We take a bus from St. Petersburg and cross the Estonian border and arrive in Tallinn, its capital city. As we enlist the assistance of a local Estonian to make our way to our hostel in the old town, we are thrilled to find out that many of the locals (especially the youths) speak English. After over a month in Russia and China, this is a very good thing.
Being in the old town of Tallinn is like being in a dream and waking up as Cinderella. It is a perfect little medieval town surrounded by an old wall, with cobbled streets and pretty pastel coloured buildings with a large clock tower in the town centre. Many of the people working in the restaurants even dress in medieval styled clothing, adding to the 14th century feel. We spend 3 nights in Tallinn, exploring the old town before commencing an 8 day bike tour through Estonia. We had booked a self-guided 470 km bike tour through the western islands of Estonia where each day we would be riding according to a set itinerary with all of our accommodations pre booked.
Just as we never fully thought out what it would be like to sleep on a train for 4 nights, we also hadn’t fully considered what it would be like to bike 470 km for 8 days after doing virtually no exercise for almost 2 months. The first day is gruelling. It is a 60 km bike ride and thinking that it will take us around 3 hours to get to our destination, we leave Tallinn late in the day. Not anticipating going against a strong wind for the entire trip or following directions that are completely wrong, we find ourselves travelling at slower than walking speed for parts of our journey and in the middle of our ride, finding ourselves in rural Estonia asking a farmer’s wife for directions (contrary to my previous comment, rural Estonians do not speak English and after a lot of pointing and hand gesturing, we proceed down a dirt path in the direction we hope will get us to a main road). With only 10 km left on our first day, quads burning, we end up sitting in the middle of a road for 30 minutes (without one car passing us) before setting off and getting to our accommodations at past 9 pm at night. Thank goodness for being in a country where daylight lasts until 11 pm.
The next day, our legs and knees aching, me and Vic look at each other and again ask, did we really agree to sign up to bike 60 km a day for 8 days straight? But fortunately, our toughest day end up being that first day. We learn not to rely on the maps that we are given and use google maps instead (Estonia is the only country in the world that has free wi fi EVERYWHERE) and as the wind turns in our favour, we find our bike rides getting progressively easier as we complete one of our days in only 3 hours.
With the exception of day 3 where it rains, the rest of our rides consist of sunny days, biking on lovely country roads, music pumping in our ears, picnic lunches and the world at our feet.
