More Tallinn, Estonia

We continued through the lower walled town and then up to the upper walled town which offered great views of the harbor and everywhere else.  This was a charming little town and I really enjoyed seeing all the medieval, Germanic parts of it as a good juxtaposition from all the Roman ruins that we’ve been seeing. 

 We did catch a tram to make it out to the park  on the outskirts  of town to see the little palace that was built for Catherine of Russia by her father and where the prime minister lives now.  We made the mistake of walking down to the harbor to see the Baltic Sea and saw our boat maybe half a mile in the 

 distance.  We thought that we could walk around the shore to the boat and avoid detouring to town before going back.  Halfway around the shore, we were met with an ungodly stench coming off the Baltic Sea, but we were committed.  If we only would have stopped to look at the map in our book, we might 

 have thought twice because harbors and ships are optical illusions people.  Hear me now and believe me later.  We had to cut in to go around some fenced off area, then we had to cut in again to go around a sink hole, then we cut back out to the sea, but guess what?  There is a canal in the way and we have to cut 

back in, back out, back in again to the point where we could have walked across Estonia to our ship, much less Tallinn.  We finally made it back and in time to hit the wifi in the terminal with a beer, before boarding the ship on time. 

We were afraid our table mates hadn’t made it back after we 

gave them advice on getting out to the park.  But we took a look at the menu and figured that picky eaters would skip tonite anyway.  I have to admit that I wanted to leave the dining room quickly and made John stay for dessert and bring mine to me later.  We have an Italian waiter and I mean ITALIAN.  He winces when you order the wrong thing, will recommend things that he thinks that you should have, and then will bring courses at a very, slow rate so that we can see other people on dessert when we are still in our second course.  I mean, it’s nice when you have so many courses and so little to do on the boat, but there are times when you just want to go to bed and not wait.  This is one of those days.  We land in St. Petersburg tomorrow morning early and we have already lost 3 hours more on this trip.  We are now 11 or 12 hours ahead of Pacific time, so we’re halfway around the world from some of home.  The time changes and sight seeing are taking their toll on my feet, my sleep, and my attitude though.