We took a trip on top of the city wall. They made us pay to get up there, but it was totally worth it.
This is the spiral staircase we climbed to get to the top of the wall.
My mom was freaking out that you can see the ground through the stairs. She doesn't do well with heights. Little did she know what else she would be doing during the rest of the day.
These stairs were much less scary for her.
This was a little resting spot before going outside.
Here are some pictures from the top of the wall.
I don't know why, but I think this first picture with Spencer yawning is funny!
More wall pictures
Here is where the city walls meet at the city gate. It was really cool! The only thing missing was...well...the gates. :) Not much stopping anyone from entering this city!
Just inside the city gate is what has been deemed the sweater wall. Spencer is sporting a sweet hat that doubles as a scarf!
We then decided to do more climbing and head over to the highest tower in Old Town which is located in St. Olaf's Catholic Church.
It was quite a climb to get to the top of the tower (I guess they didn't really do elevators in the 1500s).
We had to take a breather between spiral staircases when it switched from going clockwise to counterclockwise.
Almost there!
We finally made it to the top!
It was so beautiful! You could see everything in the city.
Not wanting to miss anything, we continued our journey and basically went anywhere we saw something cool.
We saw a random tower on the other side of the congress building that caught our attention and wanted to get a little closer.
I had to lay on the ground to get the whole tower AND Spencer in the picture, but it was worth it.
The Russian Orthodox Church
A random one-legged pigeon that we quite enjoyed seeing in one of the alleys.
We then walked around one of the upper parts of the city and found some other beautiful views. It's such a beautiful city and we loved the time we spent there.
We then had to run back to our apartment to pick up our rental car. You'd think it was supposed to be an easy task - the company drops off the car, you sign the paper, they leave, you have the car until you return it - right? Well, it would have been easy if the right car had shown up. My mom said she wanted a Mazda 3 hatchback, which would have given us enough room for the 4 of us, our 3 suitcases and 2 duffel bags. That's not what came though, it was a little Suzuki with barely enough room for 1 suitcase and 1 duffel bag and about enough leg room for only Spencer in the back. This wasn't going to work, and the poor delivery guy who came to drop off the car was at a loss as to what needed to be done. Finally - after quite a few phone calls a 1997 Volkswagen van was found (which we are now convinced is the owner's family van) and we were just thrilled to have something large enough for us and all our stuff.
So finally we were off on our next adventure... Zone Conference! :) My mission president and his wife were up from Riga for zone conference, which the missionaries have every 6 weeks. It was such perfect timing and we were able to get in touch with them early enough that we were able to plan a night out to dinner with them while we were all in Tallinn. It was so fun to take my family to the church building (which is the only actual church building in all of Estonia) and to see and meet many of the missionaries that are now out here. We were then able to go out to dinner with President and Sister Dance. We went to this great Italian restaurant where we basically put together our own pizza, pasta and salad. I loved it! It was especially delicious to have some good Italian food after our 2 1/2 month break from everything but Ghanaian food.
I wished the dinner could have gone on longer - it was so much fun to sit and visit for such a long time - but alas, they had to get back on the road and we headed back to Old Town, but not before getting a picture.
President Dance, Sister Dance, me and Spencer
We spent only one more night in Tallinn and headed out with our trusty old family van to experience the rest of the Estonia.
No comments:
Post a Comment