How Do You Spell "M-E-D-I-Æ-V-A-L"?

In case anyone following along does not know what the city's main tourist draw is, I thought it best to attach some photos of Tallinn's Old Town. Vana Tallinn -- Old Tallinn -- is incredibly cute, contained and perfectly photogenic. Come summer, however, it is said that the locals flee to the countryside as the cruise ships release their human consumer-cargoes to amass "suvenirid" and British stag party locusts swoop down on the city, plundering the various "erootika baar"s and "massaaz salong"s that pepper the crooks and crannies of the walled city. Until that time, a clear-skied, ice-cold day in the Old Town looks a little like what's pictured below.

It's the kind of place that the styrofoam-sword-wielders on Mont-Royal wish they were returning home to after a long day's battle, to reinforce their cardboard body armour with electrical tape and tend to wounds inflicted by Dollarama skull spears. Instead of taking out chicken wings, frites et sauce and tuning in to Star academie, they'd be hunched over wooden bowlfuls of steaming forest nutmeats and swilling spicy mead while being seen to by the town's plague doctor. Interestingly, there appears to be no local branch (whether canton, shire, barony or village) of the Society for Creative Anachronism in Estonia, despite the ready-made backdrop.

And le soir: