Europe By Camper - Travelling Europe By Motorhome: Estonia

Estonia in a Motorhome - Our Summary

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We've been in Estonia 10 days and have travelled 634 miles so while we're hardly qualified to write a book on the place I think we can just about muster up enough credibility to write a blog post on it.<br />
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We entered via Tallinn from Helsinki on a Viking Line Ferry, a two hour crossing costing £89 for our 6m van booked 3 days prior. The ship itself is like a cruise liner, with a self service buffet serving everything you can imagine for 89c per 100g (they weigh your plate at the till!) or a huge well stocked duty free shop not to mention the free on-board Wifi.<br />
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You can read all of our blogs from Estonia by clicking here:<br />
<a href="http://www.europebycamper.com/search/label/Estonia">http://www.europebycamper.com/search/label/Estonia</a><br />
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<b>Our Five reasons you should visit Estonia:</b><br />
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<b>1.)</b> <b>The vast majority of roads are excellent</b> and are obviously in receipt of a great deal of EU investment as proclaimed by the road signs at the beginning of every new patch of tarmac. I suspect if you read an account of Estonia 12 months ago things will have vastly improved since then and the only poor roads we drove across were ones currently being replaced. Granted, there are some 'gravel tracks' but these are on par with what you find off the main roads in Sweden and Finland but you'd expect that for a country of it's size.<br />
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<b>2.) The whole country is excellent value </b>especially compared with Scandanvia. Diesel is £1.05 a litre (July 2011) and you can have a meal outside of Tallinn for about £6 for a main course and £1.50 or less for a 500ml beer or large glass of wine. Furthermore, supermarkets are not only incredibly cheap but stock a huge range of foods of a quality that seriously rivalled our shopping experience for the past three months. You know all those perfect apples in Tesco, well the Estonian's have the wonky ones that taste just as good at a fraction of the cost! 500g meat (chicken, beef, pork) about £2.50. Bottle of beer about 70c. We even saw imported Baked Beans cheaper than home! If you visited Stockmann in Stockholm (massive Selfridge-esque department store) do so in Tallinn, prices are about half for all but the top branded western products and the selection of beer and wine on offer will blow your mind especially after a beer deprived tour of Scandinavia!<br />
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<b>3.)</b> Estonia, with the exception of Tallinn and it's Baltic Cruise Liners that dock here, appears on the face of it <b>relatively unexplored </b>by all but the Finns for whom it is on their doorstep. The tourist information is extensive (thanks again to EU funding) and I made a point of asking how many English the agents had seen - the answer is very few! Entrance fee's, if applicable, are often under £4 per person.<br />
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<b>4.) Estonia is changing, fast!</b><b> </b>Many of the places that would be tarted up as major pay to enter destinations are still awaiting investment in a very authentic and still visitable state.If you fancy seeing some Soviet history as it has been left now is the time. Sillamäe for example was a Uranium mining complex and a closed town that did not exist on any official maps, today it stands with large boards awaiting EU investment to turn it into a major tourist attraction into the Soviet era. <br />
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<b>5.) </b>If Wild Camping is not your thing (and we managed it every night) <b>there is a network of excellent value 'camping areas' </b>which are not fully fledged sites but camping grounds that are willing and able accommodate motor homes  for a fee of between €7 and €10 a night. Some of those are listed <a href="http://en.camping.info/estonia/campsites">here</a> but you can see many on the most popular routes. Not accept full facilities, but do expect excellent local hospitality, produce and warm greeting.<br />
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We really enjoyed our time in Estonia and will continue to blog as we travel south through the remainder of the Baltic States, Latvia and Lithuania.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Click <a href="http://www.europebycamper.com/p/wild-camping-gps-poi.html">here</a> for our Wild Camping POI's.</span></div>
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Estonia in a Motorhome - Our Summary

We've been in Estonia 10 days and have travelled 634 miles so while we're hardly qualified to write a book on the place I think w...

Parnu

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 We found somewhere to park up for free next to the river (GPS: 58.38767
  24.49373) and found some shade to watch what turned out to be some sort of speed boat race on the river although I can find no mention of it online.<br />
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We failed to mention on our last blog post that we visited a rose garden on our way out of Poltsamaa which had a collection of 900 different rose varieties which are in bloom from mid June to September. The entrance fee cost just under 2 euro each to visit - here are a couple of photos from our album. </div>
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We sat and planned our route through Latvia as well as writing a sort of summary to Estonia, you'll see in the next post!</div>

Parnu

After visiting the observation tower near Haaja we decided we wanted to go back up the west coast of Estonia to visit Parnu before entering ...

Sillamae, Narva & Tartu

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Estonia is so far living up to all our expectations and it is clear from the offset that the country has benefited from substantial EU investment - and I say that not in a cynical way but there are signs everywhere proclaiming that fact! The majority of roads we've driven on so far have been excellent with the lesser ones currently undergoing major improvements.<br />
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We drove from Tallinn across the top, stopping at the Lahemaa National Park to take in a seven mile walk (about eight with de-tours!) to see the boulders in the sea and some of the abandoned soviet military buildings who's construction is dated as recently as 1985 are reminders that Estonia only declared it's independence 21 years ago.<br />
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Spending a night in the park, we carried on to Narva stopping on the way at Sillamae, a fascinating town with a dark history in the extraction of uranium for Russian nuclear programs. The town itself was off limits and didn't exist on any maps, the plant is still visible on the skyline with many of the original buildings derelict it is clear that they are gearing up for the area to be a tourist attraction in years to come.<br />
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We did a 'big shop' since we had let the cupboards run down when touring Scandinavia, we did a big shop which came to £30 including several KG of meat and several liters of beer. We're starting to like this place!<br />
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From Narva we peared back across the impressive castle on the Russian border at Ivangorod Castle dating back to 1400's and at the stern looking border guards inspecting vehicles arriving back in Estonia from Russia.<br />
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Today we find ourselves in Tartu a pleasant town with a vast choice of places to eat at incredibly minimal prices - beer from €1 and main courses from just €5. Despite having done a big shop we stopped out for tea and was able to have three courses and two rounds of drinks for €30 which could have been less had we plumped for one of the cheaper restaurants but the ones in the sun had a bit of a monopoly.<br />
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<br />
The weather has been incredibly hot and humid especially overnight, we're looking forward to the predicted downpours in the days to come to clear the air a bit!<br />
<br />
Overnight Location GPS: (58.37936, 26.72834) - Tartu - small
  carpark close to the town centre near the river. Other motorhomes joined us.
  Free between 6pm and 8am or 1 euro an hour after that. Cheaper day parking
  can be found close by.</div>

Sillamae, Narva & Tartu

Estonia is so far living up to all our expectations and it is clear from the offset that the country has benefited from substantial EU inve...

Tallinn

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Our crossing over to Tallinn was uneventful and the duty free shop was 'expensive' compared to our trip over to Russia. It was obvious that the Fin's onboard were taking advantage of the food and drink on offer starting their cheap weekend in Tallinn, it was a Friday sailing after all.<br />
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After we disembarked we set about refilling our twin 22L gas tanks as we hadn't filled up for over a month at this point. The three LPG stations we had listed for Tallinn no longer existed and by pure chance while navigating some road works we saw a sign for 'GAAS' which turned out to be LPG. Disappointingly we only managed 32L meaning we still had 12L spare but at least it was one thing off our mind.<br />
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We then set about finding somewhere to park.<b><span style="color: red;"> ** Please note and read the comments at the bottom of this post, more recent visitors suggest that this location is no longer safe for parking or overnight ** </span></b>It is evident that Tallinn has been earmarked as up and coming and Europe's land speculators (Euro Carparks amung others) have been busy buying strips of land and turning them into carparks meaning a great deal of choice. Around the ports you can park for as little as €1 a day but the area is just wasteland with a healthy traffic of people leaving to depart on ship it's not an ideal location for the van. We settled on an unmarked Car Park suitable for all vans just a stones throw from the Old Town and €6/day (GPS: 59.44208, 24.74280) and have been Wild Camping here for two days without issue, you might be able to find cheaper but to be honest we've not paid for parking in over a month so a few euro's to park in a capital seems small change.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqGGg91cjxqGwcwLFaag36WOSguauRdveoR8Lril3bO56WSJZqZUXv82D3yKHvZi7idZubKYoe_D_3lbl_Dggi7noXJaQS_vK5tRL_BWSGMSqWQxvssXo1aaZpQZKePzegHEDzG4qYqBU/s1600/IMG_8057_8_9_fused.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqGGg91cjxqGwcwLFaag36WOSguauRdveoR8Lril3bO56WSJZqZUXv82D3yKHvZi7idZubKYoe_D_3lbl_Dggi7noXJaQS_vK5tRL_BWSGMSqWQxvssXo1aaZpQZKePzegHEDzG4qYqBU/s200/IMG_8057_8_9_fused.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE-BeOdtIyQVaQ_IHcoECFi-rUaK3PmZY_74B_hue8jLQ3Hpg2yXRI17pnHoDbePfCh_h_6ZYMLOdRBetp_EbDIMobrcfHhkFtMkKWJoyp2OTQcib1uNHhzYlIJHQcYlYaVoehHITGyOQ/s1600/Tallinn_Towers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE-BeOdtIyQVaQ_IHcoECFi-rUaK3PmZY_74B_hue8jLQ3Hpg2yXRI17pnHoDbePfCh_h_6ZYMLOdRBetp_EbDIMobrcfHhkFtMkKWJoyp2OTQcib1uNHhzYlIJHQcYlYaVoehHITGyOQ/s200/Tallinn_Towers.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq2ptJ9JImSe9zK1w_HrMGGy3fEaslCQJzNdVtucJr1tbA6z6o4IQJ6oKU31ybHQh33TJZd0cJZejA6dtIX4FWGFhgUJKMDWbsOk7g_EwvGFXOQpElpXEuEeKomxUNVe_-3E5AvAgji5k/s1600/IMG_8074.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq2ptJ9JImSe9zK1w_HrMGGy3fEaslCQJzNdVtucJr1tbA6z6o4IQJ6oKU31ybHQh33TJZd0cJZejA6dtIX4FWGFhgUJKMDWbsOk7g_EwvGFXOQpElpXEuEeKomxUNVe_-3E5AvAgji5k/s200/IMG_8074.JPG" width="200" /></a>The Old Town has lived up to our expectations with it's cobbled streets and views from the spires accessible by narrow steps. Prices are modest, although no doubt increased since the take up of the Euro. Once again Cruise Ships unload hundreds of passengers on the city by day so if you're looking to eat look to do so one an evening when most of them have gone back. There is a wide selection of reasonably priced food on offer, but quality varies greatly and we're not fond of having an usher a-la holiday resort hell pushing us in. In the end we settled for Kaerajaan offering 'Modern Estonian Cuisine' - great value and excellent food.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcYUzoXVCcFBjtoLjLi83bCJHG64nfauI8byC9hRzv33zVc7RtUM_fvppkDHczEpVxGFPV1__J4irHgMG2ZXgSF0PsonEElqszGrRagdgF_6a0oqbgUQG8ofP5J0W90PD5BBnktwtqvsE/s1600/IMG_8018.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcYUzoXVCcFBjtoLjLi83bCJHG64nfauI8byC9hRzv33zVc7RtUM_fvppkDHczEpVxGFPV1__J4irHgMG2ZXgSF0PsonEElqszGrRagdgF_6a0oqbgUQG8ofP5J0W90PD5BBnktwtqvsE/s200/IMG_8018.JPG" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH6D5CY90ahAzrZ4JQcFGamxnOgyauQcJ3TGCf3nRmMPdouTll0wYK7Rq5Ng3DzN1lLlGy_Pjd9r6sYhgOGEpT5OKtgE6xnCiDOk6bl6d3H9wHvXpaiJ-a1Agp00-rQGy5-pT5Mxodxgw/s1600/Towers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH6D5CY90ahAzrZ4JQcFGamxnOgyauQcJ3TGCf3nRmMPdouTll0wYK7Rq5Ng3DzN1lLlGy_Pjd9r6sYhgOGEpT5OKtgE6xnCiDOk6bl6d3H9wHvXpaiJ-a1Agp00-rQGy5-pT5Mxodxgw/s200/Towers.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
I was worried when I saw the amount of Duty Free the Estonian's had loaded up, but I shouldn't have worried - 500ml bottle of Larger is 90c in a shop so bound to be a bit cheaper at a Supermarket and diesel is now down to £1.10 a litre.<br />
<br />
Tomorrow we have a mammoth launderette session lined up - I think nearly everything we own needs washing and we have a months worth of clothes packed up!</div>

Tallinn

Our crossing over to Tallinn was uneventful and the duty free shop was 'expensive' compared to our trip over to Russia. It was obvi...

LPG / Autogas in Tallinn Estonia - POI/GPS

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If you are looking for LPG (Autogas / Gaas) in Tallinn after arriving via the ferry from Finland where there is NO LPG you might be frustrated to find many of the publically listed LPG stations have now closed. We did manage to fill up when we stumbled upon a newly opened automated station by pure chance.<br />
<br />
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<b>GPS Coordinates </b> 59.41771 N, 24.75442 E </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=59.41771+N,+24.75442+E&hl=en&ll=59.417924,24.754257&spn=0.046114,0.113297&sll=55.378051,-3.435973&sspn=54.238634,116.015625&gl=uk&t=h&z=13">(View in Google Maps)</a></div>
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The station is Automatic and the LPG despite being unnamed is Number 3. You use the pre-pay station to pay and select your maximum amount for pre-authorisation. It doesn't matter if you don't use all of the amount you have selected, you will only be charged for the actual gas you take. A receipt is available.<br />
<br />
This station along with some others is listed on this website, which might be more accurate - I cannot verify the existence of any of the other stations however:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.autogaasservis.ee/doc/Autogaasi%20tanklad%20Eestis.html">http://www.autogaasservis.ee/doc/Autogaasi%20tanklad%20Eestis.html</a></div>

LPG / Autogas in Tallinn Estonia - POI/GPS

If you are looking for LPG (Autogas / Gaas) in Tallinn after arriving via the ferry from Finland where there is NO LPG you might be frustra...

Estonia in a Motorhome - Our Summary

Parnu

Sillamae, Narva & Tartu

Tallinn

LPG / Autogas in Tallinn Estonia - POI/GPS

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