Olde Hansa, heaven on earth.

Have you ever been to Heaven? well, we did. We found heaven in Tallinn and let me tell you that for the three days we were in Tallinn we went there every day. Are you still wondering what is it? …wonder no more, it’s the best restaurant in Tallinn.
Here’s a bit of its history: Olde Hansa was established to honor the Hanseatic League and our forefathers and foremothers. They have dedicated themselves to this task in order to take you on a journey to Tallinn’s golden age. The decoration is all about the medieval times so, no lamps  only candles and everything is made in wood and clay.
Olde Hansa is the home of a rich merchant. His house is built in a manner to increase the enjoyment of the happy moments in the life of a Hanseatic merchant. Not just for eating delicious food and savoring a good drink, but also for the enjoyment of good music and the warmth of hearth and home during the Hanseatic times.

But now lets talk about serious things: the food. Let me warn you, the next photos and descriptions will really give you insanely cravings and probably in less than two hours you’ll be at the airport with a ticket to Tallinn. The first time you go in they’ll give you a little coin, which you should consider your new lucky charm from now on. For each time you go there this little coin gives you a free drink. And yes, it’s alcoholic and good.

 

Then you have a menu (check here what’s on it), and the first day we went then we already ate diner at The Maharaja so we decided to just have a dessert. We decide to order the dessert “Apple and honey under a crispy coat with almond milk” and here’s where heaven comes in…
This has been one of the best thinks I ever eat, and Musa too, she loved it so much she made me go there the next day to eat it again.

I don’t particularly like things with almond but this …this is the only exception. Every bit tastes like unicorns jumping on the cloud. It’s perfect and we recommend 110%.

Do you wanna guest where our last meal was? Yap Olde Hansa. We asked for one mushroom soup, one vegetarian dish, spelt bread (special type of bread they have there, has some seeds), olives and white wine. The wine was sweet and a expensive, it was 8€ just for a glass which wasn’t even full. For dessert do you want to guess again? …ahhh no it wasn’t the Apple dessert, we were so full we decided to order just one rose pudding, that of course tastes like angels singing near a waterfall of rainbow’s. I confess we did pay a lot that evening, but it was worth it, we have no regrets.

 

The beautiful Tallin

We decided to take some photos to show you guys how beautiful is Tallinn, and how it looks like straight out of a fairy tail. It was cold, yes, a lot, but we decided to still go out even snowing like hell, and make the best of it. There’s a lot of churches and some great spots where the view is just awesome.

1- Here is a place we went and it’s called the “Townwall Tower and Walkaway Café“it’s located at Lühike jalg. It’s a breakthrough from Toompea to Danish King’s Garden, and they now have these statues of “Dementors”, at least that’s what we called them since they remind us of Harry Potter movies. We went to the coffee upstairs, and be careful the stair are not very easy to climb so don’t wear hills that day, the tea was extremely expensive, it was 4€ and they didn’t have much to offer, but the view was amazing.

 

2- In the in Freedom Square they have  a big cross since 2009 and it’s called the War of Independence Victory Column. It was built as a memorial for those who fell during the Estonian War of Independence, through which the people of Estonia will be able to commemorate all those who had fought for freedom and independence. The pillar is 23.5m high and consists of 143 glass plates. The memorial incorporates the Cross of Liberty, Estonia’s most distinguished award established in 1919.

 

3- If you go up after visit the Freedom square, you will give to a beatificar garden where we build a snowman. We call it Olavo and took some photos with him. Next we went straight and found our self near a beautiful Cathedral the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Actually the Townwall is right next to this.

Well guys if you still not convinced than I don’t know, but here is some more detail about Tallinn. We love it and I’m certain you will too 🙂

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Eat, drink and eat again

We definitely have a big problem with Indian food. The first day we arrived, we were looking for a place to eat, we were so tired and so cold that we weren’t even picky, we just needed some food. Do you know when in the movies someone is lost in the desert and suddenly see a huge lake fill with water and there’s this song like you just enter into heaven?! yap it was pretty much it when Musa saw the magical world “Indian Food”. Without no second thoughts we went to the Indian Restaurant Maharaja. It was really nice all the decoration and the food. There was a person waiting at the door for us, and escort us to our seat on the second floor. Check it out:

Troika 

This time we decided to try something new, so we went to Troika, which is funny since Troika means the tripartite committee led by the European Commission with the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that organised loans to the governments of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Cyprus. Which is why Portuguese people have no money. Anyway, we went there and they lead us to the basement where the restaurant was. They took our coats and sit us at our table. There were these 3 girls performing a tradition dance from Russia. We decided to eat dumplings, since Musa is vegetarian, she ate the dumplings with cheese, and I decided to try the meat one, which was 3 different meats mixed. Let’s just say that it tasted way better that I expected. We paid: 11€ each, with drinks included.

 

 

Crepes

I was craving, I wanted a Crepe at all costs, so we found this place at the center called “Korralik Hamburguer” and asked for two crepes. Musa wanted a crepe with chocolate and banana, and I wanted one just with chocolate. Don’t ask me how but we ended up with one with chocolate and one with ice cream. We paid like 6€ each, and they didn’t taste like heaven, so it was not really worth it.

Pierre Chocolaterie

If has chocolate in it then must be worth a try. Check the place in TripAdvisor and see why it’s the number one place to go when it comes to desserts. We went there twice, we tried the hot chocolate (the simple one and the one with orange) and again we heard that song from angles singing. It’s a bit expensive, the hot chocolates go around 4€ to 7,5€ and the little pieces of chocolate from 1,80€ to 2,50€. But we do recommend to at least try to go there once. It’s such a beautiful and cozy place that it’s worth the time.

 

 

Tallinn here we go …

Being in Riga is nice, and since it was an amazing location in the Baltic’s we decided to go visit another city. We did even go far from that, we decided to visit another city…in another country. So, we made some research and end up liking Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. And how did we travel? By bus.
We did some research and found this website which for this winter season was the cheaper: Eurolines. You do have other companies like Ecolines and Lux Express, but they are only cheaper during the summer.

 We paid 9,60€ each (already including a student discount – without it was around 10,20€) but they have different prices according different schedules, so it’s a case of luck. Our departure time was at 11:30 am and the arrival at 16:30 pm.

But let’s go back a few hours…
The night before we had to pack everything for the weekend and leave everything ready for the next morning. Everything fine so far, until we decided to go for a drink. We chose a bar called “Cinema bar“, it’s close to our apartment so it was perfect. We bought two 0,5cl beers (Lacplesis) for 2€ each. And the honest reason why we went there was because the 8€ 10 shots, so after the beers we got the shots….and it sucked. Was like drinking juice in shot cups. After that we decided to drink two more beers, and we were 8 cents short, but we decided to try anyway because for 8 cents maybe they would still sell us the beer…cmon just for 8 cents short you would still profit. Guess what? They didn’t. So we bought another two shots, strong ones, and left.
Since we didn’t want to go home yet, we went to the rock cafe and did some karaoke. We sang the classics, “Ain’t no other man” “Hit me baby one more time” and “Milkshake”, and drunk one beer.

The morning after I (Mónica) realized that my charger was broken and my phone died. How that happen? I have no idea. But with no phone, no tickets. We left home, went to the Riga Shopping Center, looked for a charger and an ATM machine. I end up buying a 12€ cable charger and Musa end up with her card being swallowed by the ATM machine.
Then we looked for a place to print the tickets, lucky us they do that at the Shopping Center in a place where you can buy tickets and get information about Riga. I asked to charge my phone a little bit so I could print the tickets. Unlucky us it was 1€ for each 2 sheets, which means 2€ for the 4 sheets.

So at this point, with no card and no spare money, we only had 0,60 cents on our pockets until Tallinn. We rush to the Bus station “Autoosta” because we were running out of time. The bus was 30 minutes late, and we were not even sure that we were at the right place, because no one was able to help us. Not even the people that work there, they were like “oh go ask at some other desk”. Anyway, the bus arrived, it was super comfortable and had WiFi (they even had movies on their webpage witch we decided to see the “Playing for keeps“). The bus had a WC and a plug where we could charge our phones, which for me was almost a life saver. Four hours later we arrived in Tallinn, and catch a Taxi to our Hostel with a total of 10€.

Cilvēki Starptautiskās autoostas autobusu attiešanas vietā.

Old Town Munkenhof, this was our hostel in Tallinn, for three nights we paid a total of 52€. But let’s said that we chose a twin room with a shared bathroom. So if you have the spirit for a dorm it will be way cheaper. We made the reservation through Hostelworld, so we only pay it when we arrived. It was really clean and nice, so the quality/price here was worth it.