Baltic Cruise: Day 7 – Tallinn
I didn’t even know Estonia was a real country until we started talking about booking the cruise. It turns out it’s not only real but they have their own currency, language and even strip clubs. The honest truth is that I could have gone my whole life without visiting Tallinn (pronounced similar to talon). It wasn’t that the city itself was a festering cesspool or anything, it just wasn’t that interesting. The upper section of the city is “Old Tallinn” which consists of a bunch of old buildings a few churches with cathedrals. The lower part of the city was more modern with a few skyscrapers and most of the general population. Aside from visiting an amphitheatre, we spent all of our four hours in Tallinn in the upper section. The buildings were interesting in that they’re unlike anything we have in the US, but there was nothing distinguishing about these particular ones. The upper section is situated on the side of a hill so they drop you off up top and you slowly walk down through the shops, old buildings and whatever else is around on your way to the bottom. This would have been a lot more entertaining had the entire section of town not been set up as a tourist destination. A lot of the locals were dressed as what could only be described as peasants, merchants and craftsman. Take a Renaissance Festival from the US, alter the style of clothing a little bit and put in an old European city and there you have it… Old Tallinn. The highlight of the tour was the “Sex Shop” we passed on our way back to the bus. Upon closer inspection I revealed it’s what we would think of in America but rather a strip club with “private stripteases.” Sadly, we didn’t have time to go inside.
Note: This post is part of a series about a recent cruise in the Baltic Sea. They are [being] published in chronological order and if you haven’t read the introduction post I encourage you to do so. (I moved this piece here in case you feed some of the content.)
Back on the ship, things didn’t fare much better for most of the night. We decided to go down to one of the lounges to relax and for some reason the waitress walked by several times without looking in our direction. Then Melissa went to the bar to order drinks and she was asked for ID. Now we’d been on the ship for almost a week at this point and this was the first time having ID has ever come up. Since all you ever have to carry on the ship is your cruise card, she obviously didn’t have ID with her. She sat back down at our table and the waitress walked by two more times without even a passing glance. They’ve always been all too happy to take your drink order, charge it to your room and send you on your merry way but it had been a good twenty minutes and we couldn’t get a drink to save our lives. I finally stopped the waitress and bitched her out for a few minutes about not doing her job very well. Her excuse was that she didn’t want to bother me while I was using my laptop, which it complete bullshit. She should have asked once and if we didn’t want any then left us alone but she didn’t even make eye contact any of the five times she did. We finally got our drinks although we probably drank a bit of dishrag water with them. We actually went back to the same lounge with the entire family later in the evening and she was all over our shit. I guess chewing her out made a difference. Dinner was barely even worth a mention, it was so… average.
The night made a turn for the better come casino time. Fresh from a night off we headed to the casino revitalized. I had no idea what I intended to play but after walking around for a bit realized it wasn’t going to be poker. They use a Poker Player Card that acts as a debit card for playing at the table/machine. I’d forgotten mine back in the room safe, so it was table games for me. After wandering for awhile it looked like the craps table was really starting to pick up. I dropped $40 in chips and bills to get me on my way. I made a bit of money early but a string of bad rolls with not much winning in-between dropped me down to $20. Nearly all of it was sitting on the point (5 maybe?) which hit. I’d nearly tripled my money and things didn’t stop there. There were some craps here and there but a few of the shooters were hitting 4s and 10s, which pay nicely. After about 45 minutes of play, I’d tripled my original $40 and then some. I set aside $100 and decided I would stop when I lost the rest. Two or three craps came up in a row so I knew it was time. I walked away from the table with $104 in chips but I wanted to make it a nice round number. I put $4 down on a $3 limit blackjack hand and won. I took the extra dollar to make it $105 in chips and gave the dealer the other $3. I probably should have played another hand with that $3 but I felt good about my takeaway and wanted to share. I cashed in my winnings and took Mr. Franklin and his friend Lincoln back to sleep in the safe for the night. [Running total: -$140]
Note: This post is part of a series about a recent cruise in the Baltic Sea. They are [being] published in chronological order and if you haven’t read the introduction post I encourage you to do so. (I moved this piece here in case you feed some of the content.)
Back on the ship, things didn’t fare much better for most of the night. We decided to go down to one of the lounges to relax and for some reason the waitress walked by several times without looking in our direction. Then Melissa went to the bar to order drinks and she was asked for ID. Now we’d been on the ship for almost a week at this point and this was the first time having ID has ever come up. Since all you ever have to carry on the ship is your cruise card, she obviously didn’t have ID with her. She sat back down at our table and the waitress walked by two more times without even a passing glance. They’ve always been all too happy to take your drink order, charge it to your room and send you on your merry way but it had been a good twenty minutes and we couldn’t get a drink to save our lives. I finally stopped the waitress and bitched her out for a few minutes about not doing her job very well. Her excuse was that she didn’t want to bother me while I was using my laptop, which it complete bullshit. She should have asked once and if we didn’t want any then left us alone but she didn’t even make eye contact any of the five times she did. We finally got our drinks although we probably drank a bit of dishrag water with them. We actually went back to the same lounge with the entire family later in the evening and she was all over our shit. I guess chewing her out made a difference. Dinner was barely even worth a mention, it was so… average.
The night made a turn for the better come casino time. Fresh from a night off we headed to the casino revitalized. I had no idea what I intended to play but after walking around for a bit realized it wasn’t going to be poker. They use a Poker Player Card that acts as a debit card for playing at the table/machine. I’d forgotten mine back in the room safe, so it was table games for me. After wandering for awhile it looked like the craps table was really starting to pick up. I dropped $40 in chips and bills to get me on my way. I made a bit of money early but a string of bad rolls with not much winning in-between dropped me down to $20. Nearly all of it was sitting on the point (5 maybe?) which hit. I’d nearly tripled my money and things didn’t stop there. There were some craps here and there but a few of the shooters were hitting 4s and 10s, which pay nicely. After about 45 minutes of play, I’d tripled my original $40 and then some. I set aside $100 and decided I would stop when I lost the rest. Two or three craps came up in a row so I knew it was time. I walked away from the table with $104 in chips but I wanted to make it a nice round number. I put $4 down on a $3 limit blackjack hand and won. I took the extra dollar to make it $105 in chips and gave the dealer the other $3. I probably should have played another hand with that $3 but I felt good about my takeaway and wanted to share. I cashed in my winnings and took Mr. Franklin and his friend Lincoln back to sleep in the safe for the night. [Running total: -$140]
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