Jalametsa

Huge respect for this city!
It has literally crawled out of Russian domination for the last 50 years and turned itself around to become independent and the most digital city in the world!

We opted for the Medieval experience tour and visited the town of Rakvere to explore a 13th century castle.

They had us drinking Estonian vodka at 11h00 and then made us take a "road to hell" walk in the dungeon which, back in medieval times, was used to torture people!

Lunch was a medieval simple meal and when the noon day gun went off we shat ourselves when we realised we were only 100km away from Russia!

Made some new friends as you can see 🤣

But the prize for the after effects of the shitest vodka we've tasted goes to Karl for attempting to walk on medieval pole sticks 🤣 Gotta love this guy 🤟

The old city is BEAUTIFUL with its cobbled stones and quaint buildings, steeped in history.

But seriously, the Estonian countryside was beautiful! There are only 1.3M people. You get to see both the modern city as well as remnants of the Russian oppression.

In Winter, its worse temperature recorded is minus 30 degrees!

They hold song festivals every 5 years in their beautiful stadium. Public transport and education is free and their economy is saved by oil shale mines which heat power stations.

It's also the least religious country in Europe.

They export paper and timber and their agricultural produce can feed the whole country. There is only a 5% unemployment rate and the average monthly salary is 1700 euros per month.

Most poignantly, they have opened their borders to 55,000 Ukrainian refugees.

Back at the ship we had an unbelievable seafood meal at a specialty restaurant called Palomar and tried a new wine produced by Jon Bon Jovi and his son!Read more