July 25: Tallinn: A Great Place to Visit
What a great place to visit! My ride today took me from the ferry terminal in Tallinn to the local Honda dealership and then off to the city for a great walking tour and fantastic dinner. I have fallen in love with the history, charm, affordability, and accessibility of this great town.
After a very pleasant 16-hour Tallink Ferry ride from Stockholm, the Adventure Baby and I disembarked and headed to the local Honda Dealership for him to get his 8,000-mile service. After navigating some particularly challenging intersections and possibly bending a few traffic rules we were welcomed at Douhan Ou Honda for our service appointment.
I was so very impressed with their professionalism, thoroughness, and affordability. In addition to completing all the regular tasks, they also drilled an extra hole in the mount of the exhaust pipe so that we could more securely attach the heat shield that had come loose after the rider from France dropped his bike on the Baby last week. The total cost for the service, repair work, can of chain lube, and extra 15-amp fuse was less than what I would pay for one rear tire back home.
My experience with lodging in Tallinn was just as pleasant. My ride in took me along a gorgeous route with a canopy of trees, there was courtyard parking right out front, and the budget-priced accommodations were far more luxurious than I expected. My Revelton Suite is beautifully decorated with pastels and pretty curtains, has a wonderful seating area, and includes a full bathroom. A far cry from the $165 I paid for a room in a hostel in Reykjavik without a bathroom, towel, or shampoo!
After unpacking and getting some snacks from the local market, I headed off for a walking tour of Old Town. As I walked along cobblestone streets and passed little restaurants and shops, I also got a glimpse into some of the history of this area. I stopped in front of Kiek In De Kok, the largest medieval artillery tower in the Baltic States and spent some time in Freedom Square, a large plaza in the southern end of Old Town that features Estonia’s cross of liberty. It was hard to capture in a photo the beauty of the eclectic combination of turrets, archways, steps, and colored buildings.
My dinner at Pegasus Restaurant was a gastronomical and visual feast. Each course had a perfect blend of different yet compatible flavors and was artistically presented. The bread was crispy and buttery on the outside, full of a variety of seeds, and was served with soft butter with large chunks of salt. My cold watermelon-tomato soup was sweet and spicy and presented with watermelon seeds in the red center and a green coriander cream around the edges. The pan-fried halibut had a perfectly crispy skin and a flaky, moist center and was accompanied by a spinach and snap pea mixture on top of a chorizo-butter sauce. The Strawberry Mousse included flecks of blueberry meringue and was surrounded by a bed of mint milk. The entire three course dinner, served in a beautifully decorated and comfortable room over a period of two hours was less than $50.
I feel so incredibly fortunate to be visiting such a pleasant and welcoming yet affordable city.
