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Published: September 13th 2008
Riga
Art Nouveau, cobblestones, medieval cellar restaurants and barely a hint of Soviet times to be seen.As we settle into the seats on our ‘cheap as chips’ flight bound for Riga, the pilot makes his welcome-on-board announcement, ‘good morning ladies and gentlemen, today we’ll be flying over Norwich, Amsterdam then on to… Bratislava!!’ We have a bit of a laugh then consider the ramifications of actually ending up in Slovakia. So we check with the air steward who relays a message to the pilot. The second announcement comes over the loud speaker, ‘For those of you who were actually listening at this early hour of the morning, we are bound today for Riga, not Bratislava.’ Phew…
With that sorted, our flight did end up flying north - not south - and a few hours later we’ve checked in at our backpackers in the centre of Riga, Latvia.
When we left the UK all we knew about Latvia is that it has a population of about 2.5 million, that it is one of the most forested parts of Europe (with one of the only populations of wild European wolves left), its currency is the Lat, and that it has only been out from behind the iron curtain since 1991. To be honest we were expecting it
to be a little bit like ‘Russia for Beginners’.
With this limited knowledge naturally our first stop is the Tourist Information Centre. Armed now with information to occupy our next three days we decide the best way to get to know the city is to head out on one of the suggested city walking circuits.
Firstly Riga’s old town is nothing like Russia. Secondly it’s massive! There are loads of old buildings, plenty of narrow streets, a couple of squares, and hundreds of thousands of the biggest cobblestones that we’ve seen in Europe yet!
Apparently the buildings are ‘Art Nouveau’ in style. To us this translates to classic European looking buildings with funky window details and bright colours (although we’re certain the real definition is much more articulate). Either way, we’re impressed.
We stroll around for a couple of hours looking at the cool old town buildings before arriving at the freedom monument. Laying a wreath of flowers at the monument’s feet during the post WWII Soviet occupation was enough to have you sent to a Gulag (Communist prison work camps). These days the statue is watched over by the Latvian military and we happen to
Ahh the cobblestones
Rough on the ankles though arrive just in time to see the changing of the guard. Whilst its very ceremonial, the more impressive sight is the collection of flowers at the monument’s base… a uplifting sign that things are moving on here in the Baltics.
We’ve been enjoying ducking down all the side streets exploring Riga’s centre but the evening is getting on so we are on the lookout for somewhere to eat. We always try to eat the traditional cuisine of the country we’re in, so we eventually take a seat at a Latvian medieval themed cellar restaurant. Ariana has Bratwurst (blood sausage) and Lachlan has pickled herring. Our beer comes in ceramic goblets and we tuck into what is our strangest European food experience under the light of candles.
Friday morning greets us with overcast skies and threats of rain. We resign to the fact that we’ll probably have an indoors day so our first port of call for the morning is the Riga central market. Housed in four massive sheds (and in the space between) the market is a mixture of food stalls, Babushkas, pickpockets, the odd tourist, and plenty of Latvian locals doing their daily shop.
We’re not
keen on the rain so we wander past the fruit and vegetable stalls and head indoors to investigate. The first shed we enter is quite obviously the meat market where pork is the clear favourite. There are the odd cuts of lamb and beef as well but interestingly there isn’t much chicken at all.
We pass through a shed full of textiles and clothing to what seems to be a deli type market. Stalls are selling all sorts of salamis, cheeses, breads, pastries, and dried fruits and nuts. Hard and soured cheeses (like cottage cheese) are plentiful and when it comes to the breads, it’s a black and white matter - literally! The loaves are either heavy black Germanic bread or the typical crusty white loaves that are common across the rest of Europe.
The fish market is in the final shed where we find all sorts of smoked, dried, pickled, salted and frozen fish. What’s amazing is the quantity and quality of the fresh salmon. At only a couple of Lats per kilo it’s exceptional value and the sparkling clear eyes of the fish are a testament to the short period that they’ve spent out of water.
Rundale Palace
A popular place for a wedding photo No wonder they are on the one Lat coin!
We duck back into the deli part and grab an assortment of pastries for lunch before heading down to the bus station. What we’re aiming to do is travel towards the Lithuanian border, near a town called Bauska. From there we need to catch another bus to get to our final destination, Rundale Palace.
The problem with buses is that they aren’t on rails and the stops aren’t well signposted - but we decide to brave it anyway. Everything goes more or less to plan and at Bauska we switch buses and head towards Rundale Palace.
At Rundale Palace, with the rain temporarily clearing, we opt to explore the French gardens first. It’s obviously a favourite spot for local weddings as during our stroll we see at least four or five wedding groups being ordered around by their photographers. It’s no wonder really, because the views of 250 year old building are truly beautiful.
The extensive Palace interior is ornately decorated with magnificent timber furniture, East Asian porcelain, painted vaulted ceilings, and chandeliers. It truly is an impressive building and surrounded by 10 hectares of gardens backing
onto the forest, it’s in a great spot too.
Quietly chuffed with how dry we’ve stayed all day we catch the bus back to Riga where we head out for more Latvian food and a couple of cheap beers.
Before calling it a night we join the group of fellow travellers lounging around the common room at the backpacker’s watching the Olympics. The others are from Spain, Brazil, the US, and a couple from London who waste no time pointing out the fact that Great Britain is higher on the medal tally than Australia. They weren’t, however, so vocal when we asked how England was getting on, but this was just the start of the banter which goes on for a quite a while (and yes, we were robbed in the Rugby World Cup)…
Saturday is our last full day in Latvia and we had been hoping that the backpackers or their sister hostel could find another two people to make a canoe trip to the Gauja National Park viable to run. However the other ‘maybes’ were put off by the weather (which was grey and overcast) so the group tour wasn’t to be. But when the
guy at the backpackers explains that the group tour isn’t going to go ahead he tells us that if we’re still keen it’s easy enough to organise the trip ourselves! Cool.
OK, so here’s the plan. We’ve got to catch a bus to a place called Sigulda. From the bus station we walk towards the river. Then at the bridge going out of town we go down the road to the left for half a km. There we should find a campsite and it’s those guys who hire the canoes. They’ll drop us upstream and we paddle down. Sounds easy enough.
We plan to catch the bus in a bit over two hours time, so we start our morning with a trip to the top of Riga’s old town cathedral before completing a round of the markets to pick up bread, cheese, fruit and a couple of pastries for lunch. All sorted we pick up our tickets and jump on the bus (now that we’ve got these Latvian buses all figured out…).
The bus journey takes us through forests en route to Sigulda and along the way we spot locals emerging to their cars at the roadside
Sigulda staircase
Map says brown line on a green patch... looks like we're going the right way with buckets of fresh mushrooms. No doubt they will be a feature at tomorrow’s Riga markets.
Arriving into the sleepy little town of Sigulda we hop off the bus and head for the river. We’re following our map, which shows a brown line over a green patch. Standing at the top of a wooden staircase that descends from the road that we’re on through a steep slope strewn with pine trees it’s our guess that that’s the way we need to be going. The stairs must’ve gone on for the best part of 300 metres and the missing or washed away sections added some drama to the descent. But unscathed we make it to the road running along the river (Lachlan and Ariana 1, Crazy Baltic Staircase 0). Now we go left…
The Latvian guys running the canoeing are so laid back that we could’ve adopted them as fellow Aussies. Without any fuss we rock up, ask about canoeing and within 2 mins we’ve agreed that they’ll drop us 8 kms upstream in an hour’s time.
While we wait we munch the food that we’d bought from the Riga Markets earlier and watch the steady procession of
Gauja National Park
Castle, forests, canoes, and still about 2kms to go canoeists arriving from up stream. The hour flies by and soon enough we’re sitting in a 4WD with a canoe strapped to the roof heading east out of town and it’s hard to contain our excitement.
We pass Latvia’s biggest cave, a castle, a couple of farm houses, and lots and lots of trees before we turn off onto a dirt (now mud) track on the way down to the river.
Pushing off from the bank it’s all fairly easy. The river is flowing fast enough to keep us going so even when we pause to take in the view we’re still making downstream progress. The banks of the Gauja River are so dense with trees and that we can only see a few metres into the forest. We’re on the lookout for otters, but they’re proving hard to find... (our perfectly sound theory is they mustn’t like the rain).
After about an hour on the river we round a bend to see the circular towers of the castle that we’d driven past earlier pushing through the green slopes of forest. We stop paddling to take in the view and even in the rain it’s awesome.
The mild rapids under Sigulda’s bridge add some excitement to the final part of our canoe trip before we drop the canoe back to the campsite where we started. It’s safe to say that we’re absolutely saturated, but we’ve got smiles from ear to ear. From the campsite we catch a chair lift up to the edge of town and stroll back to Sigulda bus station.
Back in Riga, and in a dry change of clothes, we try to find a little out-of-the-way restaurant that we had spotted on our first afternoon in the old town. At the end of cobble stone street next to one of the smaller old town churches, we duck inside to find that it’s also medieval themed. The walls are decorated with spears, swords, and shields mounted over tanned wolf skins. We enjoy a fine meal of pork and salmon, which we finish at the restaurant’s bar in fitting style with shots of Latvian vodka.
We spend Sunday morning, our last in Latvia, at the museum of occupation learning about the country’s sad past. But time is against us, so before we get around all the exhibits we’ve got to grab our backpack
and head to the airport.
As can be expected with budget airlines when we arrive in “Stockholm” we are not actually in Stockholm - we’re in fact an hour north! So we jump on a bus and start the trip south. The scenery is beautiful. We pass through countryside where the mid summer wheat crops are still to be harvested, red farmhouses and barns have steep pitched roofs, and, as Ariana points out, even the cattle are blonde.
We also notice that right next to us on the highway is a six-foot high mesh fence. It seemed a bit over the top stock for stock proofing and after 15 mins on the bus we spot the reason for the fence - wild deer! Between the airport and the outskirts of Stockholm we count five ‘Bambis’ grazing in the long grass in the afternoon shadows cast by the pine forest edges.
Just when we were really enjoying the countryside the city outskirts start to develop. But not to put an end to spotting things in their natural environment the next 20 minutes of our trip allows us to see an Ikea shop, an Erricson factory, Volvos and Saabs
From the water
The only way to see Stockholm all in their native (Swedish) environment.
Then, at last, we arrive in the centre of Stockholm. We knew before we planned our trip that Stockholm was on the water, but what we didn’t appreciate is that it’s built across 14 islands, it’s connected together by more than 30 bridges, and it’s ridiculously expensive!
It’s no wonder the Vikings invaded almost all of coastal Western Europe during the dark ages. We can image Sven the giant blonde Viking at the pub pounding his shield with his axe, ‘7 pounds for one beer! Bugger this! Come Bjorn, let’s invade Scotland - I hear they have cheap beer!’
‘Ja Sven, good idea…. But shouldn’t we invade somewhere a bit easier - I hear that even the Romans decided Scotland was too hard’.
“Nej Bjorn it’s the closest, and besides, do you know how much fuel costs these days?’
Anyway, we digress, back to the story at hand. We pay for 4 pounds (9 Aussie dollars) each to go one stop on the Metro, which drops us right in the heart of the old town. In true Stockholm style, the old town should more appropriately be called ‘the old island’. It’s about
600 m long by 400 m wide and we’re staying smack bang in the middle of it! Sweet.
So after checking in we head out to get something to eat. As hard as it is, we pass up the dishes of Reindeer meatballs and Elk stew and opt for meals of salmon and herring (this time grilled, not pickled). We spend the remainder of the evening strolling through the narrow medieval streets, and before calling it a night we pop into a supermarket to pick up some snacks for tomorrow’s breakfast.
Whilst Monday is a public holiday in the UK, there is no such break for the Swedes so as we head out of the backpackers in the morning we have to be careful not to get run over by the hundreds of bicycles going everywhere. Obviously the metro is too expensive for them too…
We set ourselves up down by the water to eat our breakfast, where we spot something quite strange. Right in the middle of Stockholm we see a 40cm salmon jump right out of the water. Then another. And another. The stretch of water between us and the island opposite has come alive
with fish jumping everywhere! How cool.
But time is short, so as much as we would like to hang out and watch the fish for a bit longer its time to get moving. We walk the perimeter of the old town and as we’re pottering about we spot the wharfs where the jump-on-jump-off tourist boats dock. We reckon that this sounds like a great plan for the rest of our day.
So we check out of the backpackers then return to jump aboard for a lap of Stockholm by water. The views of the town are truly awesome and it’s calm enough that Ariana doesn’t even get seasick.
Back at our starting point we jump off to see the last few minutes of the changing of the guard at the Swedish Royal Palace. Compared to Lizzie II’s guards the Swedes seem fairly casual. Once in place after the marching we watch them chatting on their walkie talkies and chasing tourists out of the do-not-walk-too-close-to-me zones marked by white paint. We must say though that we’re a little bit disappointed that their uniforms don’t include horned helmets…
After the changing of the guard we follow the stream of tourists from the Palace down through the narrow streets into the restaurant quarter of the old town in search of lunch. We take seats at a place called Sally’s and order our last meal of our North Europe trip. Lachlan continues on his theme of fish, opting for salmon, but gets menu envy over Ariana’s choice of pork. The second best pork dish we’ve had in Europe (just behind Oktoberfest roast pork knuckle).
We’ve got only one hour left in Stockholm after lunch so we take it all in on another lap on the tourist boat before we pick up our backpack and head onwards to the closer, proper, Stockholm airport.
Sitting on the plane flying south at the end of another awesome holiday it never ceases to amaze us just how different things are over such a short distance. Whilst neither Latvia nor Sweden were part of our new years ‘list of places to see in 2008’, we’re certainly glad to have gone - especially in summer.
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Cessna152
Jason Smart
A very well written account of both of these cities. I enjoyed Riga and Stockholm too. Though my trip to Riga was in the depths of winter, Feb 2006 to be exact.