Today I got up a little before 5 AM because we had to be out the door by 5:30. I guess we had to be up this early to catch the tram to go to the docks to catch the ferry. So I was up early, didn't even have to have an alarm I don't think. Rhett was up, too. I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, packed my things, and that was it basically. Everyone gathered outside the hostel with all of their luggage and we were only missing one person, Tosha. So we waited a while outside until she finally came down.
Then, we walked to the place where our tram stop was, which was really just a little stop in the middle of the road. And it also turned out that we were really early. We waited there for like, 40 minutes or something. Probably from 5:40 to 6:20 AM. And it was dark this whole time. So we would not have had to be up that early. But yeah, by 6:20 we were on the tram and heading for the ferry port. I don't think the ride over there was too long, and we also got to see the sunrise as we were going there. Pretty cool. Once we all got off the tram and walked to the main terminal building, Tosha realized that she forgot her purse on the tram, so Dr. Caldwell and her ran back to the tram. I think we all just continued on into the building. I think there was a little bit of security that we had to go through, then we took an elevator up to this waiting area, and we waited up there for 25 minutes or so. Also, Caldwell and Tosha got back, and somehow the tram hadn't left yet, even though they thought it did because it changed its number or something. But she got her purse. The waiting area was actually really cool, too. It had lots of windows, these wooden ceilings, and pillars with vines on them.
But after waiting, we could get onto the ferry, and this is when I realized it wasn't really a traditional ferry, it was a cruise ship basically. We were on the ship by 7 AM and made our way to the buffet area because I guess that's where we were eating breakfast. I sat with Rhett, Chelsea, Molly, and Elisabeth, then went up to the buffet to get my food. There were all sorts of unique looking foods, so I got rice pies, potato rosti, a green egg muffin that I guess had spinach in it, bacon, breakfast sausage that just looked like a mini hot dog, meatballs, salami and cheese, and these little pancake things that definitely weren't pancakes, I don't know what they were, but they were good. And to go with all of that I had a glass of Coke, because they had that for free, too. Better than Carnival, cause you have to pay separate for soda on there. So I ate all that, had another glass of Coke, and then went up for dessert. I got some bread with margarine, a little strawberry donut, and a tiny piece of berry crumble cake. All very good. And then I had another glass of Coke, and Rhett was judging me for drinking so much of it, but hey, I had to get caffeinated.
Once everyone was kinda done eating, Elisabeth and Tosha kinda wanted to walk around, so I went with them, and then Molly also went. Rhett stayed behind because he was doing his little journal or whatever. So I went with those three and we just kinda walked around. We went up a few flights of stairs because we were going to go to the deck. We walked by a bunch of rooms, and it made me wonder, why are there whole rooms for a two hour ferry ride. I have no idea. But there were a lot of rooms, it literally was a whole cruise ship. When they said ferry, I was imagining a tiny two-story open boat like the kind that you take from the cruise ship to shore or whatever. But anyways, we made it to the deck and we went outside. It was super windy, but pretty cool out there, there was an Estonian flag. Estonia has one of my favorite flags of any country. Really nice colors. But there wasn't much else out there, so we went back in a different way, down these stairs through a glass door. And that led us down to this botanical greenhouse looking area. There were lots of windows and some plants and wooden seats and stuff. So we sat around there for a bit. The girls were taking pictures and stuff on this fake swing thing, so I kinda just looked around the room. There was this little slingshot game that looked kind of cool that two people were playing. Anyways, I was getting a little bored in there, so I decided to go off on my own.
Walking around on my own was actually really fun. It was my first bit of alone time I had on this trip. So I kinda just walked all over. There were tons of seats like an airplane in one part of the ship, there was a Burger King, and then I discovered the mall area. I also FaceTimed Janell around this time. It was a little after 8 AM on the ship, so it was like, 1 AM or something in Cape. So I showed her all around the mall. They had a Moomin display, Legos, candy, and alcohol. And they had one kind of alcohol on sale, a Hartwall Original Long Drink, gin and lemonade flavor. They had it a can for 1 euro, so I ended up buying one, Janell convinced me. I accidentally went up to the wrong cashier to check out, I went to the pre-checkout or something first. But I eventually found where to checkout and I bought it. It was pretty scary buying alcohol for the first time. Then I left the shopping area and walked around more, still on FaceTime with Janell. I found a vending machine and bought this Geisha candy bar because Janell said it looked good. There was also an arcade and a place to play PlayStation games. Also, I guess I ended up back at the botanical place, and Autumn said I should get another picture for my mom, so then I got my picture taken on that stupid fake swing. Then I went back to the buffet area. I also passed by Elisabeth and Tosha and Tosha was drinking something from the bar. Then I guess I'd FaceTimed Janell again and I was standing outside the buffet, so the other girls saw me talking to her, and they were asking stuff like, "did you call her or did she call you?" So I said I called her, and they were like, good. Anyways, I got back to the buffet and sat at my table for a bit. I also had another Coke or two. After about 30 minutes, we arrived in Tallinn. We departed the ship at 9:30.
After leaving the ship we walked down this enclosed ramp thing like you do with cruise ships. We could also see all of the cars driving off the ferry, that was cool. Elisabeth wanted to stop at this shop in the ship terminal, so she went in there. I was with her and Rhett and probably Chelsea at that point. So I waited outside the store while Elisabeth went in there. Then the rest of the group caught up to us. Elisabeth didn't end up getting any shoes from there. Then we all met outside and it was 9:45 by this point. This other random American lady was with our group, too, for some reason. My first impression of Tallinn was that it didn't really seem like too much. It seemed really flat, it was cloudy, kind of bleak even though the sky was blue under the clouds. But yeah, once we were all outside we started walking to our hostel. It definitely felt kind of Baltic, I guess? Our hostel was like 15 minutes away. The professors were giving us a little lecture on how not to walk in the bike lanes, I remember that much from the walk.
We got to our hostel, Fat Margaret's, and went in. We put all of our luggage in one room again, the very top floor room. Then we kind of just sat around up in that room for a little bit. Some people went to the bathroom because there was a bathroom in the room. It was also pretty hot up there so some people were trying to open the windows. Then Dana came over and said that this room that everyone was in would be our room. Like the boys room. And she showed me a piece of paper with a room code on it and had me take a picture of it. And of course, Rhett immediately sat on the furthest away bed in the room. Like, who gave you first choice. So I had to get the bed that was next to Caleb's and I had to duck down under the low slanted ceiling to get to my bed, which proved fun later. Eventually, I guess we were finally ready to go, so I put on my little black Adidas backpack which I hadn't worn yet, and my black coat, and then we left. Right after I walked out the door, I realized I forgot my water bottle, so I turned around and tried to open the door with my code, and it wouldn't work. I tried it a few more times, switching around some numbers and stuff and it still wouldn't work, so I turned around to leave because I a water bottle wasn't too important anyways, but then Rhett and Chelsea showed up and they also needed into the room for something, so they started trying the code. They also couldn't really get it, and we tried it for a while. After Rhett's like, fifth attempt, this little alarm started going off in the door handle. Then I think they texted Dana, and she came up and somehow got it on the first try. Then we all went outside after getting our stuff from the room, and everyone was waiting out there.
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