We decided with my wife to make a trip before school/daycare start. After bouncing some ideas, we ended up visiting Pärnu in Estonia. A place we heard good about, and that seems to be popular at the moment.
Before the trip
Accommodation
As we were rather late with the reservation and planning (mid July), there was not much of choice for cheaper hotels, so we ended up to go for Airbnb. We found a very promising apartment close to the beach, and the price for 3 nights was acceptable for us. The price was actually cheaper then a hotel rooms, and this for a whole apartment for two adults and 3 children. The apartment contained A/C, 3 bedrooms, shower and bathtub and even a sauna.
Getting there
As a family of five travels for four day’s, there’s a need for some stuff, and we decided to go by boat and take our car with us. We reserved the boat trip from Tallink Silja, for Tuesday morning. After a 2 hour ferry ride, we then have a little shy 2 hour drive, from Tallinn to Pärnu. On Friday we then head back to Tallinn and the ferry for Finland. Earlier this summer I went on a cruise and traveled
with the ship M/S Megastar, and liked the boat then, so we now made sure we would use that ship this time for both ferry rides.
Google Maps gave me one route, when looking for car travel between Tallinn and Pärnu. This seems like the best, fastest and most convenient.
Packing
When it came to packing that was pretty easy. Our trip would only last from Tuesday to Friday. To get our 3 girls ready and excited about the upcoming trip, we let themselves to pick out what to wear, and then gather the things. We as parents just sat and checked and verified their choices, of course. The girls loved the activation and there was a lot of giggles and running back and forth between their closest and the living room, where we ask them to gathered their stuff.
Luckily our car has good sized trunk, so everything would fit well, without breaking a sweat. What later on would be needed to take into consideration was that, I made a pre-order for some beer and wines for the ferry ride home, as they are cheaper in Estonia than Finland. So on our way back the trunk needs to be packed in a way that the purchases fit in easily.
Day one of the trip (6.8.)
The first time on my vacation a alarm clock needed to be set, so that we wouldn’t be late. Breakfast at home, and off we went to the harbour.
As the ship was setting of 10:30 am, and the passengers with car’s had to be at least one hour before departure we set off in time. We arrived 9:10 as the anticipation on the backseat was very high.
I have the Silja mobile app on my phone, the check-in was easy to do the day before without any problem. When we arrived to the harbour, we got smoothly in a check-in queues, but when there was only 3 cars in front of us, we noticed that we by mistake had chosen the Business Class check-in row. At the time we noticed that, there was nothing to do, we just had to go along all the way to the booth. When it was our turn to check-in, there were no problems despite being in the wrong queue, and we got thru easily. Then there was just the issue of waiting for the ferry to arrive, and disembark the previous route cars, and load the travelling cars heading for Tallinn.
10:30, right on time the ferry departed, and as always the highest priority was to find the kids corner.
When that was done, we spent the majority of the ferry ride there. Later on we had a meal just before arriving. When the dessert ice cream was eaten, we headed down to the car, and arrived perfectly. To the joy and surprise there was face painting for the kids, and not to anyone’s surprise, all our 3 kids wanted one.
Off the boat we went, and then started the maybe most interesting part (for us parents), driving thru Tallinn and head the car for Pärnu. The drive thru Tallinn went well, one little detour was taken due to the Google navigations advise, which seemed a bit out of date.
The drive itself went fine via the road number 4/E67, that goes straight down from Tallinn to Pärnu. The scenery is just like in Finland so no surprises there. What we did face was a VERY hard rain shower, which I can’t remember to have faced only a couple of times before. Everything went fine and at 15:00 we were at our apartment. The place is just as nice as in the pictures on Airbnb site, and getting in both to parking space and apartment went great with the good instructions our host has made.
The weather has been windy and cloudy, but pretty good temperature. Hopefully the weather will be good and at least one day could be spent on the beach, but the forecast is not too promising for tomorrow with rain and lightnings.
We took a little breather at the apartment, and then headed off to get to know the surrounding area, the famous beach and to go purchase food for supper as well as tomorrow’s breakfast. The store that was closest to our “home” was a place called Ranna Comarket, which ended up being a very small store, and not everything we were hoping to get was found. We still manage to get what was needed and headed back home.
A quick bite to eat, then a little of watching Netflix for the girls, and now were are waiting to see how long it takes for them to fall asleep.
Budbuda 
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