For our guests we are offering comfy accommodations in Saaremaa, Kuressaare city center. We are located in private holding area with lots of trees and green. Kuressaare Castle and sandy beach is just 10-minutes walking distance from our guesthouse. We are perfect match for bicycle tourists and backpackers, but also for families and couples.
GUESTHOUSE
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STUDIOAPARTMENTS
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We are closed due to hotel stall winter holiday. We welcome you back in April!
Hard to imagine sitting in a room when it rains outside and there is nothing but bed and table. Sometimes weather can play a trick on you forcing to stay inside. For that we have just installed new 32” LCD TVs. You can even bring your own episodes of your favourite series or a move on USB stick and watch that directly from TV without using PC.
Whenever I’m travelling the root question that everything else is based on is “How can I find local businesses?”. Leaving shopping for clothes and souvenir aside, where can I find nearest grocery store or restaurant?
When you are staying in 3 or 4 start hotel, you can easily ask reception for directions or get a map form local tourist centre. More tech savvy people probably prefer to use digital resources – online maps.
Saaremaa, or more particularly, Kuressaare is small town that in world context doesn’t get too much attention. That means online map providers do not have it covered in too much details, especially when it comes to local businesses. I did a small research to find out which has the best coverage.
Google Maps – obvious choice most people.
Some of local businesses, restaurants, hotels are shows on the map. But once you type in “restaurant kuressaare” and hit “Search” several pubs and restaurants are reviled with user review and link to homepage.
http://goo.gl/9m8O4
What’s more, last summer Google released SreetView mode for Kuressaare town. In fact all the biggest roada on Saaremaa are now covered, so you can take a virtual tour.
When looking at map of Kuressaare all you can see are streets and street names, that’s it. No local business what so ever. Typing in same keyword “restaurant kuressaare” reviles absolutely nothing.
http://binged.it/T4VccG
Yahoo! Maps follows pretty much the same pattern as Bing. Street names are nicely laid out, you can even see attempt to guess shape and size of the buildings. Searching for “restaurant kuressaare” doesn’t any good.
http://y.ahoo.it/w3d/Igsp
Open Street Map – community based free worldwide maps
Look at Kuressaare using standard layer expects you to zoom in to as much as you can before reviling local businesses. I’ve got to say – what I’m seeing is quite impressive. Community members have done great work mapping out Kuressaare town. Not only restaurants, but also drugstores, churches, nightclubs, libraries – everything is there.
Search on the other hand does not help you much. Using keyword “restaurant kuressaare” returns with 2 results and only one of these is what you’d call a restaurant.
http://osm.org/go/0a774hp9
I myself still prefer using old style paper maps – it’s not very convenient searching for restaurant but once you have market the place on the map it will take you there.
It’s this time of year when you take out your skiing gear and go out to the nature. At Saaremaa there are several great skiing track where you enjoy the ride, many of these quite close to Kuressaare:
Weather forecast promises some snow with near gale wind, nothing too scare I’m sure. As they say – there is no bad weather just wrong equipment.
