Tallinn, Estonia: Let the Adventures Begin!

Here's a catch-up blog post for anyone who's been wondering where the Ellis' have disappeared to...

After a very laid-back summer, September has been completely full and is flying by! After Rob finished his internship, we had a few fun trips (pictures to follow on some later posts).

Skipping forward to the present, we flew into London on Sept. 19 and had about 10 days to kill before Rob's school started. We decided to begin our European, year-long adventure with a trip to the Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

On Monday evening we flew into Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. We took a bus into historic "Old Town" Tallinn where all of the cool sites are. By the time we got in it was dark and this was our first real view of the city:
Cool huh?

The Old Town looks a lot like it would have back in the 13th century; stone towers and walls, meandering cobblestone roads, and old churches. A lot of the buildings still standing today were originally built by merchants/cobblers/brewers/etc who were prominent medieval citizens.
We learned about a really interesting part of the Baltic countries' history when we visited the Estonian Museum of Occupation. Estonia only gained its independence in 1918, then at the beginning of World War II was invaded by Soviet Russia, then Nazi Germany, and then again by Soviet Russia (remaining behind the Iron Curtain until 1991). With each wave of occupation, Estonia took a beating (it's tough to be a little guy trapped between two of history's greatest bullies).
People were friendly (and spoke at least a little English), and the food was awesome. My absolute favorite were these huge Estonian pancakes stuffed with either savory meat/cheese or sweet fruit combinations.

Raspberrry and Sweet Milk (aka sweetened condensed milk) Pancakes

We also found a place that served old-school (as in Medieval) Estonian meals complete with Troubadours and medieval costumes.

Mushroom soup with spelt bread; and sausage made of bear, elk, and boar with turnips, sauerkraut, lingonberries, and onion jelly...yum

Since this post is already long enough, if you'd like to see more of our Estonia pictures just take a look at the slideshow below.

Next stop....LATVIA!