The Interior DIYer
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Baltic Cruise – Tallinn, Estonia

My attempt to evenly disperse our holiday pictures and avoid saturating my blog with travel photos all in one go is now kinda dragging on a bit. We went on holidays in July and it’s now almost October. I promise it’s almost over as Tallinn, Estonia was our second last destination. And I should say, I’m saving the best destinations for last. 

The Old Town section of Tallinn was within walking distance from our cruise ship. I wasn’t feeling the best that morning [I sure drew the short end of the stick on this holiday], so we took our time and without a map, wandered the purely in.cred.ible streets of Tallinn. We didn’t know where we were going, I couldn’t tell you where we went, but our eye balls didn’t care … 

The only thing I can say is that my husband has the patience of an absolute SAINT. I don’t think I took 4 consecutive steps without stopping and taking a picture. A living and breathing saint. 

We came to the Oleviste Church. There was a sign saying for 2 euro you could walk to the roof of the church where there were some promising views of the city. “Oh, that sounds nice“, I said. “How about we climb it before lunch?“. Not my finest idea, and it took only 5 minutes for me to realize this. We entered the church and were pointed in the direction of an ancient, stone, very steep tightly-spiraled stair case with a very lax rope dangling around the edge. Not too bad, right? Just hold on! NOPE. 

After about 20 steps we heard voices and quickly realized this wasn’t a one-way staircase. Our suspicions were confirmed when 10 people came down the staircase and we were left trying to figure out how they’d pass us. Badly, that’s how. Did I mention I have a fear of heights so knowing you’re climbing higher and higher up a set of stairs and moments away from possibly tripping and falling all the way down made me a bit nervous. Not to mention I also have vertigo so repetitive movements such as oh I don’t know, going around a spiral stair case, makes me VERY dizzy. Then I’m so dizzy I think I’m going to trip. Basically, it was all bad. 

After 20 minutes of avoiding passer-byers, not falling our deaths [slightly dramatic, I know] and holding on for dear life, we reached the top. And it got worse. I won’t go into detail about how incredibly flimsy the wooden planks were. All I’ll say is not all of them were secured onto the roof. So husband walked around and took some picturesque photos while I held onto the doorway [seriously. Thank you, crippling fear of heights] and I envisioned the 10,000 ways I would fall to my death. 

The views of Tallinn were pretty immense. Or so I saw when we got back on solid ground and I clicked through the photos husband took. I sure was grateful for lunch after that.

We wandered for a couple more hours before we started heading back to the cruise ship. Towards the outskirts of Old Town, possibly my favourite building that perfectly merges old with new, as Old Town turns into modern downtown … 

That building / house is perfection and I need something like this to happen in my life. I love the juxtaposition between old and new, jagged and curved, bright and dark. My eye balls can’t handle it. Tallinn, you’re way too much. 

Stockholm – Helsinki – St. Petersburg – Tallinn – Riga
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Baltic Cruise – sweltering St. Petersburg

The next destination on our Baltic Cruise was St. Petersburg, Russia. We had been there before on our honeymoon, close to 2 years ago. Our honeymoon was in late October it was a lot colder than we had anticipated. We adored St. Petersburg. Wandering the streets, heads constantly gazing up, drinking chili infused hot chocolate, and adjusting to the unusual social hours [before I start reminiscing too much, you can read and see more about our honeymoon here]. 

We were really looking forward to going back to St. Petersburg, but in the summer. Little did we know it ended up being the hottest day of the year. A great day to be dressed head to toe in black, yeah? We also didn’t know it was a national holiday, so thanks to everyone flocking towards the city centre, it ended up taking us almost 2 hours to get into St. Petersburg, leaving us only and hour an a half to reminisce. We covered as much ground as we could in the 35 degree heat. 

Since we had such limited time in St. Petersburg, we made sure to visit the Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, wander down Nevsky Prospekt, and [attempted] to escape the heat by going back to one of our favourite cafes, Cafe Singer. Unfortunately, Cafe Singer, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, acted like a massive greenhouse and was hotter inside than outside. We still reminisced with carrot cake and this time, behemoth milkshakes. 

We begrudgingly walked back to the bus and back to the cruise ship. We felt a little robbed of what we were hoping would be our second honeymoon, but maybe it’s the perfect excuse for us to go back again. Third time’s a charm? We ate dinner and like the anti social introverts we are, we retreated to our usual evening spot – the lounge chairs in the adult pool that face massive windows so we can watch the scenery go by. After dinner, this area was always deserted. We spent every evening on these chairs, with wine, talking complete rubbish and reading books. 

We were treated to once again, a pretty awesome Baltic sunset. And to top it off? We passed a Russian submarine. No big deal. 

Stockholm – Helsinki – St. Petersburg – Tallinn – Riga
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Baltic Cruise – antihistamines in Helsinki

Helsinki was the second destination on our Baltic Cruise. We originally were hoping to take a guided cycling tour excursion through Helsinki, but we should have known as weeks before our cruise it was unavailable online. We tried, in vain, to book the cycling excursion as soon as we got on the cruise, but just as we thought, it was sold out. So we resorted to stumbling around Helsinki for a couple of hours, weaving our way through the pretteh city. 

Husband picked up a map in a cafe and said, “hey, there’s a design museum not far from here. Do you want to go to it?”. Why yes, yes I do. So we made our way towards DesignMuseo.

The Ball Chair by Eero Aarnio, the Mademoiselle Chair by Ilmari Tapiovaara [there was actually an extensive exhibit dedicated to him and his work, drawings and designs. It was really very good], the PS MASKROS pendant light by Marcus Avronen for IKEA, and two hooded velcro figures hugging but I can’t remember the name of this piece. I thought it was cute and kind of creepy. These were my sneaky phone pics of my highlights from the DesignMuseo. 

After the DesignMuseo, we wandered the streets of Helsinki, guideless, looking up and zooming my camera in too far. We wandered to Esplanadi park, had a bit of lunch at Konig restaurant, then headed back to the ship. 

Funny story – before we embarked on our cruise, I spoke to a couple of pharmacists about combating sea legs. I have sensitive inner ears and at the best of times [aka, when I’m on dry land the other 358 days of the year], I can have pretty dodgy doses of vertigo. Spending a week on a ship? I wanted to be prepared. So a pharmacist advised antihistamines actually help keep your inner ears clear and will help combat sea legs. Great! I already take antihistamines for my allergies, but I wanted to be sure to nip it in the bud so why not take some stronger anitihistamines for our holidays? WRONG. I took Claritin with me on holidays and it made me soooo dozy. Unfortunately, I only realised 3 days in to our trip what was causing me to have zero cares about everything. I was really mopey in Helsinki and our next destination, St. Petersburg. Hense the lack of decent pictures. I actually fell asleep in some cafes. But once I realised, I stopped taking Claritin and dealt with stumbling around looking like I was drunk. 

I did snap a good few pretty sunset pictures that night on the cruise sailing between Finland and Russia, so at least the end of this post has a semi-decent amount of photos. Kinda. Goodnight, Finland.

xx A

Stockholm – Helsinki – St. Petersburg – Tallinn – Riga