Kadriorg park and palace are located a few kilometers from the Tallinn city center towards east. The place is an oasis near the city, well laid gardens, huge parks and a palace from early 18th century, built by Peter the Great. The building is a museum nowadays.

The palace has also a small English garden with geometric paths and a small maze. When we visited the park on early June, the bushes in the maze were about ten centimeters high, so solving it is not a big feat — maybe they grow taller during summer. Nearby is also a very idyllic swan pond. Bring your girlfriend there for a nice picnic on a sunny day.

The park is just about in walking distance, but remember that taxis are plentiful and cheap in Tallinn.

Kadriorg Park, A. Weizenbergi 37, Tallinn, Estonia

This morning I forgot my trustworthy Palm Tungsten home, and had to endure throughout the day without calendar. I had to hurry to get Aapo to kindergarten, and I just picked up my briefcase without checking that everything was inside… Palm was resting on the cradle, charging.

I found out this on train station (when I checked whether I had forgot my wallet home), and it was too late to go back. Fortunately Sanna was still at home and I could get all my to-dos and events for the day listed in a text file.

This evening, I had to manually sync my notes on laptop to Palm. I decided to overcome the situation by syncing Palm with Mac.

The instruction seemed quite straightforward. I downloaded all required software and installed them without hickups. I also configured them, but somehow iSync and HotSync didn’t talk too well, as HotSync missed iSync conduit and iSync missed Palm. After jumping between these programs for an anxious 30 minutes, I finally got Palm on iSync.

However, syncing was not possible. First, the travel cable between Palm and Mac didn’t have syncing capabilities and the next cradle just didn’t work for some reason. Enter bluetooth. Fiddling both devices for a good 15 minutes, they found each other and shaked hands.

Syncing would not still work. I again frantically clicked all kinds of options in iSync and HotSync, and miraculously the HotSync picked up Palm and started syncing. The sync went on, on, on and on. It took more than half an hour to make the initial sync, as there is so many programs with huge data banks in Palm.

After this initial sync, the next syncs were much faster — I also turned off most syncing options, as I’m backing up Palm with my Windows box. I just need the calendaring with Mac, as Mac nowadays follows me wherever I go.

I clicked and clicked the HotSync button in Palm, and Mac never started iSync. I don’t know why. Then I started iSync syncing from Mac, clicked HotSync button in Palm, watched HotSync in Mac work through its chores and then clicked HotSync button again. Now iSync finally got it and synced my stuff to iCal.

This worked twice in row. Then I shut Mac and Palm to end in a positive note. Tomorrow will be an interesting syncing day, it seems.

Sometimes I’d love to get good or even obscure error messages from Mac, as they are searchable with Google. Silent computer that refuses to sync with silent PDA doesn’t give too many options for understating the issue and trying to correct it.

Bonaparte Café & Deli is a cluster of gourmet destinations including restaurant, coffeehouse, wine bar and a deli. We visited the latter while on our way to the harbour and back to Finland, as it is conveniently located at the northern end of the Tallinn old town — only a few minutes walk to the ship.

The deli is quite small and there is not that many variations on display, but don’t let that disturb you. We bought one of the best filled croissants I’ve ever tasted — they were filled with parma ham, sweet onion jam and some greens. Really innovative, really tasty.

The deli has also local gourmet products and specialties on sale. They will also take orders for cakes and such.

www.bonaparte.ee, Pikk 45, Tallinn, Estonia, +372 646 4024

Anneli Viik café is a small chocolate factory and coffeehouse in the Tallinn old town. The café is quite small and chances are that you don’t get a seat during high season. Check it out though, as the service is very polite, offerings are good and the general atmosphere friendly and cosy.

You can buy all normal variations of coffee, teas, soft drinks, sweet and salty pastries, light meals, and of course chocolate. They sell both pralines and filled chocolates. The chocolate is French Valrhona, highly appreciated brand with chocolate connoisseurs.

www.anneliviik.ee, Pikk 30, Tallinn, Estonia, +372 644 4530

I and Sanna visited the annual habitation fair (Asuntomessut) in Kauklahti yesterday. This has been a habit of ours for a few years, dating from the fair in Kotka. This year’s fair was located very near us, it took mere three stops with the local train to get to the gates of the fairground. We were able to visit the fair on a weekday and leave Aapo to kindergarten — he is not yet that interested in architecture and interior design.

As usual, the fairs are a mixture of apartment buildings, row houses and detached houses. The latter are more interesting to us, as hopefully we’ll own one in some distant future. So we headed towards them immediately and as it was early morning, we were able to browse through a dozen houses before the crowds caught us.

The fairs have not been very crowded, the audience target of 200,000 visitors won’t be reached most probably.

The last year fair in Oulu was much better. Espoo houses are cramped on very small lots, and there were no new major ideas. A couple of novel houses were interesting, also pictured in this article. The first one is an architectural experience, made old fashionedly on wood — but looking very modern inside. The house looks like a sea shell (see the first picture).

The other interesting house had movable internal walls and a part of the ceiling on the second floor. The space can be one huge room or split into five spaces. The part of the ceiling could be hidden inside the building, so you can have two rooms on top of each other or tall open space. This house is the right one on the second picture.

Most of the other houses, and especially the apartments didn’t have anything worth mentioning and we advanced quite fast after visiting the detached houses.

The best finding was that we are actually living in a quite good house with a big yard. Sometimes you have to be able to see your own stuff with someone else’s eyes…

Chocolaterie Café is hidden in an inner courtyard on Vene street in the Tallinn old town, and if you don’t know where you are going, you may well walk past the entrance. That would be pity, as the café is an excellent place to hang out for a while, savouring the sweetness of their pastries.

As the name implies, the café focuses on chocolate. You can either buy pralines or then sweet pastries that have some chocolate in or on them. My chocolate croissant was the best I’ve ever tasted.

The interior of the café is very cosy; it feels like the clock had been turned at least one century backwards. This also means that the chairs are not that comfortable…

The café is quite small and was crowded during our visit, so sometimes you may be out of luck with seating. There is a patio that effectively doubles the number of seats during sunny days.

Chocolaterie Café, Vene 6, Tallinn, Estonia, +372 641 8061

Wayne’s Coffee is a Swedish originated chain of coffeeshops. Their most easily accessible café in Tallinn is located on the ground floor in Viru Keskus, just middle of everything. The location makes the cafe a bit restless, you are sitting among walking crowds.

The selection is quite ordinary for any café. Maybe the muffins are worth mentioning, as they are big and tasty — a rare combination, you can usually select only one of these two. All normal coffees are available, as well as some teas and soft drinks. They also provide smoothies.

www.waynescoffee.ee, Viru väljak 4/6 (Inside Viru Keskus), Tallinn, Estonia, +372 6 101 390