The Jarvii We did a day trip to Tallinn, Estonia while we were visiting Helsinki, Finland. It was just an hour ferry ride to Tallinn from Helsinki, which the kids loved! Again, I did not do any planning when we decided to do this day trip. And because of that I think we really didn’t enjoy it too much. It was also really difficult to spend an entire day away from home base, especially with a 19 month old. Our group also did a biking tour of the city, which we couldn’t really do since we had two small kids. But we still tried to make the best of the day.
Old Tallinn is probably one of the best well preserved medieval cities in all of Europe, and I think that’s because they largely escaped destruction during World War II. All the roads are narrow and made of cobblestone. It definitely made you feel like you were in an old European city even though Estonia was once a Russian satellite country. It was hard to tell it had any history with Russia except for the occasional Russian orthodox church.
Estonian food was also really interesting. Because Estonia was occupied by the Danish and Germans at one point in their history, Estonian food also reflected that. I ordered a meal that the waiter told me was a traditional Estonian meal of sausage, mash, mustard, and a type of pickled relish. It reminded me of the meals I had while studying abroad in Munich.
Overall, it was a difficult day trip with young children. We spent the morning walking around finding different viewing spots and monuments with the children. In the afternoon we walked just outside of old Tallinn’s medieval walls where there was a park to have our daughter take a nap. It took a long time walking around in a stroller for her to finally go to sleep. When she woke up, it was just in time to walk back to the ferry to catch it back to Helsinki.