Weekend trips from Tallinn: islands, bogs and a ferry to Helsinki

Estonia is small and flat and its weekends are easy, which is more than most capitals can say.

Helsinki is the obvious one: two hours by ferry, several sailings a day, and cheap enough that Estonians do it for lunch. A night there is a genuinely different city, and the ferry itself is half the experience. Book the return before you go on a summer weekend.

Saaremaa, the big western island, is three hours including the ferry crossing and is the classic Estonian escape — windmills, a crater, a castle at Kuressaare, and spa hotels that the whole country goes to in winter. Two nights is right.

Lahemaa National Park, an hour east, is the underrated one. Bogs with boardwalks across them, forest, a stretch of coast, and manor houses converted into places to stay. The bog walk at sunrise is one of the strangest and best things in the Baltics and almost nobody outside Estonia knows about it.

Tartu, two and a half hours south, is the university town and the country's intellectual centre — smaller, younger and with a better bar scene per capita than Tallinn.

And Riga, at four and a half hours by coach, is a stretch for a weekend but works if you leave on Friday evening.

One seasonal note: the islands in winter are quiet in a way that is either wonderful or bleak depending entirely on your temperament and the ferry schedule.