I feel basically the same way about Tallinn, Estonia that I felt about Split, Croatia. It’s a cool place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.

Which makes sense. Both cities are cruise ship ports, and as such host mobs of tourists every summer. Now throngs of tourists aren’t necessarily a show-stopper; Prague, after all, is both my favorite destination on this trip and the most touristy. But Prague is a big enough, cosmopolitan enough city that it can accommodate the tourist hordes and also have a really fun, vibrant local scene apart from that. Split and Tallinn are not. Their Old Towns are total tourist traps, and on the frequent occasions when I ventured outside the touristy areas to explore the local scene, it was unappealing. I found nothing as lovely, lively, and local as Prague’s embankment or Porto’s Jardim do Morro.

Tack on to that the Nordic reserve and difficult (to me) language of the Estonians. Put it all together, and I can imagine Tallinn would be a difficult city to make friends in.

And now for the final set of city ratings of my trip! Remember that all of my rankings are consolidated on my city ratings page.

• Rent: 4.6. The average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in central Tallinn is $583.57.
• Walkability: 9. Tallinn’s city center is extremely compact. Even the modern, glassy areas of the city are clustered tightly near the Old Town. And nearly all of the streets are well-served with sidewalks and walk signals. The only reason Tallinn doesn’t earn a 10 is that the photo-snapping tourists crowding the Old Town mean you have to be alert when passing through, so as to avoid bumping or being bumped.
  

  Kadriorg Park features well-maintained pedestrian paths for walking, running, or cycling. I walked and ran all over them (3 August 2018).

• Dating: 7. This is another rating I’ve decided I don’t really need. Every city I visited in Europe on this trip was full of gorgeous women. When I do make my decision about where I’d like to move to, I might search for some demographic information about which cities have the most favorable male-female ratios in my target age range. But there’s no clear difference in attractiveness across countries or cities that I noticed.
• Food: 7. Restaurants in Tallinn were pricey to the point that once again, I had to mix restaurant meals with grocery store picnics. (In Tallinn, it’s illegal to drink in public, which in my opinion seriously dampens the fun of any picnic.) I was not wowed by the local cuisine — be careful what you’re ordering, as Estonians eat a lot of liver — but Tallinn has plenty of international eateries. The Russian restaurants in particular are great here.
  

  This guy looked pretty relaxed… (6 August 2018)

  

  …so I decided this spot would be a great place for a picnic. Unfortunately the meatballs I bought at the grocery store were made of ground liver. And I didn’t have any alcohol to help me choke them down. Good thing I bought the largest bag of potato chips I could find (6 August 2018).

  

  I really, really wanted an outdoor table overlooking Town Hall Square, but the Estonian and Western restaurants here were all too pricey for me to eat my fill. So my first meal out in Tallinn was at an Indian restaurant. Not bad (2 August 2018).

  

  Luckily, the streets surrounding Town Hall Square offer ambience and people-watching that’s almost as good, at significantly better prices (7 August 2018).

  

  This restaurant serves locally sourced food, artfully presented. Eating at this type of place would cost a fortune in Washington D.C., but it’s very reasonable here. And it was great, especially the thick, dark, moist rye bread served with butter sprinkled with salt and garlic. Aside from the one little saucy thing on the plate there that I’m pretty sure was liver (blech!), everything else was scrumptious (7 August 2018).

  

  Ah, the drinking! I did a lot of that here. The vodka on the left is Estonia’s most esteemed brand, but it was just OK. Polish vodka is better. But the Vana Tallinn on the right? That’s a keeper. It’s a sweet dessert liqueur based on, of all things, Jamaican rum. So it has to be good, and it is, especially served over vanilla ice cream (6 August 2018).

• Ambience: 9. Yes, the Old Town is spectacular, and the modern town is tidy. The one area for improvement here, I’d say, is the number of cars in the Lower Town. There are a surprising number of people who live or stay there and drive in and out through those narrow cobblestone streets. It’s absurd. The whole Old Town should be fully pedestrianized. I left the U.S. to get away from cars, after all.
  

  Seriously. What are those cars doing in here? (2 August 2018)

• Transit: 7. Tallinn is yet another city that was so walkable, I never once used public transportation. Even the ferry terminal is just a 15-minute walk from the Old Town. But I did see plenty of trams and buses about.
  

  3 August 2018

• Health care: 6.2.
• Nature: 3. I’m not aware of any wilderness areas or national parks within a short hop of Tallinn. The closest I came to nature here was in the wooded trails behind Pirita Beach.
  

  This is also a great place to take a walk. Or to find a tree to pee behind. Not that I did that, of course. I’m just speculating (3 August 2018).

• Internet: 7.
• Crime: 8.7. According to Numbeo’s survey data, Tallinn’s crime rate is freakishly low. Like East Asian-level low. My last destination, Tallinn, is effectively tied with my first destination, Taipei, as the safest.
• Language: 2.5. As was the case in Lithuania, it took me all week to remember how to pronounce the most basic phrases in Estonian. And no wonder: Estonian isn’t even in the same language family (Indo-European) as English. It’s a Uralic language related most closely to Finnish and Hungarian. That means that, linguistically speaking, Estonian is more different from English than Sinhala (a fellow Indo-European language).
• Bikeability: 7. The Old Town’s cobblestone streets would make for a jarring bike ride, but outside of Toompea’s and the Lower Town’s walls, Tallinn has plenty of bike paths and dual-use paths.
  

  Tallinn’s Pirita tee might must be the most stunning bike trail I’ve come across during my travels. It (along with a parallel pedestrian path) runs right along the beach for two or three miles. You see Tallinn’s skyline, the cruise ship terminal, ferries coming and going, sunbathers, kiteboarders, and the blue Baltic Sea. It does, however, smell really bad. Imagine the worst, rotting-fish-mixed-with-sulfur harbor odor you’ve ever sniffed. It’s pretty close to that in spots (3 August 2018).

• Friendliness: 5. What did I say at the top of this post about “Nordic reserve?” Yes. That. That’s another thing Estonians have in common with their neighbors to the north, the Finns. Still, the locals here are friendlier, or at least more polite, than horn-blaring Washingtonians (4).
• Pollution: 8.6. Tallinn is the least polluted of my 18 destination cities, according to Numbeo. Judging from the beautiful clear blue skies when I visited, I’d buy that.