Things to Do in Pärnu

Beach promenade walk at sunset

The wooden promenade runs 2km along Pärnu's main beach. Around 10pm in midsummer you'll share it with teenagers clutching ice creams and grandparents timing evening strolls to perfection. Gulls wheel overhead while the sun drops into the gulf. Water turns brassy gold. Sand shifts to that pewter grey photographers love.

Pärnu Mud Baths

The 19th-century spa complex reeks pleasantly of minerals and eucalyptus. Attendants in white coats smear warm black mud across your back before wrapping you like a human burrito. Through tall windows pine trees sway while therapeutic heat seeps into joints that complained during yesterday's beach volleyball.

Supilinn soup district wander

This former workers' quarter earns its name from crooked houses that look like uptupt bowls. Today they wear sherbet colors and morning glories climb the walls. Kids splash in the fountain at Supeluse and Kalda streets' intersection. Parents smoke on doorsteps. You feel you're wandering where tourists haven't quite arrived.

Pärnu River kayak trip

Paddle upstream from the yacht club. You'll pass riverside saunas exhaling sweet birch-smoke and old men fishing for perch off rickety piers. Water turns tea-brown beneath overhanging willows. At the stone railway bridge teenagers dare each other to jump. Their shouts echo off the arches.

Koidula Museum

The yellow wooden house where Estonia's national poet Lydia Koidula once lived smells of old paper and floor wax. Creaking parquet makes you tiptoe past her writing desk. In the garden heritage roses drop petals onto the path. Recordings whisper her verses in Estonian and English. Unexpectedly moving even if you've never heard of her.

Beachfront: 1970s spa hotels with balconies facing the gulf. Expect Soviet-block architecture but unbeatable sunrise views.

Old Town: Guesthouses tucked into 18th-century merchants' houses around Nikolai Church. Expect cobblestones and bakery smells.

Supilinn: Colorful wooden houses turned into Airbnb gems. Pick raspberries from the fence.

Riia maantee: Chain hotels and shopping centers. Practical if you've got a rental car.

Papiniidu: Residential peninsula with yacht marinas and fish-smoke shacks. 15 minutes' walk to the beach.

Vana-Pärnu: Quiet streets south of the center where villas hide behind lilac hedges.