Two awkward joins are the reason to reserve a ten night trip through Estonia's small towns
Ten nights, five beds, about 700 km of driving, and one admission at the top: you could arrange most of this yourself. The beds take online reservations in English and the buses sell tickets to anyone. You reserve a ten night trip through Estonia's small towns for the two joins that are genuinely awkward.
- Starting figure, per person
$2,560
- Nights
- 10
- beds you will learn
- 5
- Country
- Estonia
- How much of this you could arrange without us
- you could arrange most of it yourself
Confirmed as a final figure once the supplier holds the dates. Getting to the country is not included.
- Whatever is agreed comes back to you in writing from the supplier, before any money moves.
- No card is asked for on this site and none is stored: the supplier takes payment on its own terms.
- A request sent through the form is answered in writing within one working day.
What you could do without us
Start with the number this catalog is sorted on. You could arrange most of this yourself, and we would rather say it here than let you find it out afterwards. All five beds take online reservations in English. The national timetable sells single bus and train tickets to anyone with a card, at a counter or on a phone. None of the museums on this route needs a slot reserved in advance. If you are the sort who enjoys an evening with a map, a calendar and a timetable, you will end up with something close to what we would have sent you, for close to the same money.
Two things are left over. The first is Lahemaa without a car, which is covered further down and is the reason most people write to us at all. The second is the last week of July in Viljandi, when the town's small stock of rooms is spoken for months ahead and the arrangements are made by telephone in Estonian rather than by web form. If neither of those bothers you, reserve it yourself. We will still answer a question by email if the middle of the route defeats you.
The shape of the ten nights
Tallinn, two nights. Kasmu on the Lahemaa coast, two nights. Narva, two. Tartu, three. Viljandi, one, and back to Tallinn on the morning of the eleventh day for whatever flight you bought yourself.
Distances are small and the roads are empty by American standards. Tallinn to Kasmu is about 85 km and takes an hour and a quarter. Kasmu to Narva is 170 km on a two lane trunk road with long straight sections through pine forest. Narva to Tartu is 190 km and no train runs it directly; the bus takes a little under three hours. Tartu to Viljandi is 80 km, an hour. Viljandi back to Tallinn is 160 km, about two hours and a quarter by bus. Roughly 700 km in total, spread across five short mornings.
What the days actually consist of: two on foot in the limestone old town of Tallinn; one bog and one boulder coast at Lahemaa; one in Narva at the castle keep and the disused brick textile mill of 1857, which covers more ground than the town center does; three in Tartu, split between the university hill, the cathedral ruins and the national museum built out on an old airfield in a hall 355 meters long; one at Viljandi between the lake and the earthworks of the castle.
Underfoot across the ten days
Estonia is flat. The high point of the whole country is 318 m and it is nowhere near this route. What you walk on is three surfaces. Tallinn's old town is cobble laid on a slope, and the climb from the lower town up to the Toompea escarpment is about 24 vertical meters of it, which a bad knee will report on within the hour. Lahemaa is boardwalk and sand: the bog loop is 3.5 km of planks over peat pools with a wooden tower at the halfway point, and the shore at Kasmu is a field of glacial erratics, one of them about seven meters high. Tartu and Viljandi are ordinary pavement with two short hills.
Weather, plainly. June and July give daytime figures of 20 to 22 degrees, sea temperatures near 17, and light that never quite goes, with usable dusk past 23:00. September gives 14 to 16 degrees and something like a dozen wet days in the month. We do not sell this one in December: the sun is up for about six hours, and several of the manor cafes and small museums close from October, or drop to Wednesday to Sunday, 11:00 to 17:00.
The five beds, and what the price covers
From $2,560 per person. That is ten nights in five places, doubles with a private bathroom throughout, breakfast at three of the five, and a small hire car for six of the ten days, collected and dropped in Tallinn.
The rooms are the kind of thing these towns actually have. A converted captain's house at Kasmu with seven rooms and a staircase no lift will ever reach. A 1930s building in Tartu five minutes from the town hall square. A plain modern hotel in Narva, because that is what Narva has and pretending otherwise would waste your evening.
Not in the price: food, museum entries, fuel, and the flights, which are yours. Reckon on 12 to 20 euros for a main course outside Tallinn and 6 to 14 euros a head at museums. Figures move with the season and with how far ahead we ask, so the number on your confirmation is the one that counts and this one is only an indication.
No money passes through this office. Each bed and the car are billed to you by the business that supplies them, in euros, under its own terms, and our end is settled from their side once you are home.
Five sets of keys, and the traveler who will resent them
It suits people who would rather see five towns than sit in one, who can carry a bag up two flights without a lift, and who are content to eat at 19:00, because a good many kitchens outside Tallinn and Tartu stop taking orders at 20:00 or 21:00. It suits anyone who wants a Sunday with nothing in it. Small Estonian towns on a Sunday are still in a way that is either the whole point or the whole problem, and only you know which.
It does not suit anyone who wants to unpack once. Five beds in ten nights means five arrivals, five sets of keys, and five mornings when you are out of the room by 11:00. It does not suit a traveler who needs a lift in every building, or a pool, or a late kitchen, or anything resembling nightlife outside the two university towns. It does not suit a child who dislikes being in a car, because the driving is short but it happens on five separate mornings. One base with days out is a different animal altogether, and the question that produced this page has a second answer that leads there.
Short answers to the usual doubts
Can you reserve our flights to Tallinn?
No. No seat on any aircraft or vessel is sold from here, so buying and rebooking the flying stays entirely with you. Tell us the dates once you have them and the ten nights are built around them. If your inbound lands after 22:00, say so: the first bed is in Tallinn, the airport sits about 4 km from the old town, and we will pick a room where somebody is awake at the desk.
Could we do this without a car?
Mostly. Tallinn, Narva, Tartu and Viljandi are joined by trains and buses that run several times a day and sell online in English. The weak link is Lahemaa. The bus stops at Vosu, four kilometers short of Kasmu, and runs a handful of times a day, which turns a day of bog and boulder coast into a day of standing at a stop. Car free versions of this week exist. They run two nights longer and they leave out the coast, and we will tell you which parts fall away before you agree to anything.
Ten nights and five beds. Is that too much moving?
For some people, yes, and that is worth settling before any money is committed. Five beds means four changes, and the moving is loaded into the front: two of the four fall inside the first six days, on the mornings of day three and day five. The one long stretch is the 190 km from Narva to Tartu, a little under three hours. The last four nights sit in two towns rather than four. If the honest answer is still yes, the same ground works as two beds over eight nights with days out from each, at a figure roughly 200 dollars away from this one.
What do we pay you?
You are never billed by us, and there is no card number here to lose. Every euro is asked for by the person handing over a key or a car, on their own paper, and none of it carries a line for this office. Our share comes out of the Estonian end's own margin some weeks after you have flown home. The consequence is worth stating plainly: the office earns nothing on a week that turns out not to need an office, which is what made the first line of this page awkward to write and worth writing anyway.