retiredmartin

May 2023.

Two nights in Tallinn, then off to Riga. Country/city ticking is as arduous as visiting pubs in the Scottish Highands.

The second night started later than planned, as we returned to our apartment on Sauna to find that, again, the key didn’t work. I rather compounded the problem by pushing the whole lock mechanism onto the floor behind. To his credit, the handyman appeared 15 minutes later, deconstructed the entire door, and had us inside within 25, but we slept with the door open that night.

In the morning we had a stroll to the main long-distance bus station, which Mrs RM insisted was at an address called “Bussijaam”. Google was equally insistent the location was on “Lastedoku”.

The route takes you out past the city walls,

packed with the fresh flowers the locals would be carrying around that evening,

through the ultra-modern office and retail complexes of Kompassi,

and a rare stretch of Soviet looking housing around the central market, where we saw some very dodgy looking characters.

Tallinn would obviously like their central market to undergo a renaissance as startling as that of Riga, but the main sales seemed to be of ladies nighties.

Ah, this is the Bussijaam. “I TOLD you it was Bussijaam !” said Mrs RM, and she was right.

Time for an ultramodern coffee and cake at Cafe Precious, whose owner looks like this;

and whose buns were quite possibly the highlight of the trip.

Back to the ultra-modern Bussijaam for a bit of drama as a passenger who’d overstayed their visa was forcibly removed from the coach, causing a 10 minute delay that we hoped the driver could make up on the four hour trip into Latvia.

But sadly the single lane route south gave little opportunity for bravado overtaking.

And the views of tall trees was relentless.