Estonian Hospitality

We arrived in Estonia yesterday morning after a pleasantly uneventful overnight boat ride from Stockholm.  We got to see, but not experience, some lightening at a distance...while we were attempting to photograph the moonbeam in the Baltic Sea. 

We spent the afternoon doing the usual Tallinn tourist things: walked all over Old Town (a well-preserved medieval town, complete with walls and cobblestones), and took a bus tour.  We also learned that the weather can go from sunny to torrential downpour in less than 2 minutes....and slow learners that we are, we got to learn this twice (though we had been clever enough to put waterproof jackets in our packs so we stayed relatively dry)!  We also took advantage of the free dinner that our hotel provided, and free chocolate truffles at a local bakery.  Needless to say, it was a fine day.

But today was special!  We'd arranged to meet and go caching with Kaido and his wife Diana who brought along their cute and extremely well-behaved 1-year old daughter. They met us at one of their caches within walking distance of our hotel.  Then we drove a bit out of town to find a couple of relatively new caches together.  It turned out that Kaido had arranged for all of us to visit the owners of those caches -- a married couple: wife from Estonia / husband from Cypress.  They prepared a delicious cake (not unlike a blueberry crisp) that was fresh from the oven!  We had a fun visit and exchanged signature items. Then Kaido and Diana took us to find a few more caches, including at least one that they hadn't yet found. 

We suggested taking them out to lunch so we returned to central Tallinn and we parked at the Defence Ministry.  Then we had a fine lunch in perhaps the most eclectically decorated restaurant we've ever seen....there was quite a variety of, um, dated furniture -- each piece seemed to be different, and quite functional though not exactly interesting.  It was a conglomeration of office-type chairs with utilitarian coffee tables.  Kaido called the furniture "Soviet era" which seemed a quite accurate description, and indeed might also have described the service (two meals arrived at least 10 minutes before the others). Diana is obviously more clever than we are, because we'd intended to treat them but the next thing we knew she'd excused herself to go pay. We did the only thing we could do....smiled politely and thanked them!  Next we walked through old town to a souvenir shop they recommended, only it was closed.  It was nearly 3:00 when we called it a day: we all thanked each other for a wonderful day, shook hands, and went our respective ways.

What a treat to get to meet and spend time with locals....all because of geocaching!