Monasteries and Beaches
Trip Start
Jul 04, 2005
1
13
37
Trip End
Jul 18, 2005
Tallinn,
Estonia
Thursday, July 7, 2005
After all the lazy hanging-around-in-Tallinn-and-just-meeting-friends I decided to head down to Pirita, famous for the ruines of a monastery and its beach.
From Tallinn centre it's supposed to be a short walk (half an hour) and when you look from the the City Walls over the bay towards Pirita you tend to agree. So off i went, enjoying the lovely weather.
oh, by the way, i have been receiving lots of mails asking about the weather. I don't want to make anybody jealous (especially the folks back home in Belgium and Germany) but since leaving Belgium on Monday I haven't had one drop of rain
Alexander Nehvsky Cathedral
. The sun has been shining all the time. It has constantly been more than 20 degrees. And it looks like it is going to stay like that... So, after walking for about one hour, i reach Pirita Beach. But the monastery is still far away. When I ask somebody about it, they tell me "15 minutes" but when I ask again half an hour later, I get the same reply. Of course I am also to blame, as I took a lot of pictures of the wonderful birds that live along the coast. I guess that slowed me down.
In the end, it took me more than 2 hours to find the monastery, but it was worth the walk : the ruins and the churchyard are impressive and there are almost no tourists. A big contrast to the swarms of cruise tourists who come into Tallinn as flies to only leave a couple of hours later.
When I was walking back and relaxing on the beach, I got a call from Matthew, a friend from Australia who was also in this part of Europe. He was waiting for me near the Town Hall, so I headed back to town.
To my surprise he was not alone: Satoshi, a Japanese fellow HC traveller whom I had met in Brussels was also there, and Pascal, who had contacted me a day earlier. Together we went for a picnic in the park, where we observed how Russians tried to sell Communist memorabilia at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (Tsee Tsee Tsee Pee pins, only 5 dollars! or 2 Rubels, only 5 Evros!
Then I had to go back to Anneli's place to pick up my bags and got another healthy meal with fish and potatoes, and I took my backpack to meet my next host, Anna. She called me she would be a bit late, so first I met up with the guys I already knew from HC and some others, like Kadi whom I had met before in Holland and Natalia whom I knew from e-mail.
Afterwards Anna picked me up and I met her husband Vladimir again. It was really nice meeting them again, they hadn't changed a bit since last year, only a bit more slender maybe since they became vegetarians.
I helped Anna to water her plants, we had spaghetti and a glass of wine, and I slept like a rose.
