Gauja National Park

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After a reasonably refreshing night’s sleep, we awoke ready for a foray into our second national park, Gauja. We packed the appropriate rain gear (Rīga and the surrounding area apparently gets quite a lot of precipitation) and had a hearty breakfast of yogurt, fruit, bread, and hard-boiled quail eggs. Yes, quail eggs. We’ve seen them in a handful of supermarkets, packed in their own little containers, and just couldn’t resist buying some. Unsurprisingly, they taste like eggs, but perhaps just a little . . . smokier?

Fortified with nutrients, we packed our small backpack and headed to the train station. There’s a route that heads directly east from Rīga and drops off in Sigulda, essentially at the start of our intended hike, and how could we say no to a train trip? The train itself was not in particularly good repair (interior and exterior alike), and the trip was a little rickety with not much clue about which stop was which, but it got us to where we wanted to go; getting off where all the other people with backpacks did was a good guess. Along the way, we noted that the forests looked quite different from the ones we saw in Estonia, but maybe that was partially due to the teeming mushroom hunters roaming, heads-down, over the hillocks.

Sigulda is not very far into Gauja National Park, just barely into the western edge, but the sights were magical. Our first two stops appear to have been actually contained within the town of Sigulda: the “new castle” erected in the 18th century was very stately and had a lovely flower display bordering the approach to the castle. Unfortunately, as it seemed was the case for quite a few tourist attractions, it was closed on weekends. (?) The second attraction on our side of the Gauja River was a ruined castle, originally built sometime in the century.
After gazing at those beauties for a while, we found our way back to the path, past a cute playground and display of colourful walking sticks (these are apparently Sigulda’s emblem) and to a cable car! This afforded us a fantastic view of the Gauja River below and a great many trees on our way over to a brief stop for lunchables and the second half of the trip.
We skipped a detailed look at a reportedly lovely manor in favour of heading directly down several steep sets of stairs (only some of which were missing treads) just to find that there was yet another decline to traverse. This one was a serpentine path down the hill, which would have been incredibly easy walking had: a) my legs not been shaking from the stairs (apparently my mid-calves are a little weaker than I thought); and b) it not been steadily raining. The rain actually helped us see plenty of snails, though -- their shells were glistening, and they were EVERYWHERE -- and most of the time we were under trees, so it was on the whole pleasant.
Getting to the bottom, we looked at the lay of the land and found that we’d actually gone too far: the next set of ruins were actually at the top of the serpentine. Back up we went, and we’re glad we did. The second set of ruins were much more deserted than the first (no floodlights or amphitheatre, for example) and the rain made everything positively gorgeous. A couple of pictures there, and we were off back down the serpentine path to the cave.
Gūtmaņala not only is the largest erosion cave in Latvia, it’s also covered in graffiti. We’re not talking spray-paint tagging here. People over the last two centuries have been carving their statements of love, faith, or what seemed to be guild associations into the soft rock walls, completely ignoring the “please no graffiti” signs also posted there. We respectfully abstained from leaving a lasting impression in the cave and grabbed water and a bus back to the train station for our return trip.

The remainder of the day was calming: a train ride back to Rīga, making dinner, and watching some Latvian TV before calling it quits for the night. Lessons learned during this period:

* From the looks of it, absolutely every house in Latvia has an apple tree (or seventeen) in their backyard. This might be why none of the apples in the store are local; if you’re going to buy an apple, why would you want it to be one you likely have three tonnes of?
* Some Latvian TV seems to actually be Latvian programming, but most of it is American TV subtitled in Russian and dubbed over in Latvian, with the same voice for all characters. If it’s really fancy they’ll have one male and one female voice.
* Yes, our feet really could take more walking if we pushed them.


Exhausted, we rested for our next day of exploration in Vecrīga, the Old Town.

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Photos

Ruin
A pretty ruin in the rain.

Sigulda's Symbol
The umbrellas seemed awfully fitting.

New Sigulda
The new castle was lovely from the outside, at least.

Cave Graffiti
You can't make out the inscriptions, but you can see how high they had to climb to carve them.

Cable Car
Graham on the cable car as we crossed the Gauja River.

Comments

[Laurie]

Ha, I remember that one-voice dub-over phenomenon from Krakow, too! It cracked me up!!

[Genevieve]

WRUW ubiquity rocks
My, Graham, what a fetching shirt you are wearing in Latvia!!