Preview of Austega's blog at TravelPod. Read the full blog here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/austega/1/1221071280/tpod.html This blog preview was made by TravelPod using the TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow creator. Entry from: Viljandi, Estonia Entry Title: "Tallinn to Tartu to Viljandi" Entry: "I don't know about yesterday being described with 2 drips and today with 1 - today has definitely been wet. Sometimes just drizzle, occasionally stopped, but sometimes it rained quite hard. We hadn't met any other English speakers in the previous 2 breakfasts in Tallinn, but this morning someone at the next table said what a surprise it was to hear English spoken & he just had to introduce himself. He was a Kiwi, from Auckland, who'd been playing (rugby?) in Edinburgh in a World Cup for Veterans. He was a bit of a pain really, but yes it was nice to talk to him in English. He described in detail where he'd been & where he was going. When we answered that we'd spent some days in Finland, and had come over by ferry from Helsinki, a man at the next table (to the Kiwi) introduced himself. He & his wife were from London - not far from Richmond actually - and they were spending a week in Tallinn but today were going over on the ferry to Helsinki just for a day trip & wanted some hints about what to see & do there. I'd been feeling a bit flat this morning, and it was a nice change to speak to other travellers, even briefly. After breakfast we checked out. It wasn't raining so we decided we would walk the kilometre or so to where we were picking up the hire car, and wheel our luggage with us. This was easier than navigating the 1-way streets back to our hotel. We hired our car from Easy Car Rentals (as it says in large letters on our back window - www.EasyCarRental.ee - so much for travelling discretely as a tourist!). I reckon it might be a father & son operation. Anyway we're hiring our car from Tallinn and returning it in Vilnius. The young guy we were dealing with, Margus, will fly down to Vilnius and meet us there on Monday & then drive the car back to Tallinn. We have a little Opel Astra. 1.4 engine & automatic, so not big on power. It is a hatchback, and little, but fortunately our case & hand luggage fits in the boot. It was a bit stressful getting out of Tallinn in a different car, but Tallinn is a much smaller city than Helsinki - around 400,000 in Tallinn, there is around 1.1 million in Estonia - so we managed. Again I was driving so David could navigate. Once we nearly turned into a shopping centre car-park, but perhaps it was our big car rental ad that encouraged passing cars to tolerate my mistakes & let me back into the traffic. After we drove out of Tallinn, we had originally intended to go to an ex-Soviet submarine base, but TomTom (our GPS navigator) could not find a route for us from there except coming back to Tallinn, so we decided to skip that. Instead we headed for Tartu, about 80 or 90 km east of Viljandi. It was raining quite a lot when we reached Tartu. TomTom helped us find the National Estonian museum, but as David had directed it to take us to Viljandri via the museum, it was fortunate that David was following our progress on a map, because TomTom directed us straight past the museum - but didn't tell us we'd reached it. We had to sort of go around the block (on narrow 1-way streets, some cobbled) in order to find our way back to the museum. Across the road from the museum, cars were parked at 90 degrees to the road, but with their front wheels up on the pavement. One car pulled out as we approached, so we pulled into that spot, bumping up onto the footpath like everyone else. We went in to the museum. David reminded me of the time we'd parked somewhere in Spain, in a long row of other cars, only to come back later & find that everyone else had gone & we had been booked for parking in an illegal location. I worried about that until we came out again, and found we were still one of many cars half on the footpath. The weather was too miserable to do much outside sightseeing, which is why David chose this museum for us to visit. Previous museums we've seen in Tallinn have either been about the history of the city of Tallinn, or 20th century Estonian history. This museum focussed on the much earlier & also regional ..." Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/austega/1/1221071280/tpod.html Photos from this trip: 1. "St John's church, Tartu" 2. "Terracotta figures outside St John's, Tartu" 3. "Inside St John's, Tartu" 4. "Terracotta figures at Tartu" 5. "Raekoja Plats, Tartu" 6. "Town Hall, Tartu" 7. "Tartu" 8. "Tartu, bridge" 9. "Turtles (concrete road blocks)" 10. "Car repairs at Tartu" 11. "Statue of (?) figure in park in Tartu" See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00c1-7c0a-b90e?ytv4=1

• published: 21 Dec 2010
• views: 259