When we were planning our vacation, one of the coolest things we discovered is that it's really easy to take a day trip from Helsinki in Finland over to Tallinn in Estonia. There's a ferry that runs right across the Baltic sea. It takes about two hours, and it only costs $20 per person. 

This was a total no-brainer for us to add to our itinerary, and we're so glad we did. Tallinn ended up being one of our favorite parts of the whole trip. 

We spent our day in Old Town Tallinn, which is the walled part of the city with some of the medieval architecture dating back to the 13th century. 

In some ways it reminded me of the walled city of Quebec, but obviously much older. It was a little bit like being in a fairy tale walking around the cobblestone streets, seeing the old churches, and wandering around the Town Square. 

We started the day in the lower part of Old Town.

We popped into some old churches.

We explored Town Square.

There's an old pharmacy here that is still open and you can check out some of the ancient cures people used back in the day to treat a variety of ailments. 

One of the cooler things we did was climb the city walls and explore some of the museums that had been set up on the old watch towers. The museums covered the historical uses of the towers as well as some of the other medieval history.

There was some eerie stuff like this plague doctor and some of these statues, which I think I heard a tour guide say were faceless monks. 

After descending from the ramparts, we headed into the upper portion of Old Town, which is where the Parliament building sits as well as a massive Russian Orthodox church.

After a day spent exploring, we grabbed a late lunch at a medieval themed restaurant, where we feasted on a massive pork leg.

We just really loved taking in all the architecture in Tallinn, which is so different than anything we see at home. 

The last thing we did in Tallinn was spend some time in a museum dedicated to Estonia's more recent and darker history as part of the Soviet Union. Under Soviet rule, one of the old houses on a main street in Old Town Tallinn had been converted into KGB prison cells. 

Now the basement of the house is open and converted into a small museum where you can see the horrific conditions in which people were held under KGB rule often before being shipped to a gulag.

Our stop in this museum was definitely a heavier part of the trip and a sharp contrast to the enjoyment of taking in the sights at street level. 

We ended our day back on the ferry to Helsinki talking about how we expected nothing else on the trip would top our day in Tallinn.