Estonian Escapade

Fast (and some lengthy) facts:
Estonia used to be a part of USSR.
400 000 people in Tallinn.
1.3 million in Estonia.
Only one official language.
Soil here is limestone.
National bird is barn swallow.
National flower is corn flower (blue).
The song festival is on today which happens every six years, the first one was in 1869.
The town is divided into new town and old town and old town is divided into upper and lower town.
All skyscrapers must be a certain distance away from Old Town.
War ended with a peace treaty with Soviet Russia.
Flag colours: Blue represents the sky and their national flower, black represents the soil and sour rye bread, and white represents eternal hope for better future and purity.
Independence was achieved in 1918.
The Alexander Nevsky Russuan Orthodox Cathedral was built in upper town in 1900 in the style of 17th century Moscow churches. Nevsky was a Russian prince who stopped invasion in the 13th century.
The Coat of arms on the parliament building has been used from 13th century. It consists of 3 blue lions and oak branches.
Because of a fire in 1684, there is no medieval buildings in upper town, only in lower town dating back to 14th century.
Everywhere where you stand in the St Virgin Mary Cathedral, which was built in the 13th century, is tombstone. They started burying the dead inside this church.
When landlords of upper town died, their horse would stand on the pulpit and walk over the tomb of the owner at the funeral. The family would also build a coat of arms out of wood and put it up on the church wall. They eventually outlawed burying the dead in churches.
The pews in this cathedral used to be locked during services to keep the cold out and the balcony pews were only allowed to be used by governors because it was warmer there.
Tallinn is described as a young lady who gets her hair done, facials etc because it is a place that is constantly restored, but this lady cannot dance because she has one short and one long leg. This is because the roads separating upper and lower town are called short leg and long leg.
There is a wall of towers that used to separate lower town from upper town because lower town belonged to Hansa and they received their own independence and rights. The gates would be closed at 9pm so that the people from upper town could not get to the ports.
One of these towers is named Kirk in de kok which means peep into the kitchen. The story behind thus is that one of the guards used to spy on his wife down the chimney of the kitchen to see what she was making for dinner and hear all of her secrets. He eventually told her he knew all her secrets. She then ruled that all chimneys should be closed at the top.
Only 1.85kms of this wall between upper and lower is still standing. There were 46 towers in total, but now only 26 remain.
Tallinn's old currency was salt and their main exports are salt and limestone.
Legend is that cats protect the town, so in all souvenir shops there are many cat ornaments.
Estonians created Skype
In medieval times, the people used to throw dead cattle down a well in lower town to please the goblin that they believe lived in it. The well was eventually closed because the water became undrinkable.

So today we went to Tallinn, Estonia. As you can see from above, we had an amazing time learning so many new pieces of Estonian history. We took a tour bus from the harbour which dropped us off in lower town. This is where our walking tour of Tallinn began. Although our tour guide spoke in broken English, which made it difficult for me to always get all the facts straight, she was extremely well-informed and added a lot of comical and personal touches to the stories. My favourite part about traveling is seeing the methods that were used to do everyday things that have become so simple for us today. Something that I really enjoyed seeing was the production pulley system. Merchant houses would usually have three floors, but have no stairs to the second or third floor. They would live on the first floor and produce would be stored on the second and third floor. Because there were no stairs, there would be a metre and a half by a metre and a half wooden window on the second and third floors. They would use a pulley system to lift the goods from the ground to these windows so that they could be stored in these floors.

We went around new town on our own for a bit, shopping for souvenirs. Us three girls bought ourselves an amber pendant each. Amber is very popular in Estonia, but it gets more expensive the closer you get to Russia. I also bought myself my very first Russian Doll. It is a handmade wooden 5-piece set with golden trimmings.
After our amazing tour we returned to the ship and suntanned for the remainder of the day, jumping in and out of the pool and jacuzzi to counteract both of their extreme temperatures. We finally got to enjoy some scallops at dinner; my families personal cruise dish, since we only eat these while cruising. The show tonight was Gareth Oliver, a ventriloquist who was seen in the live semifinals of Britain's Got Talent in 2009. He took ventriloquism to a whole new level, and used a puppet (Charlie the monkey) for probably only a quarter of the show. The rest of the show consisted of comedy, magic, and Oliver and his ventriloquist wife singing together, but mouthing each other's voice...it was a show that just cannot be explained.

The night ended with a magnificent, blood-orange, 10:15pm sunset which is where I captured my favourite photograph of this vacation thus far. It's the last one of this post. I took it while my two sisters stood beside me. We looked on silently with smiles on our faces.