Mahinda’s Little World

I awoke at something like 9.15am. Either way, it was far too damn early. I tried to prod Paul awake, and then dragged my sorry self into the shower.

Our room being our room, there was no natural light. Not the best for being able to tell what time it is.

Anyway, I later emerged, fresh and clean, and awoke the stag.

We slunk down to breakfast just before 10am (i.e. jut in time) to find a few of the lads already there. Some hadn’t turned up at all, and some were considerably worse for wear than others.

I tucked into a sizeable mix of hot and cold stuff, including little bits of tasty frankfurter. Paul prodded a bit of frank around he plate before giving up, having had a mouthful or two.

Back to the room, to realise exactly how badly it smelt. Very.

Paul headed straight to bed, while I decided to join some of the others at 10.30am and mosey round town a bit. Think we ended up taking in the market. Lots of tourist tat, with some nice bits of craft thrown in. Definitely the place to go if you want something that makes you look like a multicoloured yak.

Paintball

The plan was to meet back at the hotel for midday, where Phil had arranged for two minibuses to take us out to a paintball venue.

Unfortunately, all was not well in the state of people’s heads. Not just heads, either - Mylo and Ian were definitely ruled out due to seriously bad ankles. Ian’s in particular looked really nasty, with the striations of his muscles showing up in various shades of dark purple against his pale and swollen skin.

Some others, unfortunately, had nothing to blame but excess alcohol. The general consensus was that paintballing was a bad idea. About two thirds of the group would have done it, but less than half were properly up for it.

The taxis arrived. We hung around in the hotel foyer. Phil was NOT happy, and understandably so. Fortunately, he’d not paid anything, so all we did was seriously piss off some Estonians with paintball guns. Oh well.

Wilko and I went and settled up with the (rather annoyed as well) taxi drivers - 100EEK for each one, i.e. a fiver, so not so bad really.

We all then split into small groups and went along our merry ways.

Afternoon

Mike, Ian, Little Paul and I first headed to a little local tearoom for a spot of lunch. Well, tea and cakes, anyway. This was Ian’s spot, and about 100 yards from the hotel. Good work - it proved to be very cheap and rather tasty. Full of old local women, which is always a good sign.

Here, I plumped for a bottle of random Vana Tallinn based alcopop stuff…which really wasn’t very good. The stuff just isn’t meant to be mixed with anything fizzy!

The cake and coffee were nice, though.

After that, we traipsed off towards the old city walls, and had a look at the Alexsander Nevski Cathedral, which is a seriously impressive Russian Orthodox cathedral on the outside…and a seriously ornate Russian Orthodox cathedral on the inside. Much like the big cathedral in Riga. There’s actually a bit of a story behind it - it was built towards the end of the 19th century as a sign of Russian might, slap bang in the middle of what was one of Tallinn’s biggest squares. While building it, they demolished a statue of Martin Luther - as large chunks of the Baltic States and Scandinavia are Lutheran, that was quite a symbolic thing to do.

I also had a poke in the Toom Kirk (well, I think it was that one) - the local Lutheran cathedral and seat of Estonian churchdom. Big and sparse, it was impressive in a very stark and sombre way. On the walls were all the old coats of arms from the various provinces of the area - ornately carved out of old wood, some of these were a clear 4 feet in width, perhaps more.

Our tourist desires sated, we wandered back to the hotel, via many many steps and much sunshine.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the girls in Tallinn are very beautiful indeed! One in particular springs to mind, who we kept spotting during the walk back to the hotel.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Part II coming up at some point, I s’pose…