The centre of tourist life in the City. Sometimes I felt that all of
Estonia´s 3.2 million annual tourists (yes, two and a half
tourists per year for every inhabitant!) were in the square, so crowded
was it. But the pictures of the Baltica 2004 revellers are in another
page. So I shall start with a panorama of the square as dusk
begins to fall - it was 10.45pm, and most tourists were watching some
football match or other. England against Croatia, I think.
The ¨pronounced red shift is just visible on the town hall
roof. This photo was taken with no exposure compensation, while
the town hall shot (my excuse is that MC wanted a photo showing the
time on the clock) has only 0.7 stops of compensation (and no digital
jiggery-pokery afterwards, either!).
During daylight hours, the basement acts as a museum.
Unfortunately, the EU translation fund hasn't got around to all of
Tallinn's museums yet, and the descriptions were only in Estonian and
Russian. So we photographed the waxworks and passed on.
On the last day, we saw some real people dressed up as mediaeval
merchants:
But the best thing about the Town Hall is undoubtedly the tower.
Again, lots of steps (I didn't count them). But a magnificent
view.
and there are all those 3.2 million people milling around like ants:
A ground level view of the market revealed weird hats for sale:
Though arguably, these were less weird than the hats the traders were
wearing.
and
All these were about to be eclipsed by the costumes of the Baltica 2004
participants.