If you follow me on Instagram you will probably know by now that a couple of weeks ago I spent a weekend in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn. As always, I’m a student. In approximately 8 months I’ll finally finish my university studies, but I guess I will be still broke by then. Which means that I will still have to travel on the low budget side of life. But hey! Less is more right? (Meh, sometimes is not 😀 ).
Following the same philosophy of my post ‘How to visit Riga for less than 100€’ I decided to give you few tips about how to visit the biggest city in Estonia for what I would consider a low budget for a weekend.
*Disclaimer: the prices may vary according to the season and availability of services. If you are traveling from other city that is not Kaunas it might be a bit more expensive or cheaper. Also I’m not getting sponsored by sharing anything of this, it’s just all from my own opinion and belief.The trip I’m presenting here is a weekend trip: leaving Kaunas on Friday and coming back on Sunday, 2 nights and 3 days.
1. Bus from Kaunas to Vilnius and back: 6€
The buses we will be taking this time depart from Vilnius. When I went to Tallinn I was traveling with Ecolines but researching a bit on the net and talking to other travellers I found PolskiBus, which happens to be a cheap bus company from Poland and from now on, your best friend to travel around the Baltic States.
You will need to get to Vilnius if you live in Kaunas, but if you are living already in the capital of Lithuania, well, you can save up those 6€!
2. Bus from Vilnius to Tallinn and back: 24€
Yes. Unbelievable right? Even cheaper than going to Riga. And this is the normal price. I’m not really sure if you can get student discount but, you will be paying 100 zloty (the currency they have in Poland) which is actually 23.42€ to travel more than 1100km by bus.
The journey is a bit long, it takes about 9.15 hours in total, but still faster than with Ecolines, which is 11 hours.
3. Place to sleep for 2 nights: 0€
Now this is something very personal. When I went to Tallinn I decided to try CouchSurfing for the first time. It was a really great experience. If you’d like some more privacy (with CouchSurfing you get basically none, but hey! you meet interesting people and travelling is all about that right) there are some nice hostels and hotels. For me I rarely pay lots of money to sleep. I sort of feel that I’m committing a crime. If you would like to CouchSurf, we stayed with Rainu and Andres, they have hosted more than 1,000 people (not at the same time of course) and they have such a cozy and nice flat. And they have a dog too!
4. Breakfast, lunch and dinner for 2-3 days: 36€
This is a very approximate price. Of course it all depends about how much you like to eat and how many beers you like to drink while having dinner. But for 4€/day you can easily have breakfast (a nice coffee and some croissant) and for 7€/day/meal you can get through lunch and dinner without starving.
5. Tour around the city: 0€
They do this tour once per day and it leaves at 12:00 from the city centre. We didn’t join it but from what I could research is a total blast of a tour. Great info, free (of course if you liked it very much you should support them with some tips, but if you don’t want to, you are free) and most important, in English. 2 hours walking around Tallinn and getting great information and history straight from a local.
6. Museums and towers: 10€
It’s up to you. If you are not into visiting the heritage of one city you will probably spend nothing here. My favourite tower and attraction to visit in Tallinn were Kiek in de Kök and walking the City Wall of Tallinn. Both of them are 10€ without student discount. With the ISIC you can get them for 6€. (Really, get that card right now!).
And if you prefer not paying for this sort of things, there is many and plenty of free stuff to do around Tallinn too.
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Overall the price for the proposed plan is 70€ per person and per weekend. If you add 30€ for emergencies or munchies or some souvenirs, you can get a really good deal to visit Tallinn.
If you finally decide to go visit this city, let me know on the comments! 🙂
