Sunday, June 10th

Unusually for a Dungroamin trip, we all assembled at the same airport to travel out to this year’s destination, Tallinn in Estonia. Estonia is quite a small country located on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. The capital, Tallinn, is the oldest capital city in northern Europe and the Old Town is in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

In good Dungroamin tradition we didn’t manage to meet up at the same meeting point at Stansted and subsequently stumbled upon each other by chance. However we did all manage to make the plane and arrived safely in Tallinn for our weekend exploring the area.

We had discovered that for 2 Euros there was a bus from the airport which would drop us right outside our hotel. We clambered on the bus together with all our suitcases, which with ten of us rather filled it up – standing room only for some.

Of course the main problem once you are on a bus, is knowing when to get off. But we were not worried as we had supplied ourselves with copious supplies of the timetable which indicted the route; Jerry had picked his up at the airport, Brian on the bus and Barbara from the web before we had left home. So we were all agreed, it was seventh stop..............no the ninth stop .........or maybe the twelth stop.

The debate continued for some time until we discovered we had three different versions of the time table which seemed to suggest the route changed quite a lot. I can’t remember how we decided which was the right stop, but it might have been that we had passed seven and nine so got off at twelve.

We clambered off the bus with our all luggage and looked around. Where was the hotel? Here the bus driver indicated that we had to go around the corner where we found the hotel – 4**** – is this really a Dungroamin Holiday?

We carefully selected a well recommended restaurant in the old town for our first evening meal. After finding it in a none too inviting building, we discovered that it was closed on Sundays. As we looked around for somewhere else, a brewery that served food took our eye (as it would). They had space downstairs in what turned out to be a reasonably attractive cellar.

It turned out they brewed three beers – Honey Beer (with honey), Special Pilsner (also with honey) and Velvet (with not quite as much honey)! I am not sure if the beers were for drinking with the meal or to have as a sweet. And unusually we struggled downing many.

Fiona had a bad night as every dish she picked was the last to be served.

Nevertheless, fully sated we wandered back to the hotel.