When the sun is setting, between dusk and darkness, there is a moment when the light turns blue. And the world stops for a heartbeat.
I returned to Tallinn, Estonia, today for a conference. As I had the evening to myself, I popped over for dinner in the newer part of the city center. It has several industrial buildings renovated into restaurants, little shops and galleries. What makes it cool, though, are the murals.
I enjoy sparkling wine in any occassion, but still it remains the drink I most associate with my mum. And, to a slightly lesser degree, to my sister.
We’ve drunk it together on many occassions over the years, but I think the connection was born in Luxembourg. Stuart and I lived there for a few years, and my entire family came for a spring visit. We spent a whole day in the Mosel wine region, walking, eating asparagus dishes and drinking wine – both sparkling and not. My mum, Noora and I bought a magnum-sized bottle to take home and top the weekend off. If I remember right, we ended up giggling a lot.
Day 100 – feels like an achievement! I had hoped to do something special for the occassion but – appropriately enough – I spent the day travelling.
A few special moments above the clouds. Then frantic rush on the ground. Broken laptop. Last minute presentation prep literally in the lobby. On my colleague’s laptop. Great lunch. Productive meetings. Good coctails. Another mad rush.
Looking back, it feels like a pretty good analogy for my everyday life.
With my siblings, good food, good drinks, and escape rooms tend to go hand in hand. That didn’t leave much time for any other sightseeing. With stormy, rainy weather, it hardly felt like a loss.
In between showers, I managed a few quick pictures around town and a short visit to Fotografiska – still my favourite photo museum in the city.
As said before, escape rooms are a thing in my family. The idea of going to Tallinn for an “escape trip” started off as a joke. But turning jokes into reality is also a thing in my family (e.g., annual the-most-useless-useful-Christmas-present competition).
One weekend, four rooms. Three of the rooms were actually hard, one was… an experience… We escaped three of the rooms, but are now trapped to a haunted orphanage for all eternity.
Luckily there was drinks after.
Tallinn is just a 2 hour ferry ride from Helsinki, which makes it a perfect weekend get-away with Stuart, my brother, sister, and brother-in-law.
Tallinn is an old Hansa city and the old town is just beautiful. As a tourist, one rarely wonders outside of the old town. However, one purpose for the trip was to solve a number of escape rooms – none of which are in the old town.
One down, three to go. And we got to see some of the modern Tallinn too.
Today’s photo is not the best of the day. (My last day in Rome…). In fact, it was (and still is) a bad photo in many ways – overexposed, badly framed and lots of ‘noise’ in the picture (The cars really bother me). I am still not sure why I kept editing it over and over again, and trying to make it work. Something in it just spoke to me.
It’s still not the greatest of photos. But the story it tells is a story so very typical to Rome.
History of the Vatican is not a religios or harmonious one. It’s all about power. The level of dirty politics during e.g. Borgias exceeds almost any other stage in human history (I leave the word ‘almost’ to prevent Stuart proving me wrong in the next minute).
With that as a backdrop, and tourist milling around, the sense of calm is surprising.
I love the concept of a siesta – when I’m on holiday. How anyone can work with a siesta breaking the day in two, is completely beyond me. But on holiday, the break at midday is the ultimate luxury. As an additional benefit, there is no better time for photography than very, very early in the morning.
Roman Forum in sunrise.
I apologise for a delay in posting. Ever since the plane touched down back in Johannesburg, I’ve been run off my feet.
“The perfect day is a balance of culture and pleasure”, repeated our travel guide for the 4th time as we boarded the bus in Pompeii and headed towards the Amalfi coast.
Check.
Blue Moment 