--- title: "Top 10 Things To Do in Estonia (City Guides) | Wimup" description: "Browse Wimup's Top 10 guides across Estonia: Tallinn's walled old town, Tartu, the west-coast islands and the bogs of Lahemaa." url: https://wimup.com/country/estonia type: Country guide updated: 2026-10-24 publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com) --- # Top 10s across Estonia From **Tallinn's walled old town** to **Tartu, the west-coast islands and the bogs of Lahemaa**, Estonia distilled to the things worth your time, mapped and ranked. ## Quick answer Start in **Tallinn**, with two or three nights for the walled old town, Kumu and Kadriorg. South is **Tartu**, the university city, with **Viljandi** and the ski trails at **Otepää** beyond. West is the coast, with **Pärnu**, the spa town of **Haapsalu** and the ferries to **Saaremaa** and the castle at **Kuressaare**. East are the bog boardwalks of **Lahemaa National Park**, then **Narva**, facing Russia across the river. **June to August** brings long light and the summer ferry timetable. ## Quick facts - **Best months:** Jun · Jul · Aug - **Ideal length:** 5–7 days - **Budget per day:** €80–140 - **Language:** Estonian - **Getting around:** Trains and coaches, ferries to the islands - **3** City guides - **1,360,745** People - **0** Video guide Estonia is easy to plan and hard to exhaust. Tallinn holds the UNESCO-listed old town, the art museums and the ferry to Helsinki, and everything else is within a few hours of it. An hour east, Lahemaa National Park runs bog boardwalks, manor houses and an empty Baltic shore. Two and a half hours south, Tartu is the university city and was a European Capital of Culture in 2024. West of both, the ferries at Virtsu and Rohuküla reach Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, where the pace drops again. Summer is short, bright and busy; winter is dark, cheap and built for saunas. The euro, EU membership and a Schengen border make the practical side simple. ## 3 Estonia city guides 1. [Tallinn](https://wimup.com/city/tallinn.md): Estonia · 10 picks 2. [Tartu](https://wimup.com/city/tartu.md): Estonia · 10 picks 3. [Pärnu](https://wimup.com/city/parnu.md): Estonia · 10 picks ## Know before you go - **Population:** 1,360,745 - **Area:** 45,339 km² - **Density:** 30 / km² - **Capital:** Tallinn - **Major cities:** Tallinn, Tartu, Narva, Pärnu, Kohtla-Järve - **Tourism board:** Official site - **Currency:** Euro (€) Estonia joined the euro area on 1 January 2011, replacing the kroon. Cards are accepted almost everywhere, including on buses and in rural cafés, and contactless is the default. - **Language:** Estonian A Finno-Ugric language, closer to Finnish than to anything Slavic or Baltic. English is widely spoken in Tallinn and Tartu, and Russian is a first language for a large minority. - **Calling code:** +372 Prepaid SIM cards are sold in operator shops and most supermarkets. Coverage is strong nationally, including across the national parks. - **Power:** 230V, 50Hz, plug types C and F The round two-pin sockets used across continental Europe. UK and US plugs need an adapter, and US devices need to handle 230 volts. - **Emergency:** 112 One number for police, fire and ambulance, free from any phone and answered in Estonian, English and Russian. - **Visa:** Schengen, 90 days in 180 Estonia joined Schengen on 21 December 2007, so days here count against the same allowance as France or Germany. Check the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for your nationality before booking. - **Getting around:** Trains, coaches and ferries Elron runs Tallinn to Tartu in a little over two hours. Coaches cover the towns and ferry ports beyond the railway, and ferries from Virtsu and Rohuküla serve Saaremaa and Hiiumaa. - **Tipping:** Round up, 10% is generous Service is not added to the bill. Rounding up covers a coffee or a bar tab, and ten percent in a restaurant is generous. - **Time zone:** EET, UTC+2 Eastern European Time, with summer time from late March to late October. One hour ahead of Berlin and Paris, the same clock as Helsinki and Riga. - **Digital state:** Online by default Estonians file taxes, sign contracts and vote online, and non-residents have been offered a digital identity since 2014. Visitors notice free public wifi and card payment on every bus. - **Nature access:** Everyman’s right You may walk, pick berries and gather mushrooms on most uncultivated land, fenced yards and fields excepted. The State Forest Management Centre keeps free trails, huts and campfire sites. ## When to visit - **Jan** - **Feb** - **Mar** - **Apr** - **May** (good) - **Jun** (best) - **Jul** (peak) - **Aug** (best) - **Sep** (good) - **Oct** - **Nov** - **Dec** (good) ## Fun fact Estonia launched e-Residency on 1 December 2014, the first programme anywhere to give people with no physical connection to a country a state-issued digital identity and the right to run a company in it online. ## Stereotypes, sorted out - **Myth:** Estonia is a day trip from Helsinki **Reality:** The ferry does cross in about two hours, and a day gives you the old town and nothing else. Tartu, the west-coast islands and Lahemaa are each half a day from Tallinn, and they are the reason to stay a week. - **Myth:** It is basically Russia **Reality:** Estonian is Finno-Ugric, closer to Finnish than to any Slavic language. The Soviet Union occupied the country from 1940 until independence was restored in 1991. It joined the EU and NATO in 2004 and the euro in 2011. The Russian-speaking minority is real, largest in Narva and parts of Tallinn. - **Myth:** Estonians are cold **Reality:** Reserve is not rudeness. Small talk is thin and silence is comfortable, but ask a direct question and you get a direct, generous answer. Open with tere. - **Myth:** The old town is the whole country **Reality:** Tallinn’s medieval centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1997 and covers about a square kilometre. Forest covers roughly half of Estonia, the bogs behind the coast are walked on boardwalks, and the west breaks into islands you reach by ferry. - **Myth:** There is nothing to do in winter **Reality:** Winter is the sauna season, the Christmas market fills Raekoja plats through December, and Otepää in the south is a cross-country skiing town. The days are short. That is what the candles are for. - **Myth:** Everything is digital, so nothing is old **Reality:** Estonia files taxes and votes online, and it also holds a song festival that has run since 1869 and keeps a Hanseatic street plan that has barely moved since the thirteenth century. Both are the same country. - Say tere on the way in and aitäh on the way out. Two words shift the temperature of an exchange here further than a paragraph of English does. - Take your shoes off indoors. In homes, many offices and most guesthouses, the slippers by the door are for you. - Sauna is washing, not a party. You go in clean and quiet, without a swimsuit in single-sex saunas, and the phone stays outside. - Silence is not awkward. Estonians leave gaps in a conversation and do not rush to fill them, so filling them yourself reads as nervous. - Everyman’s right lets you walk, pick berries and gather mushrooms on most uncultivated land. Fenced yards and planted fields are the exception, and you leave no trace. - Tipping is light. Service is not added to the bill, so rounding up covers most of it and ten percent in a restaurant is generous. - The song festival is not folklore staged for visitors. It runs every five years, tens of thousands sing, and the tradition carried the country through the Singing Revolution in 1988. ## Famous Estonian faces - **Arvo Pärt**: Composer of Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel, for years the most performed living composer - **Lennart Meri**: Writer and documentary film-maker who became the first president of the restored republic - **Paul Keres**: Chess grandmaster who contended for the world title across three decades - **Kelly Sildaru**: Freestyle skier, X Games champion at thirteen and Olympic bronze medallist in 2022 - **Neeme Järvi**: Conductor with one of the largest discographies in classical recording - **Veljo Tormis**: Choral composer who set Baltic Finnic runic song for modern choirs - **Jaan Kross**: Novelist of The Czar’s Madman and Estonia’s most translated writer - **Lydia Koidula**: Poet and playwright at the centre of the nineteenth-century national awakening - **Erki Nool**: Decathlon gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 - **Gerd Kanter**: Discus gold at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 - **Anett Kontaveit**: Tennis player who reached world number two before retiring in 2023 - **Kaja Kallas**: Prime minister 2021 to 2024, now the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs - **Konstantin Päts**: First head of state of the independent republic, deported after the 1940 occupation - **Karl Ernst von Baer**: Naturalist at Tartu who identified the mammalian egg and founded modern embryology - **Michel Sittow**: Renaissance portraitist born in Tallinn, court painter to Isabella of Castile - **Taavet Hinrikus**: Skype’s first employee, then co-founder of the money-transfer company Wise - **Ahti Heinla**: Wrote Skype's code, then co-founded the delivery-robot company Starship Technologies ## Must-try Estonian food - **Must leib**: Dense sour rye, on the table at every meal and the base of half the dishes below. - **Mulgipuder**: Barley and potato mashed together with pork and fried onion, from the south. - **Hapukapsad**: Slow-braised sauerkraut, the standing partner to roast pork at Christmas. - **Kartulisalat**: Potato salad bound with sour cream, at every celebration table. - **Verivorst**: Blood sausage with barley, baked and served with lingonberry jam. - **Sült**: Jellied pork, sliced cold and eaten with mustard and black bread. - **Karbonaad**: Breaded pork cutlet, the weekday plate in any canteen. - **Kiluvõileib**: Baltic sprat on buttered black bread with egg, the national open sandwich. - **Rosolje**: Beetroot, herring, potato and egg in a pink dressing. - **Suitsukala**: Smoked flounder, perch and eel from the coast and from Lake Peipus. - **Kama**: Roasted grain flour stirred into buttermilk or kefir, sweet and grainy. - **Kohuke**: A curd bar in a chocolate shell, from any supermarket cold case. - **Vastlakukkel**: A cardamom bun packed with whipped cream, eaten on Shrove Tuesday. - **Kringel**: Plaited sweet bread with cardamom and raisins, sold by the coil. - **Vana Tallinn**: A dark rum liqueur, sweet and spiced, poured neat or into coffee. - **Kali**: Fermented bread drink, barely alcoholic and drunk cold all summer. ## By theme - [Christmas markets](https://wimup.com/christmas-markets.md) - [Old towns](https://wimup.com/old-towns.md) ## FAQs ### How many days do you need in Estonia? Five to seven. Three nights in Tallinn covers the old town, Kumu and Kadriorg, and the rest buys Tartu plus one of the two coasts: Lahemaa in the north or the Saaremaa ferry in the west. A long weekend works if Tallinn is all you want. ### When is the best time to visit Estonia? June to August, when the light runs late into the evening, the sea is swimmable and every island ferry is on the summer timetable. December is the other case: the Raekoja plats market, snow more often than not, and the cheapest rooms of the year. ### Is Estonia expensive to visit? Less than the Nordic countries across the water, and more than it was a decade ago. Budget roughly €80–140 per person per day mid-range, and less outside Tallinn, where rooms and restaurants drop noticeably. ### Do you need to speak Estonian? No. English is widely spoken in Tallinn and Tartu and among younger Estonians everywhere. Russian is a first language for a large minority, especially in Narva. Tere and aitäh still go a long way. ### Can you get around Estonia without a car? Yes for the main routes. Elron’s trains run Tallinn to Tartu in a little over two hours, and intercity coaches reach the towns and the ferry ports the railway does not. A car earns its keep for Lahemaa’s manor houses and the smaller island roads. ## Related countries - [Italy](https://wimup.com/country/italy.md) - [France](https://wimup.com/country/france.md) - [All of Europe](https://wimup.com/europe) Part of [Europe](https://wimup.com/europe.md) ## Sources - [Tourism board](https://visitestonia.com/en?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Visa](https://vm.ee/en?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.