but yesterday was only for drinks and the food that came by us looked delicious, so we decided to return. Well worth it! We shared a nice chicken Caesar salad as well as this huge pile of fried garlic bread. Oh, so good – and so huge, we actually put leftovers in a ziplock bag for treats later. Yum.

Now it is time for more exercise! Meandering our way out of the town, we hit the Town Walls for an afternoon stroll. These were totally different and neat. Built in the 14th Century, these walls stretched 2.3 km around the city with 45 wall and gate towers. They were considered one of the strongest and greatest defense systems in all of Northern Europe. More of a covered walkway, rather than just plain open walls (like in Girona and Obidos), this 200 meter stretch had towers and domed rooms that were once a prison and weapons storage, now had displays and old time worn furniture. Plus more great views across the city. A nice find that we’d not done before.

Touring done, we head back to the hotel, passing the Opera house with the National Opera House, with these cool parking lot gates! How creative.

Then it is freshen up and walk over to dinner – because of course, why not walk? It was only 10 minutes and a gorgeous evening to boot. Everyone else took the bus to the town entrance, then walked into the restaurant. But, you know us and walking. Of course, because we were the only ones to walk, we also ended up being the first people in our group there and it was priceless watching the other tour folks pick tables. We ended up at the “couples” table. Since there are only a few us, it just sorted out that way because those single ladies, they stick together! Which is fine. At any rate, the dinner was excellent. Salmon – and we even liked it!

In the end, a bunch of us decided to walk back together in the dusk, taking lovely photos, but of course completely avoiding the feared US Embassy!

then it was back to our room to organize the packing and get ready for our relatively long drive to Riga tomorrow. But in between packing we couldn’t get enough of the view and the sunset. Stunning.