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A weekend in and around the Old Town gives you time to explore the old centre at a slightly less breathless pace. On your second day, dip a toe into the “new town”, where you will find pre-war architecture and monuments to Estonia’s first hard-won period of independence. If the sun is out, head straight to Pirita beach, by bus or bicycle; energetic types can row, row, row their boats down gentle Pirita River, admiring the proud ruins of St Birgitta convent as they rise above the trees. Still outdoors, take a walk in stately Kadriorg Park, with its simple wooden houses and Peter the Great’s grand summer palace, and get a taste of Estonian peasant life at the cliffside Rocca al Mare open-air museum. A bus ride will take you to Nõmme, a near-rural suburb with pretty painted villas nestling amid the trees; or, in the opposite direction, the compellingly claustrophobic Soviet-era tower blocks of Lasnamäe, home to nearly a third of Tallinn’s population. There’s more communist “nostalgia” at Paldiski, a train ride west of Tallinn, the former Soviet submarine training base, and gateway to the windswept, unspoilt Pakri Peninsula. Cyclists and loners should take a ferry to Naissaar, an idyllic and sparsely populated island where some of the paths seem not to have been trodden for years.
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