Three days in Tallinn
Jul 3, 2003 | 5:53 pm
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Three days in Tallinn
No flights in here (they are in the OW Mileage Run Parts 1 to 3), but here is a brief report on a few days in Tallinn, staying at the Grand Hotel for 3 nights, plus dinner at the Nevskij restaurant in the St Petersbourg hotel.
The Grand Hotel is listed in most of the guidebooks as one of the 10 or so "top flight" hotels in Tallinn and boasts 4 stars, but frankly it is not that grand; it is certainly not as nice as 4* hotels in "western" countries. We had a room booked for three nights as part of a package with the ferry from Helsinki through Nordic Jet Lines ( http://www.njl.info ), whom I thoroughly recommend - they responded within minutes to email enquiries and reservations and everything went very smoothly. The ferry itself is also very pleasant, having big glass walls and a skylight, which were great for the beautiful sunny week we have had.
The room at the Grand Hotel was perfectly OK, but the bed was horribly soft and uncomfortable. The breakfast buffet was OK, but not in the same league as that at the Hotel Kamp (see report here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum74/HTML/003610.html ). Estonia is big on free Wi-Fi, and some areas of the hotel have access, but unfortunately not in our room. There is also an anonymous internet access available to all for local call rates (which is EEK2/min from the hotel) - this was reasonably fast (50K connection often achieved) and also allowed VPN tunnelling. The only other facility of the hotel which we used was the casino, which is small, boasting about 20 slot machines - mainly of the Poker type. Gambling is cheap here though - the minimum stake is EEK1 so you can easily pass an hour for less than 10 EUR.
The location of the Grand is not bad, and we had an excellent time wandering the old town, which is one of the best preserved medieval fortified towns I have ever been too (see http://www.tourism.tallinn.ee ).
By happy coincidence we were also in town at the time of the annual beer festival ( http://www.ollesummer.ee ) and so we spent an evening there, sampling various brews and listening to the bands at some of the 11 venues within the "Song Grounds". Neither of us had the nerve to try the various types of bungee-ing activities on offer (bungee swings, and bungeeing in a cage suspended on two bungee cords between two huge cranes about 100 foot in the air, as well as traditional jumps).
One evening we had dinner at the Nevskij restaurant in the St Petersbourg hotel, which is claimed to be one of the best in town. We certainly had a good fill of tasty Russian fare, starting with some sevruga caviar with ice-cold vodka and continuing through salmon and chicken starters, and venison and rabbit main courses. We accompanied these with some quite reasonable Georgian red wine, and finshed with sevniki (described by the waitress as RUssian cheesecake, but that doesn't really do it justice). Service was impeccable throughout, and sound effects were provided by Misha the parrot who was not far from our table. The whole dinner excluding the caviar came to about EUR 120 including service, which was about on a par with, or slightly less than, I would expect to pay for a meal of this quality in most European cities.
The Grand Hotel is listed in most of the guidebooks as one of the 10 or so "top flight" hotels in Tallinn and boasts 4 stars, but frankly it is not that grand; it is certainly not as nice as 4* hotels in "western" countries. We had a room booked for three nights as part of a package with the ferry from Helsinki through Nordic Jet Lines ( http://www.njl.info ), whom I thoroughly recommend - they responded within minutes to email enquiries and reservations and everything went very smoothly. The ferry itself is also very pleasant, having big glass walls and a skylight, which were great for the beautiful sunny week we have had.
The room at the Grand Hotel was perfectly OK, but the bed was horribly soft and uncomfortable. The breakfast buffet was OK, but not in the same league as that at the Hotel Kamp (see report here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum74/HTML/003610.html ). Estonia is big on free Wi-Fi, and some areas of the hotel have access, but unfortunately not in our room. There is also an anonymous internet access available to all for local call rates (which is EEK2/min from the hotel) - this was reasonably fast (50K connection often achieved) and also allowed VPN tunnelling. The only other facility of the hotel which we used was the casino, which is small, boasting about 20 slot machines - mainly of the Poker type. Gambling is cheap here though - the minimum stake is EEK1 so you can easily pass an hour for less than 10 EUR.
The location of the Grand is not bad, and we had an excellent time wandering the old town, which is one of the best preserved medieval fortified towns I have ever been too (see http://www.tourism.tallinn.ee ).
By happy coincidence we were also in town at the time of the annual beer festival ( http://www.ollesummer.ee ) and so we spent an evening there, sampling various brews and listening to the bands at some of the 11 venues within the "Song Grounds". Neither of us had the nerve to try the various types of bungee-ing activities on offer (bungee swings, and bungeeing in a cage suspended on two bungee cords between two huge cranes about 100 foot in the air, as well as traditional jumps).
One evening we had dinner at the Nevskij restaurant in the St Petersbourg hotel, which is claimed to be one of the best in town. We certainly had a good fill of tasty Russian fare, starting with some sevruga caviar with ice-cold vodka and continuing through salmon and chicken starters, and venison and rabbit main courses. We accompanied these with some quite reasonable Georgian red wine, and finshed with sevniki (described by the waitress as RUssian cheesecake, but that doesn't really do it justice). Service was impeccable throughout, and sound effects were provided by Misha the parrot who was not far from our table. The whole dinner excluding the caviar came to about EUR 120 including service, which was about on a par with, or slightly less than, I would expect to pay for a meal of this quality in most European cities.
