Woke up a bit damaged from the beer, Absinthe, Jagermeister and Pepper Aquavit and headed down to breakfast. Discovered the usual Euro array of alarmingly pink meats, yellow vinyl cheese, dust pretending to be muesli and two heated pans. One contained a kind of porridge and the other something that looked like omelet. Elected for the omelet and some vinyl cheese with some toast that I eventually coaxed from a Soviet era toaster.
I'm not sure what went in the omelet but you could have made a patio out of it. And according to Mab the coffee was pretty disgusting too, so without much further ado we headed into the old town for coffee in a little coffee house off the main square where better drinkies were to be had. Suitably refreshed we headed for the Lutheran Church of the Holy Ghost which has one of the oldest public timepieces in Tallinn (see Mab's page for pix). Being a Lutheran Church it was pretty austere inside but they still charged us 15 crowns to get in!
So after the Lutheran church we headed down Puhavaimu towards the City Museum (35 crowns). This tells the story of Tallinn from its early foundation to the present day and has particularly interesting displays of the medieval trade guilds and cases of more recent everyday artifacts from the Soviet occupation, like ceramics, vodka bottles, newspapers and fag packets, just to show how much life for Estonians has changed since the Russians left.
From the Museum it was a short walk to the St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, another opulent edifice heady with the aroma of incense and packed to the roof with icons and other votive objects. I even indulged in a bit of sympathetic magic myself, lighting a candle for a sick friend.
Just down the road from St Nick's is what is left of the Dominican monastery where for 50 crowns an incredibly enthusiastic little old man with very limited English shows you where the monks slept and worshiped. A word of advice watch where you step as the steps are very worn and some of the railings could do with being cemented back in.
Well by then it was time for lunch, so knowing a good thing it was back to the Hell Hunt. We made sure we didn't order to much grub like we did the day before though. To start we shared some deep fried dumplings with spicy tomato sauce and sour cream, they looked like wizened tortellini but tasted fabulous. Then Nick had a tomato soup that contained a cheesy surprise and Mab had creamed turnip soup while I enjoyed some penne cooked with shrimp and blue cheese which was to die for. For drinks local beer and cider. Now the local cider isn't really cider like ours, its apple or pear juice with alcohol added like Kopperburg. I had the pear cider (actually it should be called perry if its made with pears) and it tasted like liquid pear drops, quite pleasant, but I had to have a beer to restore proper balance afterwards. Anyway the meal came to 445 crowns including drinks for all three of us which was a bargain.
After lunch we hit the Estonian History Museum (35 crowns) which went over some of the ground the City Museum did but also had some nice medieval weapons and armour and a room full of banknotes. From there we headed back up Pikk and past the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral to have a look in Tallinn's Lutheran Cathedral. Inside the Lutheran Cathedral there are raised marbled glass fronted pews, where the rich folks used to go to worship or whatever they fancied doing really without having to see or be seen by the great unwashed in the open seating below.
So onto the the evening and after a quick spruce up we hit the Ice Bar for a few liveners and then the Beer House for Mab to get chatted up by a Finnish Nobby no Mates while we sunk a U-Boot. Then on to Olde Hansa where we were shown to our table upstairs by a buxom medieval wench who then plied us with bitter ale with herbs while we listened to the minstrels in the gallery and chose from the menu by candle light.
Unlike those restaurants that do the medieval feasts in the UK, Olde Hansa's menu is pretty authentic and the decor has been very carefully rendered from medieval maps and coats of arms. To start Nick and Mab enjoyed some dried elk while I had a plate of herring, salmon and veg. For the mains Nick had the roast pork, Mab the Himalayan lamb, while I had the Arabian beef cooked with figs. All of the dishes came with the sort of veg that you would have encountered in the Middle Ages, a porridge of spelt with nuts, pickled cucumber, onion, salad leaves, turnip, lentils and a bean bag. The bean bag looked like a tiny Cornish Pasty, but inside the rock hard pastry was a tasty puree of beans.
Well Nick's pork was enormous, Mab's lamb was spiced and stewed to perfection while my figgy beef was absolutely delicious. And very reasonable too at only 1163 crowns.
By then we were well stuffed so after a hazardous visit to the candle lit loo we were off to the Hell Hunt for a night cap. This was where I noticed the lamp shades in the Hell Hunt were crafted from barbed wire, so how do you change a bulb in the Hell Hund? Answer with great care!
