VIP weekend in Tallinn special package.
Price from: 148.5 €
A European city break for £100 is a berserk prospect. Berserk. That’s a return flight and a two-night hotel stay for less than the cost of a train to Scotland. The thought of exactly what that would get you – a damp floor in a windowless room in a no-star brothel, with a rat the size of a toddler – is almost enough to put you off completely.
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Although small, Tallinn is a beautiful, knotty, walled medieval city that's rich in history. To orient myself, I turned up for the Tallinn Free Tour (freetour.traveller.ee), which starts from Niguliste each midday. Run by student volunteers, it's a lively and irreverent two-hour trot around all the main points of interest, punctuated by a kaleidoscope of off-kilter local insight. My guide, Anne, was a whirlwind of facts and stories and politically incorrect observations, including one about an Estonian national hero whom she gleefully referred to as an idiot with a drinking problem.
Tallinn is also the 2011 European Capital of Culture and last weekend marked both the 20th anniversary of Estonia's independence from the Soviet Union and Iceland's recognition of Estonia as an independent state (the first country to do so), so there was a glut of free stuff to crash. On Sunday, for example, I caught an acoustic set by Icelandic folk singer Snorri Helgason in the gloriously sun-dappled Masters' Courtyard, while screenings and food markets and parties went on elsewhere.