Estonia blog …
Who knew just how relaxing Estonia was?! We certainly didn’t! Although in this Estonia blog we show how it definitely didn’t start out that way!!!
In our main country section on Estonia we talked about how they’ve just started the construction of the Vanasadama (Old Harbour) tramline, and thus the traffic was very chaotic. There were people cutting others up all over the place! We saw several Finns and some bikers from Latvia driving the wrong way down the road due to the confusion.
It was a helluva shock coming from serene empty Finland, where you can drive for literally hundreds of miles without seeing anyone. We just weren’t used to seeing so many cars in the one place … it was like being back in the UK lol! And it was only in a small area, so we soon escaped.
The rest of Estonia in our view was quite an eye-opener! In a similar way to Finland, it’s pretty flat, with lots of managed forests and woodland – though fewer lakes and much more arable land given over to wheat. This provides a really pretty landscape, especially when the sun is low towards the horizon! But overall, it just has this general feeling of relaxed and chilled! Nice!
That’s another thing – the sun gets low and goes over the horizon – night time!!!! Quite stunning how dark it can get when you’re not used to it!
Just on chilled, this band were playing in Tallinn’s main square – we think they exemplify just how chilled and great Estonia is! They may be really famous for all we know?!?
Tallinn old town is just so pretty. We can really see why it’s such a popular romantic city break – just lovely!
But there’s more to Tallinn than the old town. Outside the city sprawls into wide open space quite quickly – providing lots of space for people to live. They don’t though – live in lots of space that is! They mostly live in low rise tower blocks!
Some of these tower blocks are Soviet era, and have become quite neglected over the years. There are lots of brand new ones replacing them, but they’re all juxtaposed – leaving a really strange identity crisis we felt. As well as building new buildings, they’ve also upgraded all of the underpasses, which light up different colours as you walk through. It makes you feel safe as they’re full of light – nice!
We stayed in one of the new apartments – it was great – small but spotless and new. Our SatNav took us to the adjacent old-style block though! “Park in bay 18”, they said – “there’s a code to the gate to the secure parking area.” “Nice”, we thought! Our SatNav took us to a parking lot where the gate had been broken down and was all rusted over, and there was a burnt-out car in one of the bays. There was a bay 18, although someone had parked halfway over it. “No worries”, we thought. Although it didn’t feel right at all! I got out and investigated, and it wasn’t until I asked someone local about the address that we discovered that the adjacent brand new building, which was obscured by trees was our building. A sense of relief!
There’s fewer than 1½ million people live in Estonia, so no towns or cities are big really! You’re soon back in the open countryside. As it’s so flat you get great big open skies! As you can see, we encountered a passing storm on our way over to Pärnu.
Pärnu
How chilled can you get in Estonia? ‘Very’ is the answer. And one of the best places to do it is in Pärnu. What a lovely place! Endless beach, lovely seascape, gentle avenues, loads of restaurants and café’s, great chilled atmosphere! Honestly we sat by this beach for hours just idling the day away – lovely and warm!
Häädemeeste
And just when we thought it couldn’t get any more chilled we found Häädemeeste! OMG, just incredible. So chilled it was horizontal! We found a really great little camp site which the owner Tom had recently created from some land he inherited – just lovely! He had a last minute deal to stay in one of the wooden cabins next to the coast – so we gave it a go!
They sawed a bath in half to create a surprisingly comfortable bench seat next to the coast – I guess everyone likes sitting in a bath! There are kite surfers galore. And just across the grasses are really private lovely white sand beaches. Oh how chilled can you get? Take a beer, sit, watch and relax!
They even had a fresh water small pool just in case you weren’t relaxed enough! Incredible!
So if you’ve never been to Estonia, and you had no clue as to what it was like, well hopefully you get the gist?! Relax!