Tallinn is not a "must-see" city the way London, Paris and Rome are. It could be more accurately tho

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City wall towers and the towering spire of St. Olaf's Church dominate a view of Old Town from Toompea Hill. (DIMITAR hotels and motels in rocky point mexico DILKOFF/AFP/Getty Images) Click photo to enlarge Narrow cobblestone paths climb to Toompea hotels and motels in rocky point mexico Hill, the highest point in Tallinn's Old Town. 1 2
From May to September every year, cruise ships from at least a half-dozen lines slip out of ports in Western Europe and head for such familiar hotels and motels in rocky point mexico Baltic cities as Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki and St. Petersburg.
Many continue on for a day in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. It almost seems like an afterthought or a throw-in hotels and motels in rocky point mexico in a sports trade; a name that could be forgotten as soon as it is introduced. Tallinn, however, is more than that.
It may be that Estonia isn't much noticed in the West because - along with neighboring Latvia and Lithuania - it was swallowed up by the Soviet Union in 1944 and all but forgotten outside the Eastern hotels and motels in rocky point mexico Bloc nations.
Getting there: Several airlines serve Tallinn from the West Coast, including Scandinavian Airlines, United Airlines, Air France, Delta Airlines, Lufthansa, KLM and Lot Polish Airlines. Delta offers a one-stop (Amsterdam) flight. All the others hotels and motels in rocky point mexico have two stops. hotels and motels in rocky point mexico Round-trip prices begin at $1,425.
Ferries serve Tallinn daily from Helsinki, Finland; Stockholm, Sweden; and St. Petersburg, Russia. Serving the Helsinki-Tallinn route are Eckero Line ( eckeroline.ee ) , Tallink ( tallinksilja.com ) and Viking Line ( vikingline.ee ). Tallink also operates between Stockholm and Tallinn, and St. Peter Line ( stpeterline.com ) serves St. Petersburg.
Food: Estonian cuisine is of a type that doesn't lend itself to successful weight management, although hotels and motels in rocky point mexico few Tallinn residents hotels and motels in rocky point mexico appear overweight. Pork, potatoes, sausages, sauerkraut, dark rye bread and beer are popular. About that beer, it's always fun to try a local brew, but Sweden's Pripps Bla and Russia's Baltika have more flavor than A. Le Coq Porter, which seems to be the local product most often encountered.
Enough political history. It's probably first a good idea to establish where Tallinn is. The city of 400,000 is on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, almost directly south of Helsinki. The two capitals are 50 miles and a two-hour ferry ride from each other.
It is also roughly 300 miles east of Stockholm hotels and motels in rocky point mexico and 200 miles west of St. Petersburg. Given the size of the Baltic Sea, ferries are the most common way to travel among those cities. They are the freeways of the Baltic.
Tallinn is not a "must-see" city the way London, Paris and Rome are. It could be more accurately thought of as an "ought-to-see" city, and there is easily enough to keep a visitor busy for three or four days.
Estonia joined the European Union in 2004 and adopted hotels and motels in rocky point mexico the euro in 2011. That makes it more convenient for travelers who have been in nearby Finland, but not those who have been to Sweden or Denmark, both of which retain their own currency but still more or less accept the euro.
Denmark, Norway and Sweden share a linguistic and cultural history. The Estonian hotels and motels in rocky point mexico language hotels and motels in rocky point mexico is much closer to Finnish, but the cliche of "everyone speaks English there" is virtually true, at least in Tallinn, if not in smaller towns.
The medieval old town with its cobblestone streets, stone guard towers and town hall square - all surrounded hotels and motels in rocky point mexico by a city wall - almost seems unreal in a picture book sort of way, like a Disney place but with real people instead of copyright-protected cartoon characters.
It is a genuine "old town" that deserves the "Old Town" capitalization that usually accompanies talk of the place. Many structures date to the time of the Hanseatic League, an economic alliance of the 13th and 14th centuries of which the city was a member.
Among the highlights are St. Nicholas' Church, which was built in the 13th century, and the Town Hall, which was completed in 1404. Both were damaged during World War II, but quickly rebuilt. St. Nicholas' is now a museum hotels and motels in rocky point mexico and concert hall.
Above them is the 150-foot-high Toompea Hill, site of Toompea Castle, which houses the country's government. The castle was built by Catherine the Great in the late 18th century, when Estonia was under Russian hotels and motels in rocky point mexico control. Views from the top of Toompea Hill look out over the city from every direction.
Estonia has been dominated by Sweden and Russia, occupied by Nazis during World War II and governed by the Soviets hotels and motels in rocky point mexico Souvenir shops and small clothing stores are built into Tallinn's medieval city wall. (Jay Berman) after it, but it has survived largely intact. It was bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1941 and then by the Soviets in 1942 through 1944. Several wooden buildings were destroyed, but the city was spared hotels and motels in rocky point mexico the devastation felt elsewhere in Europe.
Tourists have begun to discover Estonia. The government agency, Enterprise Estonia, reported in June that more than 431,000 foreign tourists spent at least one night in the country in the first four months hotels and motels in rocky point mexico of the year, an increase of 10 percent hotels and motels in rocky point mexico over 2011. The agency report said low-cost flights and an "abundance of cultural events" were major factors. More direct flights from Spain, Russia, Norway and Germany were also cited. Trains connect Estonia with Latvia and Russia but, for traveling to the West, air and sea are more convenient.
About that Russia-Estonia link: When Estonia regained its independence in 1991, about 300,000 ethnic Russians chose to remain. Many had never learned Estonian, and there is a bit of tension between hotels and motels in rocky point mexico them and the citizens of the nation they ruled for so long.
Pointing to a park, an Estonian tour guide told Western visitors on a bus ride through the city last month, "Young Russian couples like to get married here and have their reception. Then, the next morning, Estonian hotels and motels in rocky point mexico crews come in and clean up all the broken liquor bottles."
Other than that, you can tell the Cold War is over by the proliferation hotels and motels in rocky point mexico of Western hotel chains in the past 20 years. Radisson has three properties, Swissotel has a luxury hotel there, as does the upscale Finnish chain, Sokos. If you're there to explore Old Town, the Hotel Cru is within the city gates. It has only 16 rooms, however, and parking is problematic.
A quick word about two other attractions: Kadriorg Park is a 250-acre urban landscape that surrounds Kadriorg Palace, hotels and motels in rocky point mexico built by Russia's Catherine I in the 18th century and now an art gallery. The nearby Tallinn Song Festival Grounds figure prominently in the resumption of the nation's new autonomy. Starting in the mid-1980s, large crowds began arriving at the grounds, singing patriotic songs the Soviets had banned. In 1988, 300,000 Estonians turned out, demanding independence from the then-shaky Russian regime. It soon followed.
After lagging behind western Europe, Estonia has made up for lost time. It is already considered a "high-income" country by the World Bank.