Category: Estonia

Pärnu, the original Victorian era seaside resort on the Baltic, the Estonian equivalent of Scarborough, was a town I’d never even heard of before last year.  My knowledge of Estonia extended no further than its lovely capital, Tallinn.

However, when I started doing tours of the Baltic capitals, Helsinki, Tallinn and Riga, I went to Pärnu every week.  It’s about halfway between Tallinn and Riga and was our lunch stop. 

Pärnu is a fairly small town with a population of around 40,000, it has a small historic centre, several lovely parks, the largest of which hosts the midsummer festival every June, and a long beach on the Baltic Sea.

Pärnu has been famous as a spa resort since the 1830s and has a few spa hotels, including the beautiful, historic Hedon Spa Hotel.  The original spa resort was built in 1838 on the site of the present day Hedon Spa Hotel.  The original resort burnt down in 1915 and was re-built in the 1920s.  This construction forms part of the current Hedon Spa Hotel and is unusual in that it survived as a popular spa resort during the Soviet times.  It has been extended and has a modern part that overlooks the beach, but the original historic mud bath part of the hotel still exists.

Every time I did a Baltic capitals tour, we stopped in Pärnu and I would usually walk down to the beach, have a walk along the beach, on the boardwalk or the breakwater and back through the park and sometimes I would go into the Hedon Spa Hotel and have a tea and the cake of the day in the bar.  But I love going to spa hotels and I really wanted to be able to come to Pärnu and stay overnight.  The 2 hours we spent here on the way to Riga, just weren’t long enough.

So when I found out I was doing Tallinn Christmas Markets and had 4 days off between tours, which didn’t really give me enough time to go home, it seemed to be the ideal opportunity to spend a couple of days in Pärnu, and of course, I was planning to stay at the historic Hedon Spa Hotel.

I had already spoken to the hotel reception staff on one of my lunch time visits about staying and they told me that if I booked online direct with the hotel, it was the same price as booking through one of the hotel booking websites and I would get a free bottle of fizz.  You could book rooms in the modern part of the hotel overlooking the beach, but there were also a few rooms located in the historic mud bath part of the hotel and this was where I wanted to be.

You can get a real bargain with spa hotels in the former Communist countries.  Spa hotels in England cost an absolute fortune, but in Pärnu, I could book a family room with a large bed and a sofa for €85 per night, if I paid in advance.  My tours were confirmed, it was life in the time before Covid, so paying in advance wasn’t much of a risk.  My travel insurance would cover cancellation if I couldn’t go due to illness. So I booked a family room for 2 nights through the Hedon Spa’s own website, which would qualify me to get the free bottle of champagne.

I also booked myself some treatments for my 2 night stay, the Silent Spa ritual and the Journey to Ancient Estonia.  Since I was in Estonia, that seemed to make more sense than booking a Journey to Bali!  More about the treatments later.

I had tourists leaving on Monday morning, but no one was on a late flight, which meant that I could just go from the airport to the bus station for the bus to Pärnu.  That would get me into Pärnu at around 2.30 in the afternoon, ideal for checking in.  The bus station is some distance from the Hedon Spa Hotel which is right next to the beach.  It would take about 20 minutes or so to walk there, but I only had a small suitcase with wheels, so I decided to walk to the hotel.  By the time I got there I hoped my room would be ready.

It was December in Estonia, so it was already getting quite dark by the time I arrived at the Hedon Spa at around 3 o’clock.  My family room, one of the 7 rooms in the unique and historic mud bath part of the hotel, was ready. 

As I walked into what used to be the old mud baths during the Soviet era, the corridor was very like an old fashioned sanatorium, exactly as you would have imagined it to be.  The hotel had obviously kept this area as close to its original form as possible.  My family room was beautiful and spacious with a large bed, a sofa, a nice big bathroom, there was a kettle and bottled water and bath robes and slippers.  They had forgotten my champagne.  I went to reception to remind them and my bottle of fizz was delivered to my door shortly thereafter.

I had booked the Silent Spa for the evening, so I needed to get into my bikini and bath robe ready for that.  I didn’t want to go too mad on the champagne before I went to the spa, but I opened the bottle to have one glass before my Silent Spa ritual.

I got a reduced rate for the Silent Spa because I was a hotel guest and I was staying on a weekday.  I went to the reception of the Silent Spa and was given a toiletry bag with body care products that you used as you completed the ritual.  You could take as much time as you wanted in the Silent Spa, the literature recommended 2 to 3 hours.  There were 5 saunas and 3 pools to use as part of the Silent Spa experience, however, one of those was an outdoor pool. It said it was closed in winter, but it appeared to be available for anyone who wanted to use it.  No one did.  I’m not sure what the temperature of the water in the pool was, but it was freezing cold, dark and snow was fluttering in the air.  No one wanted to be in a cold outdoor pool in those conditions! 

I had been given scrubs and moisturisers, so I did the foot care and soaked my feet one of the footbaths and then did the all over body care, showered and then made my way to the saunas.

I went into all the saunas, there was a steam sauna, a Finnish sauna, but also a tepidarium, which as its name suggests, was a lukewarm sauna room with a concentration of salt in the air similar to the air if you were by the Dead Sea, a caldarium which was an aroma steam sauna with warm stone seats and then the hottest of all, the laconium which was a dry sauna with aroma and colour therapy and a temperature of up to 65℃. 

One of the indoor pools was a saltwater pool.  Saltwater can irritate my skin, so I gave that a miss and went in the massage pool to relax.  The hotel and spa were not busy on this Monday evening in December, so I had the massage pool to myself for quite a long time.  After I’d done all the soaking I wanted to do, I made my way to the relaxation room where I laid back on one of the loungers with a cup of the specially mixed herbal tea available to all the guests.

By this time it was late in the evening, so it was time to go back to my room and relax ready for my full day in Pärnu tomorrow.

It had been snowing overnight in Pärnu.  I had a leisurely breakfast and then put on my hat, coat and boots to go out for a bracing walk on the beach and around the park.  My Journey to Ancient Estonia wasn’t until late afternoon, so I had plenty of time to do some exploring, even though I’d seen most of Pärnu before from my dozen visits over the summer and autumn. 

It was strange to see a beach with quite so much snow on it.  You don’t usually associate beaches with snow, they’re typically imagined to be fairly warm places, although coming from Yorkshire I’ve been on my fair share of North Sea beaches in pretty bracing conditions!

I had a walk to the far end of the beach where an elevated wooden walkway allows you to do a circuit over the coastal nature reserve.  There’s a tower you can climb to get distant views and it was very quiet this morning.  I posed for my usual photos with my gorilla grip, but got plenty of the snowy beach too.  The winter morning sky was amazing, which came out reasonably well in the beach photos. 

I walked back along the beach and up to the Ladies Beach, which is the section for female nude bathing.  Obviously it was empty today.  Just beyond were the sand dunes, so I took the opportunity to have a clamber on them, which I didn’t usually do when I was here on tour.  Seeing sand dunes covered in snow was very weird, but the dusting of snow certainly added a kind of magic. 

After climbing down off the sand dunes, I headed to the breakwater where the Pärnu River flows into the Baltic Sea.  Here you will find the seawall, made up of stones that you can walk along at low tide.  Legend has it that if you walk hand in hand along the 2km breakwater with the one you love and kiss at the end, you will be together forever.  I had walked to the end of it before, on my own, and my plan was to do the same today, but one look at the wet stones, deep puddles and accumulated debris brought in by the tide littered along it and I instantly changed my mind.  I realised that if a big wave washed over the breakwater I’d be wet through or if the seawater had enough force behind it I would be swept into the sea.  I wasn’t sure how deep the Baltic Sea was 2 kilometres into the distance at the end of the breakwater, but I wasn’t particularly keen to find out, especially as I was alone, so I wouldn’t even benefit from the legend by getting to the end.  Drowning this morning wasn’t on my list of things to do, so I gave it a miss and made my way off the beach and round into the park. 

I headed into Valli Park where the yachts were moored in the moat which is round the corner from the Yacht Club.  This park surrounds the moat and this is also where you can find the Tallinn Gate, which is a city gate originally part of the historical fortifications of Pärnu and the only one that still survives.  There is also a statue of Olev Siinmaa sitting on a bench with his coat next to him. He was born in Pärnu and was the city’s architect for 20 years before the Second World War, responsible for designing several buildings in Pärnu including the old mud baths and one of the hotels. I made my way back towards the Hedon Spa past Villa Ammende, a hotel and restaurant in an Art Nouveau mansion, which appeared to be closed, but was a very attractive building from the outside.  Time was pressing on, I needed to get back to the hotel and prepare for my Journey to Ancient Estonia. 

I got into my bikini and bathrobe and slippers and went to sit in the spa reception area.  If you walk from the historic mud bath part of the hotel with its old style sanatorium corridors and through to the hotel reception and bar, you have to walk through a corridor which has interesting old photographs featuring the original hotel prior to its destruction in 1915, visitors on Pärnu Beach in the mid 20^th century and some guests having spa treatments, such as a woman covered in mud and another in a bath, up to her neck in bubbles!

Some of the old baths that used to be used for spa treatments also stand in the corridor.  I really like this part of the hotel with the old photographs and old equipment, giving you a real sense of its history and what visitors might have experienced 100 years ago, both in the spa and also on the beach.

Mud is a big part of spa and health treatments in the Baltic and would form part of my Ancient Estonian Hedonistic Journey over the next 2 hours. 

My hedonistic journey started in the sauna, another important element of health treatments in Northern Europe.  There are more saunas in Finland than cars!

I went into the sauna and the therapist told me that I needed to stay in the sauna as much as I could manage, although I could come out of it if I got too hot.  She also handed me a large bunch of birch branches.  However, unlike in the spas in Russia I’d seen on the telly, where the staff savagely thrash you with this to help eliminate toxins, this was going to be a do-it-yourself version where I would have to strike myself with the branches. 

I was left for 20 minutes in the sauna where I would intermittently bash myself with the sprig of birch as best I could.  It was a bit messy, but I was going to be covered in mud shortly, so it didn’t really matter.  I hope it worked in getting rid of some of my toxins!

At the end of 20 minutes I had to have a shower to get rid of any stray leaves and bits of twig on my body and then it was time for curative mud.  The therapist had a mud mixture to cover my body in which would act as an exfoliator and cleanse my skin.  The mineral concentration in the mud mixture was is too harsh for the face, but the therapist slapped it over the rest of my body and then wrapped me in cling film to optimise the exfoliating benefits. 

Then I was left for another 20 minutes for the mud to do its work.  Mud therapy isn’t used a great deal in Estonia these days.  Whereas in the heyday of the Hedon Spa resort, mud baths were offered as part of the comprehensive sanatorium treatment, now it’s much more popular in Lithuania where peat mud baths are particularly famous.  There’s even a poster at Vilnius Airport advertising the health benefits of peat mud baths.  So I wasn’t quite experiencing what my counterpart guests in the Soviet era would have done, but this was the first time I’d been covered in mud and wrapped in cling film, so I was still trying something new. 

When the cling film was removed I had to have another shower to wash off all the mud in readiness for my ancient Estonian massage known as “soonetasumine”, which apparently translates as vessel repayment and is derived from traditional Estonian folk wisdom.  It is supposed to balance the body and replace lost strength.  Local organic hemp and carrot oil is used for the massage.  I suppose in days gone by, those ingredients would have been readily available to the farm workers who needed pampering after long days working in the fields.

The massage technique is described as soft, but strong, a series of stretching, kneading, pounding, crushing, squeezing, creasing and cradling movements.  I generally find a massage really relaxing as long as the therapist doesn’t exert too much pressure, like in a Chinese massage, where I thought I was going to die after the one I had in Singapore! 

Thankfully despite its description, the pressure from the massage therapist wasn’t too hard and I did find the whole thing very relaxing and enjoyable. 

The therapist will always tell you not to rush to get up after the massage, relax and take your time, but I always feel like I can’t lay there for too long, they probably need the room for the next person.  So I give myself about 2 minutes and then get up and leave.  However, since I was staying in the hotel, it wasn’t necessary for me to get dressed after the massage, I could just put my bathrobe on and go into the relaxation area and rest on one of the loungers for as long as I wanted. 

It was late afternoon when I started my Hedonistic Spa Journey, so by this time it was dark outside.  The snow was falling heavily and I could see the lights of the fountain in front of the hotel were lit up. 

On the rare occasions that I’m at home, I’m happy to take it easy and relax in front of the telly and not do much.  But when I’m away, even if I’m supposed to be relaxing, I find it very difficult to lounge for very long.  The heavily falling snow was too much of a temptation to just watch through the window of the relaxation area, I wanted to go outside.

I went back to my room, got dressed, put on my coat, hat and boots, got my phone to take some photos and ventured outside.  It was still early enough for the front entrance of the hotel to be open, which was the entrance for the spa.  Later in the evening the door is locked and you have to walk around the side to the main door that brings you into the hotel reception.  So I walked through the front door and could see the fountain ahead of me, covered in white lights.  The front of the hotel was lit up in white lights too. 

I wanted to get some photographs to capture the scene of the fairy lights and the snow, but I didn’t want to walk too far and it was very cold.  Every time I took my gloves off to take a photo my hand was instantly wet and freezing, so it didn’t make sense to hang around too long for these photos.  I walked just beyond the fountain to get a few shots and then over to the beach.  I got a few photos of the deep snow in the darkness, but walking on a freezing cold and dark beach at night in the snow held no appeal to me, so I retreated back into the hotel.

The rest of the evening was spent in the restaurant and enjoying my family room in the hotel, looking out of my window and watching the snow come down.

Next morning I wanted to get up early enough to have some breakfast and a quick wander on the beach before I had to head back to the bus station for my late morning coach back to Tallinn. 

I didn’t have time for a long walk this morning, but I did manage to walk a length of the beach up as far as the Ladies Beach.  The snow was really deep this morning after it had snowed for most of the night.  The snow had stopped now, but it was far too cold for it to have melted, so there was a deep covering on the sand.  There were people out walking on this bright and brisk morning, enjoying the beach and the snow like I was.  I took a few more photos as there was a lot more snow than there had been yesterday.  Climbing on the sand dunes wasn’t possible now as time was getting on, but that was okay. 

I was pleased I’d decided to have this short break in Pärnu.  It had been a very enjoyable couple of days. I’d got to explore the city in a little more depth than on my past visits, stay in the historic spa hotel and experience some traditional Estonian spa treatments. 

And I had really enjoyed being in a resort on the Baltic Sea in the winter when it was snowing.  As you may have seen from my previous posts about my trip to Greenland in winter, I don’t mind going on holiday somewhere that’s cold.  When I’m considering going away in the winter, my immediate thought is never “where is it warm at this time of year?”  In fact, I’m likely to think about visiting cold places first, before anywhere in the Tropics springs into my mind.  So this had been a good choice. I would thoroughly recommend a winter spa break in Pärnu.  Obviously I can’t guarantee it will snow.  But you will have a great time.

I had my spa break in Pärnu at the beginning of December 2019.

I stayed at the Hedon Spa Hotel in Pärnu. I stayed in one of the seven rooms located in the historic mud bath section of the hotel. A family room cost €85 per night. Booking the hotel directly through the website entitled you to a free bottle of sparkling wine.

Hedon Spa is open to non-residents. A full list of treatments can be found on the Hedon Spa website.

I did the Silent Spa ritual, which currently costs €22 on a weekday and €27 at weekends. There is a €5 discount for hotel guests.

My Journey to Ancient Estonia lasted approximately 2 hours and currently costs €85 on weekdays and €95 at weekends.

I travelled to Pärnu by bus with Lux Express. The journey time is 1 hour 50 minutes and there are about 9 buses per day. One way tickets cost from €4. I booked my tickets online and downloaded the e-ticket onto my mobile phone. A printed ticket is not necessary.

I flew to Tallinn from Manchester with Finnair via Helsinki. There are currently no direct flights between Tallinn and any airports in the north of England. Flights are available direct from Stansted and Gatwick.

Read about my visit to the second city of Estonia.

Inland University City of Tartu

Read about my other spa experiences in Europe.

Traditional Sulphur Bath Experience in Georgia
Längenfeld Aqua Dome Spa in Austria

Last December, I was lucky to be able to explore Estonia beyond its capital and one of the places I visited was in the inland university city of Tartu.

It wasn’t worthwhile flying backwards and forwards to England between the two Christmas market tours I had in Tallinn, so I seized the opportunity to see something else of the country on my spare days.

Estonia is a small country in the Baltic, formerly part of the Soviet Union with a tiny population of 1.3 million. Around 35% live in Tallinn, which is by far the most popular tourist destination. The city sits on the Baltic Sea which makes it one of the traditional stops for passengers on Baltic cruises.  It is also just 2 hours across the water from Helsinki, making it an easy day trip from the Finnish capital. A lot of visitors to Estonia never get any further than Tallinn.

I had done tours between capitals of three Baltic countries earlier this year and we used to stop in Pärnu, an Estonian seaside resort on the Baltic, for a lunch break on our way to Riga. But I’d never had the chance to venture inland.

Estonia’s second city is Tartu and it’s approximately 180km south east of Tallinn. The beauty of Estonia’s small land area is that you can travel anywhere in the country in just a few hours. A 2 hour train journey made Tartu a viable day trip from the Estonian capital.

Tartu may not be the capital of Estonia, but it’s the home to the National University of Estonia, the oldest, biggest and most prestigious university in the country founded by the king of Sweden in 1632. It’s a classical university ranked in the top 2% of universities in the world. So Tartu is definitely an important city in Estonia.

It was a pleasant train journey to Tartu. The railway station was a little out of the historical city, but I was quite happy to walk for 20 minutes to reach the centre. There was supposed to be a Christmas market in Tartu. It promised so much, but sadly it was very small, just a few isolated stalls in the main square.

However, there were some fantastic displays in glass boxes around the square, albeit some extremely bizarre, such as the one with the historical dresses, but with animal heads instead of human ones. It was certainly interesting. However, after a quick mooch around the square and a warming cup of mulled wine, I went to the Tourist Information Office and picked up the booklet “Strolls in Tartu”, which detailed the walking tours you could do in the city taking in the most interesting and important sites and embarked on one of the recommended walks.

I followed the Historical Tartu walking tour which incorporated the park where the ruined cathedral, observatory and several university buildings were located.

I walked down a shopping street first where there was a large shopping mall in the distance, but I turned off before I reached it at Barclay Square featuring a statue of a Russian military commander. That wasn’t of any real interest to me, but it led to the quaint historic street behind, which in turn, took me up the hill into the park where you can find the old observatory and the ruins of the cathedral.

I decided to go into the Old Observatory which was just a couple of Euros admission and looked at some big telescopes. One weighed 1200kg and had been delivered in 22 boxes, but Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve assembled it in a week without any instructions. The Struve Geodetic Arc which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List is named after him and refers to a survey of points along a meridian line, a concept that is way over my unscientific head. But I enjoyed reading about and seeing big telescopes. It was a pleasant way to pass half an hour.

I continued through Toome Hill Park to take a closer look at Tartu Cathedral. Although it was built as a cathedral between the 13^th and 16^th century, after it was left in ruins following the Livonian War in the 17^th century, it was taken over by the university and is still part of the university today. It is possible to go inside the university building to climb the cathedral towers, but the towers weren’t open when I was there. However, you can walk freely around the outdoor, ruined part of the building, which is fully accessible to anyone strolling through the park.

I then hunted through the park to track down the sacrificial stone near Kissing Hill. I found it around the back of the cathedral ruins. Apparently students now burn their lecture notes as a sacrifice after they’ve sat their exams to celebrate the end of their studies. Hopefully they have made sure they’ve passed their exams before the ceremonial burning takes place! There are steps leading to the top of Kissing Hill where grooms traditionally carry their brides after the wedding. I went up the steps on my own, to take in the atmosphere and then walked towards the Devil’s Bridge which would lead me out of the park and back into the city centre.

I had already walked under the Angel’s Bridge which marked the entrance to the historical city centre on my walk from the railway station and exited the park under the Devil’s Bridge where my next stop was the Gunpowder Cellar.

It was getting a little late in the afternoon by now and I decided that the Gunpowder Cellar, which had been converted into a beer restaurant, would be a good place to take a break. The restaurant is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the beer cellar with the highest ceiling in the world, 11 metres high. I went upstairs to the balcony in order to fully appreciate the ceiling height and as I don’t like beer, I ordered a glass of Glögg (Estonian mulled wine), to warm me up. I spent a bit of time enjoying the atmosphere (and my Glögg), but this meant that by the time I left the beer restaurant it was almost dark.

I still had plenty of time before my train back to Tallinn, but now I wasn’t going to be able to see the city attractions as well because of the fading light. However, the city was now lit up and when I got to the Von Bock House with the mural of the university on the side of it, there was a light projected on it to make it look like it was snowing. And I wouldn’t have seen that in the daylight.

I went round the corner and walked down the street to see the main university building for real which was all lit up with lights around all its columns. So seeing parts of Tartu in the dark evening had its advantages.

I ended up back in the main square where the famous Kissing Students statue was now also lit up. I presume the statue is a symbol of the importance of the university to the city of Tartu.

I had another look at booklet with the walking tours in it and decided that I had time to do the portion of the Heart of the City stroll which follows the banks of the Emajõgi River, since I hadn’t seen the river yet.

It was now completely dark, so I wasn’t going to see the river properly anyway, but a couple of things, besides the exercise, made the stroll by the riverside worthwhile.

Firstly as I walked along the river bank, I could see the arch bridge ahead, which is a pedestrian bridge across the Emajõgi River. It has lights over the arch that change colour and I got some rather nice photos of the coloured lights and their reflection in the river. Legend has it that if you want to be accepted into the University of Tartu you should walk over the arch. This is both very dangerous and completely illegal, so I’m not sure how often it’s attempted these days.

By now it was bitingly cold and all the evidence I needed of this fact were the chunks of ice that were visible in the river. There was one spot where I could get quite close to the water for a photo.

I looked at my watch and realised that further exploration of Tartu would not be possible, it was time to head to the station to catch my train back to Tallinn. I crossed the arch bridge to the historical centre of Tartu and under the Angel’s Bridge away from Estonia’s second city. I’d really enjoyed my day exploring here. If you are in Estonia and have a day to spare, it’s well worth checking out.

I travelled to Tartu in December 2019.

I travelled to Tartu by train from Tallinn. There are approximately 10 trains a day between the two cities and the journey takes around 2 hours. My first class return ticket cost 27 Euros. It takes approximately 20 minutes to walk from the station to the city centre. You can book tickets online with Elron the government owned Estonian train company. Tickets can be booked online up to a week in advance.

The excellent Strolls in Tartu booklet details the recommended self-guided walking tours. You can download a copy for free or get a paper copy from the Tartu Tourist Information Centre in the main square.

I flew to Tallinn from Manchester with Finnair via Helsinki. There are currently no direct flights between Tallinn and any airports in the north of England. Flights are available direct from Stansted and Gatwick.