Tallinn

The bus ride from Riga to Tallinn  is full of green forests ( I think as I slept through most if it but our young student Tallinn tour guide pointed out later 50  percent of Estonia is covered in forests) . 

The other interesting piece of travel trivia is that you have to pay for toilet paper at every public transport station. Scary looking Eastern European ladies will pull you into line very quickly if you try to sneak past quickly so as not to be late back to the bus) 

 

Tallinn is a very pretty medieval town not quite as touristy as Riga ( by that I mean it doesn't have as many expensive overseas shops ). The original medieval town wall is still in tact in lots of places.

Tallinn has had the usual amount of invasions and occupation from it Swedish German and Russian neighbours 

My favourite piece of revolutionary information as told by our young university student tour guide, Marylynne was that the most recent surge for independence from the Soviet Union was won by people getting together in the streets and singing. (Maybe there is some hope for the ukes yet)

Our tour guide Marylynne also 

 took us out of the "old town" to her favourite cheap eats  cafe. Very yummy . With both the tour guides and the lonely planet restaurant recommendations keeping us going we reckon we could both end up like the side of a house by the time we get back ( the Half litres of beer and luscious hot chocolates also not helping ) The Dukin diet seems to have gone out the window . There is lots of meat here but it's the bread and cream and cheese that go with it that Mr Dukin probably would not like. 

Our final day in Riga was spent riding through the Estonian Lahemaa National Park. The strong head wind reminded me of home however there was no turning back with  a lovely tail wind. The forests meets the sea here and everything seemed a little cold and bleak ( even the Vikings did not venture out today). We managed to find a windowless and warm tavern that  has served traditional estonian food ( yes more meat and cream)  continuously for the last 3 or 4 hundred years  ( the bar man assured us he hadn't been there that long) but  we decided upon an almost vegetarian lunch with fish soup and porridge with mushrooms ( saving for our lonely planet recommended medieval dinner) 

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   The medieval dinner when we got home was well deserved ( riding in that head wind must have burned up a few calories) . It was a bit hard to tell what we had though as the restaurant was only lit by candles ( I had to surruptioulsy get out the iPhone torch just to make sure I had finished my dinner) Harley's giant pork knuckles proved almost too much for our post modern appetites but some how we managed!
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