Rakvere

Tuesday morning, August 10th, we left our luxurious Old Town apartment in Tallinn and jumped on the Estonian highway. Our next destination? RAKVERE!

This town has an old, medieval castle that's been turned into a sort of interactive museum. It is the greatest place!

While here in Estonia on the mission we had a day called "culture day" every three months or so where we had a chance to take the day to visit a place in the country that we otherwise wouldn't get to visit in our regular, everyday missionary work. For my first culture day, when we were trying to decide what it was we wanted to do, one of the elders told us about this awesome castle in a place called Rakvere. It was hands down, the coolest thing we could think of doing. I loved it so much the first time, I didn't even complain (too much) when 6 months later newer missionaries wanted to go there again. I liked it SO much that I was NOT leaving Estonia on this trip without taking my parents and Spencer to see it.

You start off at the gates by decking out in the medieval attire.

There is a very large, open courtyard with all sorts of activities set up for you to try.

This was the first thing Spencer saw

We had to pretend like we were the castle's royalty

And THEN Spencer found his REAL joy... Doesn't he look so happy?

We got to try out some jousting - here I am teaching everyone how it works

We then got to test our balancing skills while smacking each other with these bags. Spencer won this fight... Sad, but true :)

And the race was ON when we came across the stilts.

My dad cut Spencer off, so Spencer tripped him, taking them both down

And Spencer Wins Again!

We all got to take a shot with the bow and arrow, here's my mom getting her aim perfect. The guy kept telling her to pull back farther and farther, but it didn't work and ended up bouncing off the target and falling to the ground.

Spencer got a bonus shot at the end. Here's where all the arrows ended up. Guess which one is mine
Hint: I'm quite proud of my aim

Believe it or not, holding onto your horse and fight with a sword and shield is quite difficult/nearly impossible to do.

The old-fashioned handicrafts were enthralling. My dad loves the blacksmith stuff.

It took a couple tries, but spinning this pottery wheel quickly became second nature for mom. She looks like a natural!

I think this is called a lathe - but it took some serious muscle to get this thing turning. It's amazing they could make beautiful woodwork back then with tools like this.

Dad and Spencer found the swords. Pretty sure that was Spencer's favorite thing about the castle.

LOVE this picture ;)

Dad thought he would put his preaching skills to the test, considering he was wearing something that looked like a priest's robe.

We took a quick trip through "hell" and the torture chamber, where Spencer was placed in the Spanish Violin as a demonstration of one of the old devices of torture. Apparently they would leave people like this for days without food or water. Then they would put food on the violin so they could smell it and not eat it. THAT would definitely be torture!

Exploring the castle was a lot of fun too. There are some really great passageways and tunnels throughout the walls.

We felt like we were finding secret passageways and hideouts with every tunnel and staircase we walked down.

We even found a tunnel for our waste!
And finally, after 2 1/2 hours of playing and exploring in the castle, we found a table and some mugs to have a toast with - something my dad had been wanting to do since the beginning.

When we were done at the castle I had one more place in Rakvere I knew we needed to hit up. The hard part about this was actually finding our way there. I didn't even remember the name of this place. After quite an exhaustive search of the city, we finally found it! This wonderful little cafe is where we stopped to eat on both of our trips to Rakvere when I was here before and I just couldn't leave without eating there again.

I made sure that we got a picture of it this time so that if we ever get the opportunity to come back, I'll at least know what to ask for.

Fairytale Adventures in Tallinn

I waited a long time to make it to Estonia, and now we’re finally here! We didn’t spend much time in Tallin, since I’m not as emotionally attached to it as I am to other places in this country, but this is a gorgeous city! Old Town has a very medieval feel, inclusive of a city gate and city wall.

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.

Travels to Tallinn

Sunday night, August 8th, we said our goodbyes to Uncle Kim and Aunt Pam and continued our journey by catching a ferry from the harbor in Helsinki to Tallinn, ESTONIA!!!
Here we all are on the ferry. It was about an hour and a half journey across the Finland Straight and we killed the time by playing card games on our tiny, cramped airplane trays.

We finally made it!

The sunset was the first to greet us. I was happy to see this and enjoy it for a couple seconds before we got caught in a massive downpour.

We reached the place where we were supposed to check in, and it wasn't until AFTER the taxi had left that we realized our apartment in Old Town was still a 15 minute walk away...in the pouring rain. It was actually quite humorous to see all four of us trekking across cobblestone streets with rolling suitcases (not exactly ideal). It would have been funny to see us without the pouring rain - but we all just had to laugh at the wonderful welcome Estonia decided to give us.
Even Spencer's suitcase, who we have now nicknamed Bertha because of the weight she is forced to carry, was so thrilled to be in Estonia, that she literally buckled under all the excitement. The wheel on the left side has decided to bend outward, making it somewhat difficult to roll around, and if that weren't enough, the whole extendable handle ripped completely out. Like SO:

We now have to drag it around by a nylon strap and pray that it all holds together long enough to make it home to the US. LOVE IT!

We LOVED the place my parents rented in Tallin. It was right there in the center of Old Town.
Here is the town square (Rajakoja Plats).

And just up one of the little alleyways was our apartment.

Rataskaevu, in Estonian, means well - and our apartment was just above this well. It was the most perfect spot!
Mom and Dad at the well.

Apparently this well is the only one in Old Town, and every 20 minutes or so a massive group of tourists would come through with their guide to see it and take all sorts of pictures. We figured we should probably join in the tourism fad and take a picture of it since we were staying there by it.
Spencer and me

My parents loved the staircase that led up to our apartment. It all just seemed so fitting being in such a "fairytale land" (as my mom said) to walk up a wooden, spiral staircase like this. Spencer especially loved heaving Bertha and the other suitcases up these shallow stairs.

So our adventures in Estonia began. I never lived in Tallinn while I was a missionary here, so seeing everything was almost as new for me as it was for Spencer and my parents. I loved Tallinn, and I will always be struck by the beauty of Old Town there. I couldn't get enough of it.

Here's a picture of the city from one of the upper walls - It really does feel like you've walked into a fairytale. So in order for us to give a full accounting of this beautiful city, we are going to finish our adventures in Tallinn in another post with LOTS of pictures. I love pictures, so it's going to be fun!