If you ever find yourself in Tallinn, feeling a bit jaded after traipsing round Vanalinn, Toompea, Kesklinn and all the other tourist traps in the central part of town, try looking a little further afield. For instance, there’s Kadriorg! Do yourself a favour and take the short tram or bus trip to Kadriorg (3.5km east of the Tallinn city centre) … especially if you are interested in seeing an 18th century Petrine Romanov palace that has touches of Versailles and Italian design about it. It’s not exactly Saint-Petersburg but it is certainly a pointer to what you should expect to find in that most western of Russian cities. The focal point of the suburb of Kadriorg (“Catherine’s Valley”) is an elegant, if small by Romanov standards, strawberry pink (green-roofed) palace. The palace (Est: Kadri Loss), is in a Baroque style, built by Peter the Great for Catherine I (not Catherine the Great but Peter the Great’s Empress, Catherine) as a summer palace. Unhappily the great Tsar died before it could be put to use, as a result Peter’s widow and thereafter Russia’s sole ruler showed no interest from that time on in wanting to live in it.

Currently the regal building is used to house the Kadriorgu Kunstimuuseum, a collection of predominantly Western and Russian art (€5.5 charge for entry (2015)). Kadri Palace has its own miniature version of a meticulously manicured Versaillesesque garden at the back. The surrounding parkland is vast, and it’s various trails are popular with cyclists and walkers alike. The parklands are attractive for visitors to stroll through whilst they brush up on who’s who in Estonian art history (the park has a series of sculptures of famous Estonian artists scattered around the grounds).

Other features of Kadriorg park include a Japanese garden, a canal with floral decorative bridges which bisects the park, and a monument (Russalka Memorial) by Estonian sculptor A Adamson. At the southern end of the parklands you can sit and relax with a picnic in a garden setting overlooking the majestic Swan Lake. The lake (or pond) is a beautiful, peaceful tree-lined pond with several little islands with domed pergolas. Close to the Swan pond is a bluish-grey and white rotunda which functions these days as the Park’s information point. Also check out the cute green mailbox across the road from the info point. Near the park entrance there is a kohvik-restoran with the distinctly German name Katherinethal.

That night, after returning from my excursion to Kadriorg, I rejoined the rest of our group in Town Hall square for a taste of Russian culture and cuisine (interestingly given the bitterness of the period of Soviet hegemony, ethnic Russians still account for over 36% of the city’s population). The place we chose was Kazatchok Restaurant in a nice location in the open space of the square. As the night and the dinner went on we were entertained by a series of dance routines by Russian dancers who donned several traditional, spectacularly colourful costumes. The dancing was very spirited, as befitting an “abundant fairytale”! The dancers were full of energetic leaps and bounds performed to the background music of predictable numbers like “Ra-Ra-Rasputin”!

Getting round to the dinner itself, the menu had a lot of options. No one was adventurous enough to try the ‘bear’ (as it turned out bear was out of season and thus unavailable in any case!). I didn’t like the sound of the boiled tongue much or the salted ‘surprises’ so I passed on the hunter’s menu and opted for the fish menu instead. To top a good night off, the establishment gave us all a shot of vodka on the house which we were encouraged to skol down in the spirit of Ruskiyzakazy! Good fun! Funnily enough, one of the waitress with a ridiculously huge red and green bow on her head bolted and hid when I took a photo of her. This was funny at the time but seemed strangely funny behaviour to me later because I found out that her sudden shyness at being snapped was rather at odds with the way she and her quaint Russian cultural outfit and big bright bow was brazenly splashed all over Kazatchok’s own website gallery in all its conspicuousness!