Tallinn With Kids: The Storybook Old Town You Can Walk in a Day

Tallinn looks like a storybook because it is one. The old town is a medieval walled city on a hill, with towers you can climb, a town square that has held a market since the thirteen hundreds, and cobbled lanes that a six year old can lead you down without getting lost.

It is also small. The whole old town is fifteen minutes across. That is why it works with children who are done with big cities.

Start on Toompea, the upper town, for the viewing platforms. The one at Kohtuotsa has the postcard view of the red roofs and the sea, and a wall where someone painted The Times We Had. Then down the Long Leg and the Short Leg, the two stair streets, into the lower town.

The town wall walk is the thing for kids. You go up inside a tower, walk along the top of the wall between three towers, and look down on the gardens. Hellemann Tower is the entrance. Twenty minutes, cheap, and it is a real medieval wall.

Hot chocolate and marzipan

The town square is ringed with cafes. Every one does hot chocolate thick enough to stand a spoon in. The Maiasmokk cafe on Pikk street has been open since eighteen sixty four and has a marzipan room where the kids can paint their own marzipan figure. It is the most Tallinn thing there is.

Kadriorg park is a tram ride away, with the palace Peter the Great built, a playground, and the children’s museum in a wooden house. Lennusadam, the seaplane harbor, is the museum older kids want. A submarine to walk through, an icebreaker to board, and a simulator.

Come by ferry from Helsinki, two hours across the gulf, and stay two nights. Or three, because the price of dinner here is half of anywhere else in the north.

Planning Estonia with kids? Start with the full Estonia family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.