Nate and Kara Buchanan spend their first full day in Tallinn, Estonia, exploring the medieval Old Town, eating local crepe pancakes, and hunting for the hipster Kalamaja neighborhood. They get briefly locked out of their Airbnb before the host shows up from across the street.
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It's our first full day in Tallinn, Estonia.
And it's warm enough to wear shorts today. So I don't care what we do. I'm a happy girl.
Today is basically our only full day to spend exploring Tallinn. So we're going to start by wandering around the old city after we grab some lunch. It smells incredible right now.
This is the best smell. Where is it coming from?
I don't know. It's like somebody's cooking something delicious over a fire.
This is a cool street.
So also the place that we're staying here in Tallinn is perfect. Like out of both windows of our apartment, we just constantly see people taking pictures of our building and the surrounding buildings. And we walk two seconds down the street and we are surrounded by these huge medieval walls with towers.
These towers you can see from the body.
So we were totally obsessed with the city of Riga in Latvia, and. And I'm feeling like we're going to feel the exact same about Tallinn. These cities are just so cool and cute. And maybe it's just because we just came from Dublin and Paris and Rome, like these big tourist destinations. I don't feel like anybody's bucket list item is to go to Estonia or Latvia. Or maybe it is and I just didn't know about it. I feel like more people need to come here. It is so pretty and all the cobblestone streets. Everybody's just so nice. And it's cheap.
We've now been sitting here for about 10 minutes and nobody has come to our table to take our order. There are several people up at the bar, so I'm guessing that we're supposed to go there. At least that's what I'm going to try.
You do order at the bar. And so much for the friendly Estonians. Care Osaki about.
Are they not friendly?
No.
Thank you.
Looks so good.
So when I saw on another table that the pancakes were pretty much crepes, I decided to get one. I got the salmon with cheese sauce, and I figure if it tastes like a pancake, I'll just drown it in cheese sauce like so.
Mmm.
Mine is delicious. Doesn't taste like pancake.
At.
I think we're both walking out of this restaurant the exact opposite of how we came in.
I had a great experience.
Kara was not looking forward to pancakes. I was really looking forward to pancakes. Kara enjoyed her meal and me not quite as much. It was. It was crepes and not pancakes. And I went savory instead of sweet. That was a mistake.
You should have gotten sweet. But now we're just gonna get some ice cream.
Now we are going to wander around the old city which I'm pretty sure is a UNESCO World Heritage.
So cute here. I love it here. I love the Baltics. This looks like it's the central square and there's some kind of market going on.
Yay. Whoa.
Come over here. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
I need a hat for the Trans Siberian.
Oh my gosh. Is it cute?
No.
The furs are in my head. It's so soft. Maybe we should just buy one in Russia. I love this market. Everything is so cool. There's tons of medieval shops. Apparently that's a thing here. Like they really embrace their medieval history and I love it.
So I consulted with Google and the old center here in Tallinn is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Apparently in the 13th to 16th century it was a major. It was developed as a significant center of Hanseatic League. It's a well preserved medieval town. It's cool.
So I've noticed this morning that we walked by all of these plaques and they're just on these really cool buildings. When normally we just walk by and say that's a cool building. And we don't know much about it. So it's really nice to know what this is. Good job, Talon.
Hey, you're on my. You know.
Still can't believe how adorable Tallinn is. Now we're going to a part of town called Tunpi. Tunpi. I don't know how to say it. Like most European cities, I feel like.
That'S a little dramatic.
It's supposed to have really great views of the entire city and we're looking for ice cream.
This is my dream car. Whenever it makes sense for me to own a car again, this is exactly what I want. But they're really hard to get in the US and really expensive. But I see them everywhere in Europe and I'm super jealous. Maybe Karen Nate Part two will be road tripping in one of those.
Who's gonna buy it?
That's a good question. Any of our viewers will like to let us borrow their Land Rover for the rest of my life? That would be fantastic.
We found the viewpoint.
That view was great. But it was just missing one thing.
Ice cream.
Hey.
You know.
Now we're going to head over to the like hipster part of Tallinn. So we've heard it's supposed to be like the more authentic part that has cool restaurants, cool cafes and lots of street art. It's called K Maja. I think it's like a mile walk.
These things are so creepy.
Just did something really bad for the first time ever. An hour.
You know why it's the first time?
20 months of travel. So we decided to come back to our Airbnb before we went to the other part of the city. City.
And then we were leaving.
And I locked us out.
And now we are sitting in the stairwell.
Cara is messaging our Airbnb host, and.
She hasn't said much to me. Every time we leave the apartment, which is multiple times a day, every day for the last 20 months, more than once a day, I say, nate, do you have the keys? And most of the time he does. Sometimes he doesn't, which is why I always have to ask. And this one time.
I didn't ask.
I usually try to, like, pause and fill my pockets before we walk out the door. And I just wasn't thinking.
Our Airbnb host has already had to come once. They fixed our oven for us this morning.
Oh, I'm so mad at myself.
Ow. I didn't mean to.
I said it was an accident.
Please.
Hey, I'm so sorry. No worries. Thank you so much.
No worries.
I need just across the street.
No problem.
As soon as he close the door.
He'S like, yeah.
Crisis averted. Turns out our host just lives right across the street.
She's so nice. There's this blue choo choo train that drives around the city. We passed it like 10 times today.
That was Kara's preschool teacher coming out in her choo choo train.
So I just put the name of this part of town that we were supposed to go to into Google Maps. And we're here.
This is. This is where we are. We're on a road with some buildings that don't look very special.
They're colorful, super hip, but it's starting to rain. Where's all the graffiti and stuff they said was down here?
I don't know.
I feel like we need to go somewhere else. Let's go to the next road.
They've all looked like this. This is what we've been walking through for the past 15 minutes. I think I missed it.
So this is what we're looking for. According to Culture Trip, there's a thing called the co Culture kilometer. Venture off the beaten tourist track.
You'Ll see abandoned structures, Soviet era stuff left for ruin, remnants of railroad tracks, and it'll all be covered in graffiti. There'll be tons of cafes is pretty much what it says. So now we've been wandering around this area for the last 20 minutes and have seen none of that.
But we'll keep trying for a few more minutes as long as the rain doesn't stop us because we don't have raincoats and we have no way to cover the camera. So I've put the culture kilometer into Google Maps. Something that's in Estonian that looks like the culture kilometer has popped up. It's a 15 minute walk from where we are now, but as you can tell from the dots on the screen, it just started raining pretty hard. I think this is something that we might save for another day, hopefully. I think we're gonna head back and call it a day. The afternoon didn't go quite as we had planned, but it was still a fantastic day in Tallinn. I'm loving the city.
Me too. Let's go home.
When you search Google, you're about to run into a motorcycle. Pretty good travel tip. You're going to run into the wall and keep walking at that angle again.
Nate and I both just beelined to the hat stand. We need a good furry hat for Russia.
This camera is so heavy. I don't know how Nate holds it out. Here.
Oh, I can't do it anymore.
