A fairy tale, yes.

Tallinn Old Town in the snow was magical. Like wandering round a child’s pop-up story book.

So much so, that after a day or two, I kept wanting to stop people in the street and say, ‘excuse me, but can you tell me where I can find the real Tallinn?’

I didn’t of course.

And it’s not all Sugar Plum Fairy. There’ll be some more realistic stuff on here soon but for now, I’m doing pretty not gritty.

So voila! Here’s Tallinn Old Town. Let’s do the roof tops first. The place is full of them. Well so is any town but you can’t miss these, they’re all over the place in all their gingerbread glory.

I took these from the top of Kiek in de Kok. Kiek in de kok is a simply ginormous fortress built in the 15th century. It means ‘peep in the kitchen’ which is exactly what soldiers used do from that height. Well you can’t blame them, can you? It’d be rude not to.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

See the Lutheran church with the skinny green spire? That’s St Olaf’s Church. The KGB liked to hang out in there, surrounded by radio equipment so they could block the television signals coming in from Finland. And that was only a minor part of their kill-joy activities. More about the KGB later.

Bumper roof-top crop here.

I was taking a peep myself here but couldn’t see inside anybody’s kitchen.

From the roof of the Tallinn Maritime Museum in Fat Margaret’s Tower.

Now for ground level Tallinn Old Town.

It was a delight to take an early (well, earlyish) morning walk, with a belly full of breakfast, kicking through the snow and drinking in the sunshine.

Similarly, it was great to wander round at night through snow-muffled streets. Some of the photos are a bit grainy because they were taken with my phone. Sorry about that.

Right, a couple of street pics and that’ll do for today:

Well I think that’s the Tallinn Old Town Fairy Tale Experience done and dusted with some pretty snow.

If I can find time tomorrow, in between writing short stories and getting up to no good, I’ll flip the experience to the gruesome and show you the photographs from Paterei Prison.