Tallinn

We were here nine years ago (almost to the day!) on a Princess Cruise. I’ll comment on that Cruise at the end, and it will have some interesting information for you.

Tallinn is the oldest of the Capital cities (1248) that we’re going to visit, straight out of our favorite medieval times. Its Old Town section is divided into an Upper Town and the Lower Town which affords an opportunity to view things from a higher elevation. Interestingly, our guide for the day told us that Tallinn really only has about 40 to 45 days a year that are not overcast. I guess that makes us fairly lucky because if I showed you photos of nine years ago, they are indistinguishable from those of yesterdays!

                     A note on that.

                     Yes, the skies were that blue.

                     Obviously in Lightroom (my Adobe photo processing software) I have the ability to tweak aspects of a photograph just as if I were working in a darkroom. In fact, I need to be careful not to overdo anything as my eyes become jaded/accustomed/blurry (?) when I stay too long on a project. Suddenly, things get out of control, and I find that sometimes the colors can get ‘over saturated’ only because my brain thinks that it’s normal. If this ever gets (or is) like that, please drop me a line as I consider this to be one of the Cardinal Sins of some publications.

                                So, what you see is what it was!

I could subtitle this piece as “The Rooftops of Tallinn” as there are so many steeples all with multiple views depending on what lane you’re walking down, that it makes for difficult decisions as to what photo may be better than the next. I solved that by including (almost!) all of them.  

                                Tallinn is one of those places that are wonderful to just get lost in because you can’t get that lost! I’m really just referring to the Old Town here as this is the place with the meandering medieval lanes and paths. Quaint little shops and cafes can pop up anywhere and it’s the excitement of the ‘find’ that keeps one in that meandering mode. And then, when it’s time to exit the maze, all you need to do is look up, spy a familiar steeple or tower, and head towards that and get reestablished with your directional orientation and head back to the present day leaving the Serfs, Fair Maidens, and Knights behind.

                                Now for a few more of those photos!

Here is that tid-bit on that Cruise that I promised. 😊

Back in 2017 we signed up for a Seven-Day New England Cruise embarking the last week of September, which puts it near enough to the good ‘leafy’ color times that it was very popular. About ten days before we were scheduled to leave, I received an email from Princess asking if we would consider giving up our room for a cruise in the future.

                                Obviously, the ship was overbooked and they needed some staterooms. The very last thing that a Cruise Line wants is for you to show up on the dock with luggage in hand, and they not have an available room to put you in. That would be suicide. Airlines are a bit different, they just find space on another flight either with them, or another airline.

                                So, no matter what it cost, they needed my (and I’m sure a few more) room(s), I was skeptical, so I checked it out and found that cruise lines have regular departments dedicated to this exercise. It is called a ‘Move-Over Cruise’. In our case, here was what they offered us in exchange for saying ‘Yes’.

                                Free 7-to-10-day cruise, anywhere we wanted to go.

                                Upgrade to a Mini suite

                                All of our monies refunded.

They did keep our money in an ‘account’ until the end of whatever cruise we decided on. This was used to draw from for excursions and the like until we got home and then we received whatever wasn’t spent.

                     We had a year to make up our minds,

                     Narrowed it down to the Mediterranean or the Baltic.

                     Ten-Day Baltic out of St. Petersburg won out, so onto the hot line I went, “Bob” picked up the phone in their offices in California. I gave him all our info, and he confirmed our eligibility for this (which we already knew). When I told him of our decision he said, “Don’t take that one, take the same one, but embarking from Copenhagen.”

                     I said, “We can’t, that’s an eleven-day cruise and you guys told us we had a limit of ten days.”

                     Bob said, “No worries, I don’t want you to have to worry about getting in and out of Russia, so I’d rather see you on the eleven-day one….. it’s the same cruise and you’ll get two full days in St. Petersburg.”

                     Don said, “Sold!”

                     Moral of this story: If you ever book a cruise and they ask you to give up your room (and you can move your vacation) act fast because they only need so many rooms and they obviously ask more than they need to…… so FYI……it’s ‘First come, first served’ in this case!

Some more pics!

If you’ve gotten this far, I thank you. I know that this was a longer one, way too many good pics, but then I believe that Tallinn deserves it. We’ve been lots of places and back in ’17 when we first visited here, we said that this was one of the places that we’d love to come back to, so here we are! And you are too!