Good News Travels to Estonia

As I write this blog, Aaron and I are on a ferry crossing the Baltic Sea headed from Estonia to Finland. The snow is swirling gently past the huge windows as we cruise through the very chilly, open waters. I feel like we're in a snow globe : )

It's hard to believe that in a month and a half, this will all be a distant memory of places we travelled, things that we saw and adventures we had. But enough of that for now because right now, I want to tell you about Estonia.

We hadn't originally planned this trip to go there, but it became an add on to our Finland itinerary. Tallinn is only 2.5 hours by ferry to Helsinki, so we thought, why not?!

We almost didn't make it to Tallinn yesterday because we were so close to missing our plane. When we arrived at Gatwick and made it past security, the board said "Gate Closed" for our flight. We began sprinting to what might be the farthest away gate imaginable as they paged over the loudspeaker that they were looking for two other remaining passengers and the Whams. I really thought we'd missed it. And it's not like there are many flights to Tallinn each day. But miraculously, we arrived to a stern gate counter woman who said, "we've been waiting for you." Whoops! This was the first bit of good luck and news that day : )

Tallinn was another fairytale city that gave off little hints of other European places we've been to. Bruges, Kraków, Copenhagen - lots of similarities but also very unique. There was one cathedral in particular that looked very Russian (you'll see in photos below). We found out the architect was from Saint Petersburg so that explains why!

We explored the city by foot, walking through the winding, snow-covered, cobblestone roads. We ducked into a cave-like place for lunch and had delicious meat and salmon dumplings with sour cream. Afterwards, we headed to the Tallinn history museum and then went ice skating on an empty rink in the middle of the town.

My favorite thing we did was go to this little pub under the town hall. It was a step back in time: rock walls, candlelight, wooden tables, clay pots and jugs that you drank beer out of. They even had a huge barrel with free pickles that you had to scoop out with a skewer. The food was simple but delicious and the atmosphere was so fun! It was here that we learned I got a job in Seattle- wahoo!! Another piece of good news : ) Then we went to a German beer hall for a night of music and dancing. We got some more great news about our house hunt but I'll share that in another post.

And now we are on our way to another place we have yet to explore: Finland!