Weekend Update

Mark Twain once said that no one who traveled could stay the same. We enjoyed Tallinn, and as always, wonder how this unique city has added to or shaded the picture of who we believe ourselves to be.

We enjoyed taking advantage of the spa hotel where we stayed. We realized it had been years and years since we’d gotten a massage, and so took advantage of the low price and indulged. The steam sauna, ice cold showers and tepid swimming pool were included in our hotel fee, which was really nice. That was a relaxing benefit after putting in a twelve hour day — T. on last-minute revisions which she needs to return before her editor goes on maternity leave, and D., on coaxing reluctant clients to accept the changes the company is making, and doing damage control after a couple of people got snippy and refused to cooperate.

Both of us had a long, long, long day Thursday, and T’s went onward into the wee small hours of the day following. And she still didn’t get done.

On Friday T. broke down and left the hotel regardless of the status of her work. We treated ourselves to lunch with a friend, and enjoyed cold ‘supid’ — a soup with pickled beets, pickled cucumbers eaten with honey and sour cream — one of those “you- have- to- try- it- to- appreciate- it” dishes, tasty brown bread and green onions (one is meant to eat them together) and a luscious mushroom broth. Some special Tallinn truffles — not the mushroom kind — rounded out a light and tasty meal with our Estonian friend who is fortunate enough to live in the her country’s capitol. We rounded out the day with our long spa date, and an early bedtime, where we crashed out, even though it was sunny until midnight.

Tallinn — it’s hard to describe. The red brick rooftops, cobblestoned streets and friendly people made it a fun place to visit. The inexpensive shopping was also a boon — and a rarity for the American dollar. The crowds of perfectly tanned, toned and taut people was a little unnerving in our rumpled touristy state. It was, at some moments, like being around a lot of flawless models and mannequins. Tallinn was celebrating a medieval festival, so there were many visitors to the city while we were there — probably many from Sweden and Finland as well, so the beautiful people were divided evenly among those countries. The Russians who live in the city were also very much in evidence, in the language and restaurants and architecture of the city. Antiquity cheek-by-jowl with construction, glitzy malls snuggled up against Stalinist cement, Tallinn is a city of contrasts, perfect beauty with stark ugliness, a juxtaposition of quick-paced, modern, progressive and old-fashioned.

And now, we’ll regale you with our plans for this week!

Our next adventure is back on our “home” turf. We’re finally getting a chance to see the Highlands, a trip with the University’s International Club which we’ve been anticipating for weeks. Our itinerary goes like this:

Return from Estonia, dump out the suitcases, sleep, T. frantically finish last hundred pages of revisions, D&T eat all the fruit in the house which has ripened in the three days we have been gone. Wash dishes and repack the suitcases.

Day One: Leave from the University at 9 a.m., and go to Pitlochry, which we’ve enjoyed before. Spend some time in the sun, hopefully resisting the urge to do more pointless shopping (unless they have men’s hats, women’s shoes, or other things on a REALLY good sale) then continue on to Inverness, where we will be staying in a “4-star hostel” — whatever that means — but in our own room, at least (probably with shared bathrooms, but we’ve lived in dorms before…). Check out the Inverness nightlife. Hah, hah.

Day Two: Enjoy the morning walking tour of Inverness, then make our way to the Kingussie Highland Wildlife Park. Take lots and lots of pictures of things that weigh two and three tons and might charge us. Spend the afternoon golfting or at the beach in Nairn, and maybe take in an historic site or two. Return late to Inverness late, and take in more of its pulsating (in terms of crickets and bats echolocating) nightlife.

Day Three: Cruise Loch Ness! Oh, yeah, baby, we’re going to find the lair of the Water Horse and then ride her to the ruins of Urquhart Castle. And then, um, let her go, so we don’t tick her off. We’ll then spend the afternoon in Inveraray, and arrive back at home in time for supper.

Those of you who think we’re living an exotic life, please note: we’re doing this for you, so that when you visit, we’ll be able to steer you to all the best places to see. Of course, we’re really grateful to the University for organizing these kinds of trips — we’d probably never get out to do half of this without a little push from our Chaplain Avril.

Stay tuned for dispatches from the road!

– D & T

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.