Transportation
VISA INFORMATION
Estonia is a part of the Schengen visa area. Nationals of EU and EEA member states are free to enter Estonia. The required travel document for entry is a national ID card or passport.
Please refer to the page of Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the list of nationals who need a visa for visiting Estonia.
Please contact us if you need help with the visa.
Getting to Tallinn
There exist direct flights to Tallinn (summer 2014) from many European cities. For information on the connections, see the web homepages of Tallinn Airport .
Tallinn is mostly served by traditional airlines whose flights are sold by any reasonable travel agent or online (Nordica, Adria, Lufthansa, Finnair, CSA, LOT, Air Baltic).
Tickets to the flights of easyJet from London Gatwick, norwegian.com from Oslo Gardermoen, Ryanair from Bremen, Dublin, Girona, London Stansted, Manchester, Milan Malpensa and Oslo Rygge are only sold online by the airlines.
If you need to change planes, you should probably do this at Amsterdam (KLM/Estonian), Frankfurt/Munich (Lufthansa), Copenhagen/Stockholm/Oslo (SAS), Helsinki (Finnair) or Riga (Air Baltic). If you are travelling from Asia, it is likely that your best itinerary is with Finnair with a change at Helsinki. Finnair is very much oriented at the Asian market and offers quick connections from Europe from China, Japan, South Korea in particular.
Late arrivals at, early departures from Tallinn are not to be worried about (or to try to optimize away). These times are the norm for Northern European airports. Luckily for you, in Tallinn, the airport is max 15 mins by taxi from any point in the city center. The airport is small, so collecting luggage goes also fast.
For ferry connections from/to Stockholm and Helsinki, see the web pages of Tallink , Viking Line and Eckerö Line .
From Vilnius, Riga, St Petersburg the coach services of Lux Express and Ecolines are the most practical travel option.
Getting from the airport to town
The city is 4 km from the airport and you reach it by taxi or scheduled bus.
Bus line no. 2 runs throughout the day (from early hours until quite late in the evening). You are travelling from "Lennujaam" (Airport) in the direction of "Reisisadam" (Passenger Port). The most centrally located stop in the city center is "A. Laikmaa" in front of Hotel Tallink, the travel time there is 13 min. The timetable can be found here .
(More about public transport and taxis in Tallinn below.)
Getting around in Tallinn
The public city transportation system of Tallinn, consisting of bus, tram and trolleybus traffic, is quite efficient. The services are many and they run frequently. Most stops have timetables (affixed to the stop signpost) and many also have a map of the transport system on display (in the waiting booth). Some stops have electronic displays showing the next incoming journeys in real-time. From the bus driver you can buy a paper ticket for a single journey, which costs 2 EUR. From the various sales points (R-Kiosk newsstands, Selver and Maxima supermarkets, post offices) you can buy a smartcard ( Ühiskaart ) for 2 EUR on which you can load prepayment or specific tickets, at a sales point or online at www.pilet.ee . The simplest is to prepay some amount. If you travelling with Ühiskaart , you have to validate the card on entry to the vehicle and the cost of a single journey (1.10 EUR) is subtracted from the prepayment. If you make a number of journeys during a single day, the total deduction from your prepayment is capped to 3 EUR.
A interactive public transportation map is available here . The timetables are here .
The best option for choosing and ordering a taxi is to use the smartphone app Taxify (available for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone). If not, then it is always preferable to order a taxi by phone rather than taking a taxi from the street. You could consider a phone order even at the airport, certainly you should not take a random taxi from outside the official taxi rank at the airport. The reasonable rates are ~2.50 EUR initial fare + ~0.50 EUR per km charge, but many companies / private adventurers charge much more ( Taxi comparison table, in Estonian ). Check the tariffs on the window of the taxi vehicle (there must be a yellow A4 size tariffs sticker).
Always request a printed receipt. All taxi cars are required to have printers.
Interactive Maps of Tallinn and Estonia
Map of Tallinn (1)
Map of Tallinn (2)
OpenStreetMap (3)