There were eight of us who had a package deal that included two-way tickets and hotel rooms for two nights. The fun started on Thursday night on the boat. Although in the beginning we suffered through really horrible singing in the bar. Later we went up to the disco/club/dance floor and had some interesting experiences observing some of the customers. Fun night, we retired around four.

On Friday we got off the boat, some of our party got ripped off by a taxi driver, some actually remembered my warning. Unfortunately there is a tendency by port or airport cab drivers to ask for a lot more money from innocent tourists. Nothing helps if they have a doctored meter, but usually once you got a meter on, the fare will be fair.

We left our bags at a hotel and went to the Old Town to have lunch. Later I took some people fabric shopping, run some errands while they went back to the Old Town and visited mom before meeting everybody at the hotel again at five PM. We took our stuff to the event site, met lots of cool people who were arriving and had oodles of fun catching up. Later I took some of the people to have dinner in one of my favorite restaurants and got back to the site right before the doors closed for the night.

The curfew was/is one of the problems with this site. An SCA party involves consuming various amounts of alcohol. The site, being a school, was dry. Which is OK in itself, but not OK when one can't stay out and party, then go back to the site. This combination will diminish the number of people ever coming back to an Estonian SCA event drastically. And that is a shame because they are fun to be around, even when one doesn't drink. They just accept it and party on. We went to bed around five again.

Saturday morning arrived a bit too early. I got up, left the heavy partiers to sleep and went down to see if I could help out. I was given a task, but then one self-appointed busybody decided she was The One to do it, so I just watched the tourney. I didn't understand any fighting technicalities, but enjoyed the show anyway. Fortunately R is a heavy fighter and he will explain things to me at next event or fighters practice. He was missed at the event, both by me and by his friends. Real life interfered and he could not come.

After the tourney and lunch I hung out with various groups of friends I've made. There are so many cool people in the SCA and you want to hang out with all of them at the same time. That is impossible, but I managed to spend some time with everybody I knew and met some new people too. Fun, fun, fun.

The feast at Olde Hansa was a disappointment. The quality of their food has degraded and paying for an expensive feast where only dessert was actually tasty, is not worth it. I will not be going back there, if I want to eat that cake, I'll go to the restaurant and order it for much less money. After the feast some of us went back to the site, packed up and took the bags to the hotel. Then we went out to a pub and stayed out until the pub closed at four.

I'd set the alarm to go off at 9 AM so I'd be at the school at 10. Luckily my mom called me at ten or we'd slept much longer. The weather had turned ugly — it was raining sideways, except it couldn't really decide if it was really raining or snowing. I tried to call the event steward and cancel the tour. Instead of getting a herald to announce it, she had me go to the site and do it myself. Fine. It turned out that there was one person who was slightly interested, but agreed that you can't see much when it's raining in your eyes. So the tour was canceled.

After saying a few goodbyes I went back to the hotel. There was a couple who was interested in buyng a travel backpack, the rest wanted to go to the Old Town again. I took the couple shopping and we met with the others at the hotel at 5 PM to take our luggage to the ferry port. Once back on the ferry we had a light dinner. I went to bed and slept, my cabin mate returned around 2 AM.

This morning we took it easy getting off the ferry, had a leisurely lunch at Central Station and parted. I got home around 2PM, completely pooped, but happy.

There are a few things I know to avoid if there will be another event at the school site. Other than that I had a blast, the whole weekend would have been perfect if R could have been there. I am planning to organize just a party weekend in Tallinn. No SCA event, no school with a curfew, just a bunch of friends and a good place to party. It promises to be another successful weekend.