Ferry to Tallinn
The next morning we took the early morning subway for one stop, and caught the bus 15 to the West Terminal. We booked our ferry tickets from the Tallink's website, but had to call them to authorize the credit card. Apparently they have some trouble with processing international credit cards over the web. Once the transaction was complete, they emailed us a confirmation code, which we entered into the check-in machine in the ferry terminal and got the actual tickets. The ferry was huge, with restaurants, booze lounge, supermarket and video arcade. Most impressive was free wifi on the ferry. We took the first ferry in the morning at 7:30am, and arrived Tallinn in just under two hours.
Bus to the West Terminal
Ferry checkin
Booze lounge
Restaurant
Tallinn Activities
Once we arrived Tallinn, we walked for about 15 minutes to the Old Town. And we were looking for, what else, the bike tour office ! We did not have to look hard, as we ran into their 5 people bike on our way, and they were also heading to the office.
5 people bike
Bike tour office
It turns out we were the only two on the tour that day, and were given brand new helmets to wear ! Our guide Terris, is a high school kid working his summer job in the bike office. He speaks perfect English though. We went to see many sites in Tallinn, had we not joined the tour, we would probably be limited to just walking in the Old Town vicinity. Compared to the Chicago and Copenhagen bike tour, we seemed to be riding at a much faster pace - there was much less traffic to fight against, and we had to catch up with the young kid !
Private Tallinn Bike Tour
Remembering the ferry disaster on Sep 28, 1994
Art Museum
President's residency
Cultural Museum
After we finished the tour, we were quite exhausted and needed a big lunch to recover. We walked to the old town center, and picked a restaurant where we could sit outside and watched the crowd. We had an Estonian pork and a sausages entree, and of course beer to cool down. We lucked out with the weather during the bike tour, though the rain did come down a bit for a brief moment in the afternoon.
Old town square
Lunch
Rain
Miss Tallinn card
Estonian fashion ?
We took the 5:30pm ferry back to Helsinki, and found lots of people carrying back cases of beers, and quite obviously the price was much lower in Estonia.
Beer back to Helsinki
When we got back to the hotel, we used the saunas facility to wind down, but most people in the hotel were sitting in the bar watching the Spain vs Germany world cup semifinal.
Spain vs Germany world cup match