Day 9 - Transiting the Baltic Sea
There wasn't too much planned for my last few hours in Tallinn other to just enjoy the hell out of it, leading up to a lunch at Restaurant Rado in the heart of old town. Early on, I ambled over to the old town, much like I would have say done in Cape Town, meandering over to the waterfront. I decided to stop by the Natural History Museum, which is housed in a small three-story house, so calling it a museum is a bit of a stretch. Sadly, the signage was only in Estonian, but seeing all the various fauna that live in Estonian forests was cool. The lover of animal cuteness in me got a kick out of especially how in almost every case if they showed a adult-sized animal, they would have a few babies of that animal there as well.
Anyway, after that quick stop and a traipse through the Town Hall Square in old town to grab an iced coffee and soak in life for a few minutes, I headed slightly north to the Tellaviski neighborhood. I had been there in a sense the day before, to go to Vaat Brewing, but avoided its main attractions, which are large food and art collectives.
The food one is housed under the roof of the old train station (the new one sits across the street), which has three different areas. The one in the middle is a standard grocery store, though seemingly a bit more upmarket. The one to the Eastern side was a farmers market (basically tons of stalls selling produce) and then a series of small half-a-trailer sized specialty stores/food stalls. The Western side then had more food stalls. It was truly wonderful, if the only sad parts being (1) I wouldn;t be able to take any of the gourments meats say home, and (2) the food stalls were largely other ethnic cuisine - including magically a half-trailer selling food from Cape Town!
The other main attraction is a 3x3 block area (pedestrian only in teh middle) called Tellavitski Creative City (at least that's the translated name). It has two buildings that have arts and crafts boutiques on ground level, including a really nice ceramics store that I perused for way too long, and then galleries on the upper floors (most closed). Around the back were other boutiques, music spaces, restaurants, cafe's and then a couple Padel courts (can't wait for a few months from now when Padel, the more exclusive version of pickleball, lands in America full time). It's a great little space, maybe feels in a way more like soemthing you find in American cities, but a lot of this arts collective stuff originated in the Nordics anyway so I was all for it.
After further meandering around the old town, and a few more souvenir shops (wanting to get a few more local, touristy wares) I settled down for lunch at Rado, which is on a corner of two alleys in the old town. I took this chance to sit outside, which was lovely with some cloud cover for the first time in my days in Tallinn, giving some relief on what have been unusually warm days in Tallinn.
Rado comes up with a menu of 5 starter and main options that can shift day to day - though from what I looked up its usually cycling through the same 25 or so in the rolodex. Either way, a novel approach adn the food was pristine, with a charred cauliflower with Estonian cheese and dill sauce (excellent) and a brillaintly cooked picanha with an estonian wine sauce. Despite being steak, it was cooked so well and light. On the whole, a lovely way to end my time in Tallinn.
From there, I took a more circuitous route back to my AirBNB to pick up my bags and head over to the ferry terminal (a 15 minute walk from the AirBNB), a bit sad to be leaving. Actually very sad, though some of that is probably also getting to the point where I do start to see the end of the trip approaching. I don't think this will be last trip to Tallinn, but then again I can't remember the last place I went to where I was pretty sure I wouldn't ever be back (probably say Takayama). Tallinn exceeded every expectation. As did the return trip on the Megastar, which even had a guy playing piano live to add to the experience.
Dinner was at Gron, a veg-forward (with some fish and poultry) tasting menu spot that was fantastic. So far, with one more to go tomorrow at Finnjavel, I'm not sure how I would stack the relative tasting menus up, but Gron is right up there - stunningly my favorite dish might have been a tomato tart, which given my normal hatred for tomato's is shocking enough.
Post dinner, I ambled my way down a few blocks to the more buzzier area of Helsinki. I shouldn't be surprised, but it was staggering how much more busy and full they were than the prior Tuesday. Again, makes complete sense, but it was nice to see Helsinki so alive. My first stop was a beer bar that was a bit too close to a pub in that their selection was more standard ales and pilseners. Not awful, still had a good chat with the barman and a few people there, but it was a pit stop before a return to Gate A21. The place had a great vibe, with tons of people sitting outside and inside, a DJ playing fairly inoffensive house music behind, and some good cocktails.
The final stop was what I was picturing when coming to Helsinki, and worked magically well. There are clubs all over the city, but a bit further afield (though in reality still within a 10-min drive of downtown) is a building area with a back courtyard that holds something of 3-4 different clubs, more in my variety. I hopped back and forth between two of them - Post Bar, a more my style EDM place with fog, dark lights, no photos, quick bar, and Kaiku, which is probably more reknowned but was a bit tamer in music than I wanted. Still was nice to hop back and forth, going across the 300 or so feet between them. There was also a halal-style cart in the middle too open till 4am which was a great touch - especially since this area is a bit far afield to any brick and morter spots.
In the end, it was a nice evening across a great meal, good beer and cocktails, and very good techno music and experiences. Helsinki tourism proper will begin tomorrow, but for another evening/night in Finland's capital, it is living up to expectations.
