Stop! This Museum Is Not Ready Yet...

Following the instructions in the Tallinn Card brochure, we took the bus to the suggested stop for the Seaplane Harbour ship museum. It was the stop at the end of the line, and we were expecting signs to point us in the direction of the museum. We found ourselves in a peaceful, leafy, and almost deserted suburb, with beautiful wooden houses, but no signs. To find our way to the museum, we used a compass, general knowledge of "the sea is that way," and an assumption that we'd find the ships on the coast.

So it was that we arrived at this building-site-come-museum. We walked to the ticket office through clouds of thick construction dust, and had to dodge out of the path of an oncoming digger.






The leaflet we'd followed to get there told us of the beautiful new exhibition hall which had "opened in May 2011". I can only guess that they must have gone to press before then, and included an optimistic estimate of their opening date; when we visited in July, it was far from finished. We could, however, enjoy an artist's impression of what was underway. And, of course, an inside view of the construction process.





The Soviet steamer-icebreaker Suur Tõll was fully open for business (and was a genuine highlight of the entire trip) but to get to it, we had to clamber over rubble and unlaid cobblestones.





The submarine Lembit, launched in 1936, was also highlighted in the brochure. We arrived to see it being unpacked, after it had just arrived on site. Unfortunately we weren't able to get inside, although walking around underneath it gave a very good sense of scale.









A new, themed playground by the in-progress museum hall was a good indication of what this will all be like once it's finished. I think it's going to be a fantastic attraction - we just visited a little too soon.