Now, where was I?

That's right, I was on a boat which arrived in Tallin at 11am and I made my way to the hotel where I dropped I bags and walked into the old town.  I've seen a few old town's of late and this one was just as quaint and pretty.  The Christmas market in the square was super-touristy but the Christmas tree with hundreds of notes (letters to Santa? messages of goodwill?) attached to it was cool.  I had a nice hot spiced apple wine in a little ye olde Estonia cafe while I waited for the walking tour to start at midday.

The guide was entertaining and had some good stories to tell about Tallin and Estonia.   I'll repeat a couple:
- Skype was invented in Estonia (the software -  the company was formed by a Swede and a Dane) and they have a huge industry in software and technology - complete with their own silicon valley just out of Tallin
- Tallin used to be two towns.  The lower town was full of merchants and craftsmen.  If you could escape the upper town and stay undiscovered in the lower town for a year and a day, you would be free.  The two towns therefore hated each other and a wall was built between the two.  [This sounds like shit tour guides say to entertain the tourists, but I'll go with it anyway.]
- There is a cathedral named after Alexander Nevsky, who was a Russian hero for defeating crusading knights by luring them onto a frozen lake.  The ice was strong enough to hold foot soldiers, but the knights with their horses and all their armour had clearly had too much cake and the lake cracked and they sank.
- The current president (Toomas Hendrik Ilves) regularly tweets and is apparently quite funny/insulting.
- It's a very new country.  It had independence briefly between the two world wars and gained independence again in 1991.  Do you remember when two million east Europeans formed a chain across the country in a protest for independence?  I only remembered when once the guide started talking about it.  That was in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
- The country declared independence in 1918 and was immediately attacked by Russia and Germany.  Incredibly, they won.  They were occupied by the Russians, then the Germans in WW2.  The Russians then bombed the shit out of Estonia even though the Germans has already left.  They wanted to send a message.

The walking tour was two hours long and a very interesting way to spend my hours waiting for my hotel room to be ready.  I had booked tickets for the Opera (La Traviata) so got myself all dolled up in my dress.  Then added jeans cos it was too cold.  The singing was great, the sets were great, and the costumes were great.  It was three hours long and I'd intended to get dinner afterwards....but all the restaurants were closed so I went to the supermarket instead.