48 Hours in Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn is the perfect 48 hour city. Back in May 2019 I went to Tallinn for a city break with my sister. With most of holidays I decided on visiting Tallinn due to the beautiful pictures I had seen on Instagram (so basic I know!) So with this plan in mind I headed straight to Expedia to check out what deals were on offer. To my surprise I managed to bag flights and a hotel for £80! Yes I had to endure flying with Ryan Air from Stansted but I can’t resist a cheap 2 night break.

As with most of those cheap city breaks, our flight was at the break of dawn leaving at an eye watering 05:55am. Personally, I don’t mind these early flights as I can catch some z’s on the plane and be ready for great first day in a new city.

My first tip for visiting Tallinn would be to grab a Tallinn Card, we purchased ours from the hotel we were staying at, City Hotel by Unique Hotels who were super helpful with tourist information. They can be purchased throughout the city but also online here. The card cost around €49 for a 48 hour plus card which included a free hop on hop off sightseeing tour which was ideal for us as we used this as transport around the city, but you can also use it to travel for free on all public transport. The free public transport would have been ideal if we were there for one more day as I would have tried to get outside the main tourist area if we had extra time. Also included in the card is free admission to over 40 attractions which we used to enter Kadriorg Palace, KGB Prison Cells and TV Tower.

As we arrived super early we weren’t able to check into our hotel for a couple of hours which wasn’t a problem as it gave us some time to explore the district we were staying in. The hotel was just on the outskirts of the Old Town next to Toompea Castle.

After getting checked in at the hotel, showered and ready for exploring we headed into the Old Town which is just the perfect mix of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The cobbled streets with winding alleyways reminded me of classic Eastern European Old Towns like Krakow and Prague. The quirky colours and architecture reminded me of Copenhagen. Hopefully you can see where I’m coming from with this comparison.

Whilst exploring the Old Town we discovered the best ice cream parlour either of us had ever been to, Gelato Ladies . Hidden down one of the side streets it would have been easy to miss.

Most people I have spoken to about Tallinn are only aware of it because of the DM Baar, fans of Depeche Mode flock to the city to visit the DM Baar. After ice cream I dragged my sister to the bar for ‘just one drink’ which turned into several..

The second day saw us making full use of our Tallinn card, looking back we could have done with the 24 hour card instead as the first day was mostly spent in the Old Town without needing public transport or entrance to attractions. We had breakfast in the hotel which consisted of a continental buffet, my fave! Our first stop was catching the sightseeing bus from Toompea Castle to the TV Tower, as we had such short amount of time left we had to be savvy with our timings on the day. The TV Tower was around 20 minutes from our hotel which would be the furthest we’d travel within Tallinn during this trip. If I’m being completely honest I didn’t really rate the TV Tower, the views offered at the top were nice but if had it not been for the Tallinn Card and free entry to the site I would have been slightly disappointed.

We worked our way backwards from the TV Tower to Kadriorg Palace and Art Museum which was my favourite attraction we went to. I’m a sucker for an art gallery or museum and the fact this one was within an imperial palace was a double bonus for me. Once again access to the attraction was free with the Tallinn Card.

We headed back to the Old Town on the hop on hop off bus and decided it was time for dinner before either of us started to get hangry and ruin the whole trip. We get very aggressive when it comes to hunger, especially my sister. We found Thai Boh the kookiest Thai restaurant I had ever been in. We filled up on Pad Thai and headed back into the Old Town once more, taking a slow stroll towards our hotel. You can’t visit Tallinn without stopping by the beautiful Russian orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

And that was my 48 hours in Tallinn! To summarise (if you’re lazy like me and can’t be arsed to read a whole blog post)

• Old Town

• Kadriorg Palace and Art Museum

• TV Tower

• Toompea Castle

• Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

• Gelato Ladies

• Thai Boh