Christmas in Tallinn

As its our first Christmas away from our families we decided to settle down somewhere for 2 weeks and enjoy a break from traveling. Our apartment is cosy but very white, not good for 2 clumsy fools like us, we'll have to be careful!
After making our mark in the snow by doing snow angels we settle down for the night to watch Christmas films.

Snow angels!

Walking into Tallinn the next day we can see why people love it, lots of pretty (and pointy) buildings. We walk up to the cathedral and around the surrounding area, unfortunately the viewpoints that people rave about are closed for building works, doh! The Christmas market is small and expensive, compared to Riga its a bit poop. They do have reindeer though! We find a medieval bar which is lit only by candles and you can go pickle fishing. We get clay mugs of beer and James goes to kill some pickles. His first attempt brings up a clove of garlic, unfortunately he doesn't realise that it's raw and shoves it in his mouth. He's not allowed to talk to me for the next 5 hours. Finally triumphant in grabbing a pickle he goes back for more in true Oliver! style.

The next day we buy some paper and get busy, the apartment is white and needs some colourful decorations to brighten it up. A full day of making decorations, drinking mulled wine and watching Christmas films, yey Christmas!

Getting creative with paper

Spongebob joins in the festive fun

Trust the science teacher to make decorations that look like planets!

It's getting close to Christmas day and we haven't bought any presents yet. We have read that the Russian market is an experience not to be missed and we're happy we made it down there. Although the first part of it is pretty generic we work our way round a few twists and turns and end up in the real bargain part - Christine snaps up a very cosy woolly hoody for a pound. Its like a boot sale without the cars in this bit, lots of antique shops and bargains. We find the main shopping centre but we're happiest in the second hand shops, weird but wonderful things to buy, especially useful for Christmas shopping on a budget. We wander around the town some more and find Tower Square which is another good viewpoint.

It's the weekend so it's time for a night out. The Depeche Mode bar is a perfect place for us to start, they only play Depeche Mode songs which is fine by us! We stumble around the city sampling a few more hot spots. Unfortunately we get our timings all wrong and miss a cheap prog rock gig at Kodu bar so console ourselves with a local brew. Its 7.9%, murky like tea and makes you walk funny! We still manage to wobble back to our flat, albeit slightly slower than normal!

The next day is one to take it easy... Thank goodness for Christmas films.

Today is Tallinn's Christmas eve (for us it's Christmas eve eve) so we go food shopping, where are all the sprouts?!! You can't have Christmas without sprouts.  We search high and low but no success, even James is disappointed and he doesn't like them! Back at the flat Father Christmas does the weather forecast and seems happy that the sleigh can cope.

How's the weather Father Christmas?

24th December and it's time to start preparing the Christmas dinner. Just as James is cooking his cranberries the gas stove goes out...the canister is empty! We text our host but as its Christmas day here she is out of town and can't do anything today, oh no! Luckily it's an electric oven so at least "turkey" and roast potatoes are still on the menu. We decide we might as well ditch the preparations and get out to complete the task of sprout finding. Three supermarkets later and we are successful, yippee! We celebrate with a few Christmas eve beers In town as is James' tradition.

Christmas day! Whoopee! Still no gas though so we're missing out on our egg and bean breakfast. Nothing's going to get us down today though, we shovel down some muesli and investigate the present pile...it looks like Santa's been (even though we have no chimney) and he even made a stocking for James out of paper and card. Maybe he used up all the wool making Christine's. Despite being away from England we've managed to get ourselves the Raymond Briggs trilogy of The Snowman, Father Christmas and The Snowdog to indulge in today and break up the present opening. Christine gets a bundle of Disney Princess stuff (including two games the same...oops), face paints and earrings. James is well chuffed when he opens some Lego! We're still waiting for gas (will we ever get our Xmas dinner?) so there's time for a quick Skype to Salford and Stortford. Happy Christmas everyone! We finally get to tuck in to our dinner at 6pm but it's worth the wait, and that's according to both of us! Our evening entertainment sees us break out the face paints before we Skype the families again giving everyone a good laugh. Blame that one on the bubbly and Glogg! A first Christmas away for both of us and a very enjoyable one too.

Who needs gas? Baked Camembert, mmm!

The worlds smallest oven and a lack of gas but it's a success!

Elvis gets excited when he opens his presents.

...and so does James!

Facepaints have to be taken seriously you know.

Glogg - very strong mulled wine!

Christine gives James a late present of going out to watch the Boxing Day football today. It's an unfortunate loss for Liverpool so the best thing to do is go for a few consoling drinks. We work our way around a few of our favourites before finding a late night club (described to us as 'the place where parties go to die') which reminds us of Star and Garter in Manchester and make the most of the empty dance floor. The locals must have been waiting for someone to make the first move on the dance floor as pretty soon we're joined by more people getting into the groove. We are just getting our dance moves going when suddenly we're told it's closing...we were told it didn't close until 6am but it's only 3. Poop. I suppose its Christmas hours. Weirdly the flower market is still open, James treats Christine to a rose, awwww. Something tells us that we won't be doing much tomorrow...

Awww a pretty rose, thanks James.

...and we don't! More Christmas films!

We're heading home for New Year and very much looking forward to seeing our families. However flying from Tallinn is too simple (and expensive) for us so we've got a coach booked back to Riga where we've got a nice cheap flight back to Stansted with a warm welcome waiting from James's parents.