Tallinn is rather small. If you wanted you could see all of the main points in one day. I guess that is why there were so many package day trips. I was tripping over package tourists! I was glad that I had extra time to get to know the city.
After some blogging I headed to Hesburger, Ive grown addicted. I ended up running into Joe there and we went to the Peter the Great Cottage together. Peter the Great was the czar in Russia in the 17th century, he was the first Russian monarch to try and westernize the country. He is also one of the most interesting royals to me.
Peter the Great was insane. He was 6´8 when most men were no talker than 5´4. At one point he wanted to travel around Europe incognito, but brought his retinue with him. His personal guards were called the strelsi, each one had to be taller than he was and then they wore 2 foot tall hats on top of that. Peter was convinced that one of his female relatives was trying to overthrow him. He had her imprisoned and hung his strelsi outside of her window. As their bodies rotted and fell away they were replaced by another one. At one of his parties, that usually turned into orgies, he had an ice castle built for a party of little people. They were forced to sit inside and have dinner as they slowly froze to death. He was insane.
Peter the Great had a cottage built in 1714 during a visit to Tallinn. The building has been highly altered and he would not recognize it today. He would, however, recognize several of his possessions. One of his dining room sets was here, a mini ship, There was a mold of his massive hand. Cathrine the Greats bed was here as well.
In the basement there were historical bits about his life, but I knew most of it already.
After the museum and checking out the nearby park with Joe I went to check out bus times in the morning and he headed off to see a football game.
When I got back to the hostel I watched several movies with the other lazy people sitting around. I didn´t go out though, my bus was too early.
No comments:
Post a Comment