Riga and Sigulda

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We spent the day wandering around the wonderful old town of Kuldiga, it is not visited by many OS travellers as it is a little off the beaten track so a hire car makes it a bit easier, it was well worth the drive.
We drove on to Jurmala, we decided to stay in the Latvian resort town and make a 30 min train ride into Riga. We stayed at the lovely Jurgas Banga 2 mins from the main mall and 1 min from the beach.
The next day we spent the day in Riga old town and the area with all the art nouveau buildings particularly Albert St. Henry wanted to go for a drink of Latvian real beer in a place called Alberta Pipes it was a specialist pipe shop where people particularly men went to talk politics. We had an interesting evening, met Normus and Andis, with quite a walk back to the train station, we missed dinner so HK had a hot dog at the train station and we got the last train home!

The next morning I walked up and got fresh Piroshki for breakfast another beautiful day so we went to the beach for to eat.
We headed off for Tartu but spent several hours walking through the forest, on the cable car and visiting Sigulda and Turaida castles, another beautiful town.
We have had amazing weather, beautiful sunshine other than when we left Vilnius, temps between 25 - 30C every day, we are so lucky.

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Photos

Widest waterfall in Europe
This waterfall is 250m wide in spring and early summer in the afternoon there were people swimming and trying to catch fish as the salmon swim upstream here

The old museum
This building was used at a world expo in Paris by the Russians then pulled apart shipped to Kuldiga and set up on this site in 1900

us in a sand cave
The sand caves were owned by a family for 4 generations, the sand was exported for glass manufacturing, closed in the soviet era now just for tours

The assistants lab in the pharmacy museu
The pharmacy museum was so interesting, showing from medieval times, courtyard with all sorts of herbs and the lab and more

art nouveau building
one of many, so interesting particularly Albert street

Andis, Maira, Lynda and Normus in the Alberta Pipes club
Henry saw that real beer was sold in here but it turned out to be a pipe club where people go to chat about politics and other things, Normus introduced himself as soon as we arrived and kindly insisted on shouting us a beer, he and Andis told us about the new President elected the day before and some project opportunities.

Breakfast on the beach in Jurmal
We had fresh Piroshki that I went and bought from the bakery in the mall, just like Henry's mum used to make

Comments

[Wendy and Tim Wilk]

Canterwilk 1
Sounds like a great experience. Look forward to hearing more