Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Saaremaa...Free Day


Monday



The morning showed promise as it was not raining, warm and even breaks in the clouds for the sun to shine through.  After another hearty breakfast we boarded the mini van for the trip into Kuressaare for the day.  

Kuressaare Castle


Neveyana, our guide, took us on a short orientation walk to the castle.  From this point people had several options, some went bike riding, some went to the spa others walked.   We chose to explore the medieval castle.  The outside had a large moat and inside  It was a winding myriad of hallways, stairwells and rooms.  Even with a map we weren't always able to figure out where we were exactly.  The displays were very well done and followed a chronological order except for the 1940s decade.  We finally asked where this part was and a lady took us to a small hallway behind a red curtain!!  We had assumed this was a no- go area because of the curtain but that was not so.

 
Behind the curtain is 1940-1949
 
Steps to the displays had sayings on them from the communist years




The Estonian history is very interesting and disturbing.....it has been fought over and taken over for hundreds of years...Sweden, Finland, Russia German.......the most disturbing is just in the last 100 years....in 1918 -1920 Estonia declared itself an independence country, only to be taken over by Russia again in 1920 to 1940 when the Germans came in during WWII, immediately after the Germans left the Russians came back. In 1988 there was a revolution...a singing revolution, over 300,000 Estonians gathered in the Song Festival Gardens to sing patriotic songs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA9PmZo-2jo&noredirect=1 .....August 23 1989 about 2 million people from all three of the Baltic states joined hands in a chain, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way from Tallin Estonia to Vilnius Lithuania, about 600 km to make a stand against the communist regime. In 1993 the last of the Russian troops left the island of Saaremaa.


Leaving the castle area we walked along along the seawall for a while and then headed off for a cache.  Wandering through a residential area we came to a walking/ running track that is used for cross country skiing in winter.  The cache was in a unique setting, but we found it.  We worked our way back to the  city centre in time for lunch.

 
Structure in the woods...plus mosquitos!



Can you see the cache?


While eating our pancakes, we noticed a small street where vendors had small booths set up.  A beautiful handknit sweater was calling to Pam...it looks great on her!  Took some time to explore a few more streets before picking up some dinner supplies and catching a taxi  back to  the farm.

Time to repack the suitcases in anticipation of the drive to Tallin tomorrow.  Dinner finished, off to check emails and watch part of the soccer game and create the blog, then to bed.

B.C. playground equipment?

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