Crossing the Sea or Trial By Water And Stone

So the intrepid duo of the Eldership de-I set out on dark night on their away mission to 21st Century Earth. They were to make the hard, treacherous passage over the notoriously stormy autumn Baltic Sea from Tallinn, Estonia to Helsinki, Finland. Doing their best with their tiny craft fighting the cross currents, the towering breakers, the icy waters, with near disaster at each turn, they made it to their destination.

A pause...perhaps I exaggerate just a tad.

In fact we took a one of the many super modern ferries that look like cruise liners for a two hour cruise (cue Gilligan's Island theme) across a Baltic that was like glass.

Entering our vessel

Leaving the Port of Tallinn

 

Arriving at Helsinki

On our first day in Helsinki we walked to the center of town to get our two day transit passes. On the way we passed two of the major sights:

The Uspenskin Katedraali

And the Tuomiokirkko

Fortune of all good fortunes!

This is the week of the Baltic Herring Festival!

 

I'm sure you can hear Wife swooning in delight even through the miracle of blogging.

Actually I was a bit disappointed in that they are only selling it in retail packages and not as part of the buy and eat offerings.

However one could get...

And there were street musicians and other market fare

Then it was off through one of the main thoroughfares to the Tourist Information Office to get our passes.

For our main event of the day we took a short ferry ride to the island of Suomenlinna. This is called a 'must see' part of a visit to Helsinki. It is renowned as a great fortress built by the Swedes when they controlled Finland that's primary fame in history is that it capitulated with out a shot fired the first time a real attack was made on it.

It is also known among elder tourists as the site of:

TRIAL BY COBBLESTONE!

Because you will be walking for miles on these things until your feet are ready to turn into mush.

For those who are long-time readers of the de-I you will know that if something is must see it means there must be construction going on when de-I and Wife visit.

Voila

We were also stalked all day by this garbage collecting tractor guy

But we did get some views of the actual fortress without construction going on

And some nice shots of the photographer in chief

And some good scenes of the Inner Harbor of Helsinki

So let us conclude with our continuing series

SIGNAGE OF THE WORLD

If you are a person wearing a Medieval Helmet or stocking mask

To those who do not wash their hands

if you insist on walking backwards over ledges

Do not throw sand at the birds - It hurts their eyes

Estonia - The Food Chronicles or Who Would Have Thought Here?

Hahahahahahahahahaha

Your really thought after four posts with hardly a mention of food, eating or gastronomy that maybe de-I was ready to forswear gastronomic blogging?

Maybe you think that a person with the vision, ethics and nobility of a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln is going to be our next President too.

No, here is the complete, official, authorized, intensively researched de-I Eats report on the Tallinn, Estonia restaurant scene after eating five meals out.

We arrived in Tallinn after 24 hours of travel around 5:30 PM on a Thursday. Our hotel was a very nice place right on the outskirts of the Old Town so we decided that we'd walk into it just to get our bearings. We realized we were hungry but we were right in the most touristy center square and were reluctant to eat there. I got out my trusty TripAdvisor App on my phone. It located a place that was literally 3 blocks away that was the #1 rated in Tallinn and wasn't that expensive. Going to the place they told us they were completely booked not just that night but the next two nights we were in Tallinn as well. Being pretty exhausted, we went back to the hotel and ate there. Our meal was actually pretty good. Wife had a mushroom risotto that was quite well done with three kinds of mushrooms and I had a duck breast that had a great skin component.

Our hotel had a fabulous breakfast buffet that was included in the price of the room. There were all kinds of cured meat and fishes, cheeses, fruit, six kinds of bread, eggs made to order, various breakfast meats and many other things that I didn't look at because I don't eat them (like all kinds of cereals and muesli). And the quality was extremely good especially the cured meats and fish.

At lunch we took a chance at going back to that top rated restaurant. They were booked for lunch as well but said they could give us a table if we could be done in an hour and fifteen minutes. We took it.

 Wife had an exceptional salmon with a crispy skin and enough salmon eggs to fill four Ikura Nigiri.

I had a Braised Elk that was melt in your mouth tender, wonderful flavor and perfectly seasoned. 

 During the whole time we were in Estonia, I don't think we used a salt shaker once, things were seasoned that well. You will also note the presentation of the food. Every place we ate at had presentation of this quality. The portion sizes you will not were not horribly large. So though we thought of this lunch as our big meal of the day, we ended up wanting to have some more to eat for dinner. Not wanting to deal with the whole need a reservation thing again (we were told it was this way for just about everything of quality in the Old Town area), we merely went to a cafe type place where we had some drinks that afternoon. We were really surprised at how good it was.

To start we shared this cream of pumpkin soup. It had pumpkin seeds in it that gave it a nice crunchy component and wasn't as over sweet as pumpkin soup often is in the US.

Then Wife had a piece of beef filet (not tenderloin) that she thought was a bit chewy but had good flavor and I had a Lamb Chop...though actually that turned out to be a Middle Eastern style Chopped Lamb - ah the joys of menu translations. We were very happy with both dishes given it was just a cafe.

The Beef

The Lamb - the tomatoes on this were really good!

And in honor of Son-in-Law 2B, I had to try this Estonian craft rye ale

Reminded me a lot of rye whiskey

Oh a note on wines. We drank wine by the glass most of the time and had some nice stuff (like a really big pour of a 9 year old Barbaresco at the hotel meal) for not a whole lot. 

The following day, because of the need for an early nap we were way out in the boondocks for the Television Tower at around 2 PM and not having eaten. But we were told they had a restaurant and snack bar on the top. Wife wanted to eat a good meal so we opted for the restaurant in spite of my reservations about eating a meal at a tourist restaurant like this. Boy was I wrong. This meal was every bit as good as the one we had at the top rated place.

Because of our experience with portion sizes being smaller, we decided we could have a first course and not be too full. 

Wife started with an onion soup. It had a slight amount of vinegar which made it taste sweet/sour

My first was a smoked eel with a beet and fennel salad. Wow! Top notch. The eel was not too fishy and the salad was great counterpoint to the fish smoked favor

Wife had a roast chicken that had as good a flavoring on the skin as the duck I had earlier with a tasty black risotto

I had braised pork cheeks - moist, tender, great flavor but not highly fatty (I think they must have brined the meat). The mashed potatoes with were excellent too.

I had another beer that I think was Belgian but it only had a label in Estonian so I couldn't tell. It was good too.

So all in all we were very surprised in a good way about the eating and the value (never spent more than $75 for a meal), with one exception. On our last night we only wanted to have a snack and had seen this stand near our hotel that had among other things Doner Kebab. Long-time readers will remember Wife and my love affair ever since Istanbul for Doner Kebab. This was called Doner Kebab with fries. We are thinking the Doner Kebab sandwich with a side of fries. No it is a tiny bit of Doner Kebab type meat on a bunch of fries with thousand island and a ketchup type of sauce over it and pickled onions, hot peppers, cucumbers on the top. NOT Kebab like we expected. In fact we saw very little if any street food during our time in Tallinn at all.

SPECIAL FEATURE - Return of Signs of the World

Seen on a bus in Tallinn

Respectively:

No dropping of drinks into a puddle

No leaving of S curved smoke in the bus

Skates with brakes on the tip forbidden

You must have an anti-theft lock on your bike

But you can bring a dog who likes biting others

Trial By Card or How To Self-Apply Medieval Torture

I think I mentioned in my last post that we did a five story climb up a Medieval Tower. How many of you have climbed the typical Medieval staircase? I know a few of you have but many have not. Your typical Middle Ages architect pretty much thumbed their noses at modern building codes. And as far as accessibility..."Why you dirty American peeg dogs, why don't you go home and write up your ADA."

I bring this up because Wife and I have this amnesia related to age. We continually make serious...I mean SERIOUS vows that we will remember that we are not as strong and resilient as we were in the past...we will remember we have numerous and varied muscle and joint issues...we will remember that we don't have to do everything we did when we are younger.

And we continually completely ignore them.

Hence today we were sore as all get out, but still went on multiple long walks and are now trying to figure out how to say 'hip replacement' in Estonian.

Now a lot of this WOULDN'T HAPPEN AT ALL if it were not for the phenomena of 'Cards'. I speak of those 'Cards' that give you discounts off multiple attractions as well as giving you unlimited access to public transportation. The problem with 'Cards' is we have this need, no I'd say this compulsion to get our money's worth. This means you do everything you need to do to get more value than you spent on the 'Card' - even if it kills you. You may remember a couple of years ago when we bought the Istanbulcart and Wife insisted we go to numerous museums even though I was ill with a fever and the chills.

Today was one of those day. Wife hobbling up and down stairs or not, we had discounts we needed to earn!

Tallinn Estonia is a neat little city. The country has about the same population as New Mexico. Like Slovenia that we visited last year, with its newly one independence their is a feeling of freshness and enthusiasm. Did you know that Skype was developed by Estonian engineers? As an avid Skype user to keep contact with my far flung family, thanks Estonian innovators!

Here's today's pictures

In the morning we were back in the Medieval City

We visited a museum, an old church, that has an impressive display of Medieval art. I like Medieval art because it reminds us that our feeling that this was a black and white period is dispelled by the colors of the art.

Wife wanted to introduce me to one of her Mentors, the Dark Lord of Photography criticism.

Then we took tram and bus out of town to the Estonian TV Tower

We had lunch at the top which I will report more about in a foodie post but here are some shots from up in it.

Then it was taking a tram to Kadriorg Park. This park was established by Peter the Great after he conquered Tallinn from the Swedes. He built a 'summer cottage' for his wife that now houses an art museum but we got there to late to get in. Here are pictures of the summer palace and in the park as well as one of the houses that were built nearby in later centuries by Russian elites.