At the end of October, Oliver and I spent an extended weekend in Tallinn (Thursday October 30th to Sunday November 2nd). I flew with SAS via Stockholm and Oliver came from Cologne with LOT via Warsaw. We met up at the airport in Tallinn in the evening and took the local bus from the airport to our hotel.
After checking in, we headed straight out for a first glimpse of the Old Town. Even after dark the cobbled streets and medieval towers looked interesting. We found a small, cosy place called Pannkoogipubi, which served savoury pancakes and local beer, simple, authentic, tasty and very affordable.
Friday
Friday morning started with a walk towards Tallinn’s Old City Harbour. We stopped for a fika to focus properly on something very important: scoring Brandi Carlile tickets for next year. Mission accomplished, Zürich and Stockholm secured!
From there, we continued to explore the harbour area, including the public installation “Tallinn Letters”, which is part of the city’s Green Capital project. Next to the big letters there were hammocks and a picnic spot but it was, of course, deserted this late in October.
Nearby stood the impressive but worn-down Tallinna Linnahall, originally built for the sailing events of the 1980 Moscow Olympics when Tallinn was still part of the Soviet Union. Beneath the same roof there used to be an ice-skating rink, later followed by a concert hall that remained in use until 2010. Today it’s closed and decaying, a huge, concrete structure covered in graffiti, looking as if no one has cared for it in decades. On the seaside there’s even an old public heliport also long out of use. A few curious tourists wandered around, just like us, trying to take in this strange, time-frozen (and very Soviet-looking) monument by the sea.
We then walked back towards the Old Town, Vanalinn (sounds almost like Anna Lind, doesn’t it? 😅). The old town has medieval towers and narrow cobbled streets. The climb up to Toompea Hill was a bit of a struggle and the uneven cobblestones didn’t make it easier. The cobblestones are a charming detail but definitely also hazardous. If you’re not careful, you might stumble (I strongly recommend leaving the high heels at home). From the top we looked for the view I’d been reading about but it wasn’t exactly breathtaking that day, only grey and cloudy. I bet it’s stunning when the sun is out.
Dinner that night was at Margherita Pizzeria & Trattoria, proudly listed as number 42 among the 50 best pizzerias in the world. Naturally, we both ordered… pasta. (In our defence, it just sounded too good to resist.) Everything was delicious and afterwards we rounded off the evening at Olde Hansa, a signature medieval restaurant just off Tallinn old town square. We wanted to try honey beer since Oliver had good memories from a previous visit. It was tasty but the beer had more of a cinnamon taste than honey. Did they serve us the wrong one?
Saturday
Saturday was meant to start with a visit to Telliskivi Creative City but my navigation skills sent us on a rather ”creative” detour. Luckily, Oliver spotted the place just around the corner from the train station Balti Jaam. The area looked interesting but was almost deserted, maybe because it was off-season or maybe we were just too early (or both).
We then strolled towards the Apollo Kino Plaza, a cinema situated in Rotermann City. We bought some popcorn and a Pepsi. We watched the film ”One Battle After Another” and the cinema itself was top-notch. The sound was great, the seats were comfortable and you could even lean back and rest your feet as the seat ”unfolded”. The film was in English with both Estonian AND Russian subtitles, an interesting little cultural twist.
After the film, we headed to the Old Town square for one of the “original” honey beers in that same restaurant Oliver had drunk one back in 2018 (Vana Toomas Restaoran). This time it actually had the right taste. We noticed that most of the restaurants around the square had taken away their outdoor seating, probably because it was now November, but it didn’t matter as it wasn’t warm enough to sit outside anyway.
Sunday
Our flight times didn’t quite match (mine was much earlier) and Sunday turned out grey and drizzly. To make things worse, Oliver pulled his back while stretching in the morning, so we decided to stay in the hotel until checkout before walking to the bus station together.
Tallinn airport, by the way, is one of the cosiest I’ve ever been to. Each gate has its own “sponsor” and design theme. For example, Gate 7 has a mini gym (sponsored by myFitness), Gate 8 highlights the Paralympic and at Gate 9 passengers can engage in activities such as ping-pong, checkers and hopscotch. They also have amenities such as a book exchange and public pianos. I wasn’t allowed into the lounge, not even as Senator Oliver’s guest, since we weren’t flying the same route. However, by the time I had boarded my small propeller plane bound for Stockholm, Oliver was already settled in comfortably in the lounge waiting for his flight.
To conclude, Tallinn was a charming little city with plenty of history and interesting corners, compact enough to explore on foot. Since we visited in the off-season, the streets were often quite empty which had its advantages such as giving us plenty of space to move around and see everything, but it also made the city feel a bit deserted at times and we probably missed some of the lively atmosphere it can have in warmer months.
We also noticed that the Estonians can be quite reserved. It was hard to get a smile, even from people working in the service sector (hotels or restaurants). The only person who actually smiled and joked with us was the woman at the gate as I was leaving.
Still, I’d definitely recommend going. Lots of Swedes and Finns come over on the ferry and, according to an annual statistic summary, tourism in Tallinn is growing. Last year it went up by 7%, reaching over three million international visits. The fastest-growing groups of visitors came from Germany, the UK, the US and several Asian countries, while the Finns and Latvians stayed loyal as ever. The language is almost like Finnish (which I don’t understand at all), but now and then we came across a word that made us smile, like “Bussiterminal” (see photo).
Coming up: Where the Bands Are (Mumford and Sons, Copenhagen 8 November, 2025).
Stray Bullet 
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