Fine Fines

We wanted to sleep in today. So we set the alarm for 9.. But we went to sleep an hour and a half later than has been usual this trip, and so actually ended up getting less than ever when we woke up at 9/9:30.

My dad left the room around 10:15, and I followed suit close to 11, leaving my bags at the front desk and finding him several blocks away in the old town, wending my way there not by a map, but by the church steeple visible from the street outside the Radisson. It was a short walk but I made it shorter by cutting across a small park by a Hesburger. 

I found my dad in the main square, an obvious choice. He should have made it more difficult -- he was the only one sitting outside at the café he was in. 

We walked out of the town, looking for food. But for a city as clean and modern as Tallinn is, we found a surprisingly small quantity of restaurants, and none of them appealed to us.

Around 12:30 we left the old town and walked back to our hotel to get our bags and the car we rented two days ago.

We tried to get a lunch recommendation from the concierge who got us our bags and car. He recommended Madissoni, a Radisson-owned restaurant about 30m down the street from where we stood. We tried to get another recommendation, and got one for Gourmet Coffee, near Peter the Great's old home in the northern part of the city. We had to visit there anyway, so we decided to go to the coffee shop. But as we drove past the Madissoni, my dad looked inside and exclaimed that we needed to eat there.

I ordered an Estonian beer, A. Le Coq, and a salmon risotto. My dad got crusted whitefish and a latte.

When the coffee came, dad insisted on telling Nele, our waitress, "Please tell the chef that this coffee is incredible."

"I made it," Nele replied.

It turned out that Nele was the Estonian Barista champion two years ago... 1.3 million people, and we found the best coffee maker among them.

Dad's second cup of coffee came with a condition. He wanted to watch Nele make it. The two of them went behind the bar and he watched and commented as she made the coffee. He was blown away.

From Madissoni, we got in the car and drove northeast towards Peter the Great's old house. We meandered for a bit and made a few wrong turns before stumbling upon a beautiful mansion in a park. It looked to be the home that Peter the Great's built for his wife. It is called Kadriorg Palace and today it is an art museum - but not a very good one. We walked out before we got past the gift shop. 

We walked around the back of the palace and ducked under some police line-style tape trying to keep people out. We shuffled up ice-covered steps and got a beautiful view of the back of the house. We also saw a pink palace in the adjoining lot, on the other side of a low stone fence. I considered jumping it, thinking it was another museum. But we had ducked under dividing lines to get to where we were, were standing next to a sign informing us of video surveillance, and saw what looked like guards patrolling the back yard (the latter item wasn't noticed until we left)

In most other situations -- and based on our past experiences with dividers and boundaries abroad -- we would have probably jumped the stone divider and walked right up to the windows, peering in the back of the palace. It's a good thing we didn't.

It turns out I was one hop from violating the sanctity of the property of the office of the President of Estonia, their version of the White House. It's a good think I had even a little sense. We ran out of there, half expecting a bullet to the back for each of us for trespassing on the Pink House lawn and threatening national security. We had gotten up close and personal with the Presidential headquarters in Helsinki and Riga.. Now Tallinn as well.

We found Czar Peter I's house a short while later, on the other side (front side) of the Pink House. It wasn't that impressive - most of the house wasn't original, it was renovated several times, and Peter didn't build it, he bought it. But the furniture, while reupholstered, was all original and all in great shape.

The two coolest pieces of the tiny cottage (which was somewhere between the size of his house in St. Petersburg and his summer home on the Peterhoff property) were the chest and the table. The chest had belonged to Charles XII of Sweden, whom Peter defeated in a war in the late 18th century. The table was decorated on the top with a large compass in a circle, and a map stretching from Denmark to St. Petersburg, from Prussia to Finland, in the center. It was clear that Peter once used the table to plan his navy's movements during the war with Sweden. Very cool.

We went from that house, at about 3:30, to the ferry terminal to catch our 5:30 back to Helsinki.

When we arrived at the car rental place in the terminal, Rilka, the woman who rented our car to us, came out to meet us. It was just before we started cleaning out the car that my dad exclaimed, "We made it!" to which Rilka responded, "Yes, but you received two fines."

It turns out we were caught for speeding by speed cameras on the highway twice, once while my dad was driving 6km/hr over the speed limit, and once while I was going 3km/hr over. Expecting the charges to be exorbitant, we were relieved to hear that the charge was €3 per km/hr we were over, or €18 and €9. This wasn't too bad, but thank God that Latvia never sends in tickets to Estonia, cuz I averaged 120km/hr through Latvia coming back, which has a 70km/hr speed limit...

We waited in the terminal to board, watching countless Finns rolling carton after carton of alcohol with them across the straits. Riku had told us in Helsinki that because alcohol is so expensive in Finland, Helsinkans (no?) found it cheaper to make occasional runs to Estonia for €60 round trip, just to spend hundreds of Euros on liquor. "You can bring an entire truck of beer back with you," Riku had said, "as long as you say it is for your own personal use."

For a country of 5,000,000, with 2,000,000 of them alcoholics (according to Riku, the same number of Russians are alcoholics, a country with 150,000,000 citizens), this is a ferry attractive deal.

Our ferry left at 5:30. We relaxed for a bit at first, lulled by the now-familiar sound and corresponding vibrations of the ship's hull scraping the ice blocks below.

Around 6:30 the two of us stood on the "sun" deck of the ship, bundled up, and shared a couple of fresh Cuban cigars for a while.

Our boat pulled into Helsingfors around 7:30. Forgetting the Latvian "Paldies," and the Estonian "Aitäh," we had to again say "Kiitos" to every person we needed to thank.

We got a cab to the Hilton, where we were given our old room again, 630. At 8:30 we were relaxing in our room, overlooking the frozen sea.

At 8:58 I received a text from my father, who had gone to the executive lounge on the seventh floor, which said: "Help!  Drunks here"

When I finally meandered upstairs about a half hour later, I was greeted by a very drunk man, who pointed to me and asked me to join his friends and I (whom I learned later wanted him there as much as everyone else -- not at all). I blew him off and sat with my dad.

The drunkard pestered everyone in the area and, after repeated requests from several people, including my father, he was forcibly removed from the premises. I mixed my dad and I makeshift Amaretto Sours (DiSaronno, Schwepps Lemon Sour, a wedge of lemon, and half a package of sugar) while we prepared to leave for dinner.

At 10:00 we left for dinner. Since many/most places close then, we chose to go to Baker's, a burger and bar joint near Stockmann's and the shopping district.

We arrived at Baker's at 10:20, which turned out to be across the street from the Dubliner. I had Reindeer Carpaccio and Lambsteak. Amazingly delicious. Especially the reindeer. Oh, and our waiter was a Spaniard, who was about as bumbling as Manuel from Fawlty Towers.

From dinner we passed by the entire population of Finland getting drunk at once. We didn't take advantage of the party. 

We did stop at the casino, though, which we didn't stay at since I observed too many strong players and i had not enough energy to spend a few hours playing.

We left and got back to the hotel around 12:40am. I fell asleep around 2.