Friday, June 12, 2015
Clay was up early to go walk. I heard him leave so I guess I
was up early too. By 6:30am or so I could see land with wind farms, so I
started moving around. We are to be docked in Tallinn by 9am. We are too meet
our Alla guide by 9:45am so we aren’t in any hurry. There is no Internet this
morning. I hope the last weather forecast we got here is still valid! There was
no notice in Currents of shut downs or maintenance being done on the Internet.
There are no signal blocking mountains in sight so it is not clear what the
problem is. That being said as we reach Russia there may be problems. Also once
we get very far north in Norway there may be times without Internet. If you
don’t see a new post every day, don’t get alarmed for at least 3-4 days because
we just might not have been able to find a signal to get posts uploaded.
We arrived at the dock in Tallinn around 8:15am and there
was already a Fred Olsen ship Boudicca docked there. We pulled straight into
the next berth and docked on the starboard side. We will have to back out and
turn around to leave the port tonight. If they continue apace we should be
cleared to go ashore on schedule at 9am.
The weather is feeling a little cooler than was predicted,
but at near 60F at 9am so as long as it doesn’t rain, it should be a
comfortable day. We will both wear jackets out to start and take umbrellas and
go from there. We were hoping for the predicted few degrees warmer so we could
go without the jackets. But, it is the weather and you take what you get. The
day turned warm (72F) and sunny right after 10am. It was a beautiful, blue sky
day here in Tallinn today.
We took the Alla Tours 5-hour Tallinn Grand Tour today. It
was a bus ride to near the top of Toompea Hill with a walk around the hill top
area and then meandering down through the medieval town to the bus pickup site
by the Russian Cultural Center. The tour part lasted from 10am to 1pm.
Unfortunately, there were some people who didn’t understand where to find the
guide outside the port gate so we got a late start. This was a 3 hour walking
tour. Alla Tours had a max group size here of 16. There were over 35 on the bus
at the port gate, but the lead guide assured us that we would be divided into 3
groups each with a guide once we got to the hill top. We were and we weren’t.
We went with the guide closest to us who asked volunteers for her group to
raise their hands. Too many. She asked a family of five to go to the next
guide. She counted again and asked number 17 & 18 to go to another group.
She counted again and had 17. OK she told the guy he could stay in the group
and he says his wife is sitting on a bench over there. (The walking tour hadn’t
even started yet!) She rolled her eyes and kept walking. We passed an enormous
group and a group of 6. By the time we walked to the corner, someone stopped
her and pointed out that now her group had 26 people. She said it was up to us
how big a group we wanted. I told her we would go back to the small group and
if she asked for volunteers maybe others would, that it wasn’t totally our
fault, that even though the guides explained that people didn’t understand or
weren’t paying attention. She told me to go if I wanted and told a few others
that could hear her the same thing. We walked back to the sole male guide and
asked to join his group since the first group had picked up 10 extra people and
was too big now. He agreed that we weren’t evenly divided and welcomed us.
Someone in his group loudly informed us that this was the slow walking group
and we should go back up the block. I just turned around and said we were told
all the groups were going to the same places on the same route in the same
amount of time and so would all be walking at the same pace. This was true. In
fact, our slow walking group was frequently ahead of the now 2 too large groups
because the guides couldn’t handle them and they kept losing people. Once we
got far enough away from the O groups and the other 2 big Alla groups, we kept
a nice pace and had a good and informative easy-paced tour. Some people were
still upset about the amount of walking, but it was described as a 3-hour
walking tour. The thing that kind of was upsetting at the end was that they
have you in the old town center and tell you this is where you want to spend
your free time, but then they want to walk you the last 15 minutes of the
walking tour back to where the bus will be in 2 hours. People did not want to
have to walk 15 minutes down the hill to see where to find the bus and then
walk 20 minutes back up the hill. Neither did we but we wanted our full tour,
so we did. It would have been best if the Alla guides had been able to give out
maps showing where we were and where the bus would be. I had picked up a map
off the destinations desk as had a couple of others, but not those who didn’t want
to walk back and forth. I show the guide the map and marked where the town hall
square was and where the bus would be as did the others and then we all walked
on either with or without the guide. So, at $45pp for a 5 hour tour (3 hours
guided) we felt it was a good value. Far from the similar experience in
Copenhagen with 1 guide and over 32 people and missing several things on the tour
for spending time sitting in traffic at $125pp. We went to lunch in the Beer
House and had a good, reasonably priced meal. Clay had a bratwurst with mustard
and sauerkraut and a Vana Viini lager. I had a Coke Zero and a bread bowl of goulash.
It was 23 Euros for us both and mine was delicious. We both really liked mine
and I never like food. I loved it and the presentation. I expect we’ll come back here on our return
visit.
As far as port notes, there was a taxi line, a complimentary
shuttle from the dock to the foot of the old town and a HOHO bus from the port.
Please note that the ship's internet may be spotty for the three days we are in St. Petersburg.
Please note that the ship's internet may be spotty for the three days we are in St. Petersburg.
Oh, check out my Travel Map! Tomorrow I will pin my 60th
country. Yeah!
