Oct 8 / Administrator

September/October 2019 – Helsinki, Tallinn, and Riga

Earlier in the year when Annie was looking at holidays we might enjoy she came across a week long trip to three capital cities Helsinki, Tallinn and Riga. We had both agreed it was a great opportunity to basically combine three city breaks into one holiday and indeed it was.

Our first city was Helsinki. We had a guided tour which took in some amazing and beautiful buildings ranging from the national museum, shown here, to the cathedral standing high in the old part of town. We also saw some very modern buildings and although very different architecturally, blended well.
.
.
We visited the Cathedral early in the morning and were blessed by a lack of tourists.
It made such a difference.
.

We also visited the monument to Sibelius and the Rock Church. The church had been hewn out of rock, was essentially circular and had a copper dome roof – it also had a nice set of organ pipes! That said, we both felt it more of a tourist attraction than a church.

We strolled around the promenade and saw both tall ships and a fleet of 10 icebreakers as well as the international ferries and cruise ships. The ice breakers were fascinating – Finnish companies have designed 80% and built 60% of all the icebreakers (circa 150) in operation throughout the world.

We took a short ferry ride from Helsinki to the island fortress of Suomenlinna. Apart from some cannon, it did not impress as a fortress. However, Suomenlinna did have an amazing and working dry dock that fills up with boats as the winter approaches.

After a brilliant three days in Helsinki we caught the ferry for the two hour crossing to Estonia and the city of Tallin. We had a guided tour of the old town and were impressed by the beautiful buildings and views.

The picture on the left shows the area of The Danish King’s Garden which also contained a couple of statues of faceless monks – they were very effective.
.
One of the most stunning buildings was the Orthodox Cathedral

We enjoyed an organised visit to the Kadriorg Palace located in parkland some 2 miles from Old Town Tallinn. Parts of the parkland were made quite beautiful by the trees’ autumn colours. The interior of the palace contained many beautiful paintings and frescos and was beautifully decorated. However, it was the exterior of the building and the manicured gardens and fountains that really impressed. A visit to the Kadriorg Palace is a must if you ever visit Tallinn.

We left Tallinn by coach heading for Riga via the Estonian university town of Tartu where we had a couple of hours to wander around. We walked through a lovely park beside the river and enjoyed a picnic lunch near two human statues. One was of a young girl running and the other of a life sized man sitting on a park bench.
We walked into the area near the very beautiful Town Hall and were amazed to find a fountain with bright green water.

The “Kissing Students” sculpture and fountain is one of the most recognised symbols of Tartu. A fountain has stood in the same place since 1948, when newlyweds and their guests would visit it for luck, and people would also take a dip in it. The sculpture itself was completed in 1998.

The final stop on our week long trip was Riga the capital of Latvia.
Once again we were treated to a walking tour of the Old town which was filled with beautifully clean and impressive buildings but was hard on the feet as the streets were quite large cobble stones.
We also learned to look up at the tops of buildings!
Two examples of some amazing figures we saw are shown below,

Two other interesting, if slightly less beautiful, sights on our trip to Riga were the Freedom Monument dating from 1935 and commemorating the Latvian War of Independence which lasted from 1918 to 1920 and the Latvian Academy of Sciences nicknamed Stalin’s birthday cake.

Riga was certainly a beautiful city but the Art Nouveau District was breath-taking. The pictures below show some of the quite amazing building facades.