Here’s why Riga is awesome…

• My hostel is a 5 minute walk from the bus station
• Lots of thrift shops
• Art nouveau buildings everywhere 
• Folks are almost friendly
• Free tea and coffee at my hostel
• Cheap washing machines (you’re welcome, airplane seat mates)

I found just what I needed here; a night in doing laundry and drinking tea.

Sightseeing-related, I found the greatest bunch of shops with actual handmade items. Not like that Chinese crap I found in Russia. Lots of cool wooden toys and felted wool.

Also had time to see a few local highlights. The most important was the museum of the local KGB headquarters for Riga/Latvia. Not particularly a pleasant topic, but it’s important to see actual historic sites before they’re whitewashed. The Soviet occupation is still very fresh in everyones mind for sure.

Tomorrow is my only whole day here so I hope to achieve a lot.

Good night!

Very nice, indeed.

Okay, what a great little city. Good metro service (trams), enough parks, free city Wi-Fi.

The major art museum was a good deal, there’s a lot to see. My favorite was a temporary exhibit of mostly drawings and etchings of the seedier side of life: sex, drugs, STD’s, alcohol, death…you get the picture. Very dark and depressing.

I pretty much ran out of must-do’s, so I just wandered around the biggest park all afternoon. There’s a beginner Japanese garden; I’d love to come back in 10 years and see how it develops.

My evening was spent talking to a gal from Slovakia. She’d just spent a year living on the isle of Wight and had all sorts of terrible things to say about it lol. Also she had lots to say about the refugee issue in the newest eurozone countries, and their quotas as well. Very insightful.

Now I’m at the bus station waiting for the bus for Riga. It should take 4.5 hours. We’ll see…. (ominous rumbling)

Have a great day, everybody!

It’s a smallish type of place, but enough to be seen in a couple of days.  I got the impression from the tour guide that it’s okay that the weather was kinda crappy today. It kept the streets empty and easy to navigate. 

I visited the Estonian history museum first thing today. It was a good little place. As with a lot of museums I saw this year, there was an exhibit about the 500th anniversary of Protestantism. The permanent exhibit went over Estonian history from the 1200s to the 2000s. Estonian wasn’t a written language until relatively recently, so that’s why such a short time period.

In 2018, Estonia will be celebrating 100 years of being a republic. The republic was basically under occupation until 1991. So the progress that this little country has made in that time has been remarkable. I’d live here, you know?

After a snack, the usual walking tour. The guide had a great routine about the ridiculousness of the Estonian language. It’s similar to Finnish. So it truly is awful.

After warming up, I walked outside of the old town a little to an area of renovated Soviet warehouses. Yay, gentrification!! In this case, well done because it is super cool. Lots of neat shops and cafes like you’d expect, and lots of street art too. Which I of course love.

When my toes were icicles, I found a bakery which had some “black bread” I wanted to try. It’s great! So good with peanut butter….but then isn’t everything? 

Tomorrow an art museum maybe?

Bye!

It went, but slowly…so slowly.

I spent 70 of my available 72 hours in Russia. It was great. 

Then, lots of sitting around for the ferry to depart Russian territory. Got lots of reading done. Met two cool couples from the UK. We talked about Trump, healthcare, travel, and Brexit. They convinced me to travel to India as a single female. So that’s good. Someday soon?

Today at noon we arrived in Tallinn, the Estonian capital and largest city. I spent several hours just getting some walking in. The points of interest are mainly in the historic center as usual. Like a lot of European countries, there’s a history of occupation by Russia and/or Germany. So that interests me of course.

I went to a violin/organ concert at the old Lutheran church here. Very nice, but man I’m glad it was short. Those pews….lord save us they were uncomfortable!

I’m at a party hostel for the next 3 nights. All quiet so far, but we shall see. If nothing else, there is free breakfast and coffee to make it ok.

Good night 😚