A down day.

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We should have known better when we saw that the restaurant had only one other customer! Having spent a cold, wet evening in Cesis, and an equally cold and drizzly morning walking round a lovely park and the old and new Cesis castles (the new one now being a museum), we drove on to Estonia, passing the deserted Latvia/Estonia border control buildings with no one to care who we were or where we were going. We saw several black and white storks alongside the main road and, after mile upon mile of Latvian forests and grassland, more of the fields now contained crops.

It was warm and sunny when we reached Tartu and we found a much nicer room for two nights than we'd had the previous night, which is why we were lulled into thinking our hotel's restaurant would be equally good. There was a chamber concert on in a nearby church so we decided to eat afterwards for a change. Our Eastonian-style lamb dinners arrived surprisingly quickly and weren't what I was expecting. The "steamed spring vegetables" turned out to be a root vegetable - maybe turnip? - long cooked in the same sauce as the meat and potatoes. The extremely well-cooked meat didn't taste of lamb to me at all and I would have complained but for Keith insisting that it was lamb and that he was enjoying his. After our plates were cleared away, we asked for dessert and were told we were out of luck, the kitchen had closed. It was about 1 minute to 10 p.m. and, in retrospect, I think we were simply served whatever main meal they had left because the kitchen staff were clearing up for the evening, but it was a bit late to say anything other than 'no' when asked if I'd enjoyed my dinner. So much for eating fashionably late. The next evening we gave up on being adventurous and had pasta at an Italian restaurant that was almost full all the time we were there and which we both enjoyed.

We find, as in Latvia, Russia and Paris, that although locals look at us as we pass in the street they don't return our smiles. Estonia seems a bit more expensive than Latvia. We wonder if this is anything to do with their having the Euro for their currency (Latvia uses Lats which exchange for approximately $2/Lat. Also as in Latvia, a lot of work is being done to renovate old buildings and many statues that reflect upon the culture and identity of these countries and that were destroyed during the Soviet Time have now been replaced.

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Photos

Estonian storks
En route to Tartu