SCAPE insight: Таллин очень красивейше!

Tallinn is very beautiful!

The historical old town

I think I may have just experienced my first "foreign affair." It was a dark dewey evening and the sun just began to set over the skyline of the old city as it faded into the sea. As I walked through the enchanted cobblestone alleyways I couldn't help thinking if it was truly there. Were the buildings I witnessed merely sets in an expensive Disneyland amusement park? But as my feet balanced to stay atop each stone in the road my eyes absorbed the deep ocher illumination.

For three days, there was only bliss. I returned with my head held low that night to St. Petersburg. I knew I had betrayed my beloved city. but it was not completely my fault. My city had cheated me too. It's shopkeepers glared and demanded for exact changed. It shut me up from trying to speak and handed me English menus. It had ripped open the bottom of my "soles". But we're on betters terms now. We've decided to accept each other for our flaws, and I think this little tryst in the end will have made us stronger and appreciate each other more.

In front of a section of the old lower town wall

The view from my hotel window Sunday morning

my very first castle

So this is what Estonian street signs look like:

The NB! yellow sign throws me off a little bit - I thought pictures tell a thousand words...ha I can't even get one out of it. By the way, I never ever want to learn Estonian. It has FOURTEEN cases! I can barely get by the six in Russian. Besides, most people there speak Estonian, Russian, and English, and very often German. And I thought Spanish was annoying in grade school. Ha ha ha.

No I am actually in a very good mood right now. I just returned from my Russian yoga class and the endorphins are kicking in. Ha, I told my instructor today that most of the time I know what she's talking about, it's just that I can't really do those poses in America either! (Mommy, I'll hate you if you can kick my butt in yoga ;)

It's really funny because although my speaking skills are terrible (at least I HAVE some skills now), I keep wanting to type words in Russian, or I'm thinking of common words in Russian (this makes me so...O-chen...happy). I might go get some stickers for my computer and then make my keyboard bilingual.

windmills

Okay. So. Tallinn. It was incredible. I can't believe a city like that really exists. Granted, it is very small but it's so nice it feels fake. The funny thing is it's so small that from one end of the old city to the other part probably couldn't take more than 15 minutes to walk across. That's how long it takes me to walk to my Metro station in the morning!

Maggie and Denisa in posing in front of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

old city wall

lower city wall

passage way

Alex and I in front of the old city

landscaping in Tallinn

St. Catherine's Passage

St. Olav's Church

Tallinn is the largest and capital city of Estonia and it lies on the northern coast of the country on the Gulf of Finland. As a trade port between Russia and Scandinavia - Tallinn became a target for expansion for Teutonic Knight and the King of Denmark during the Northern Crusades.

Estonia Information from the Translation S ite