After a fairly nightmarish train ride (bunks smaller than we were and enthusiastic snorers) we arrived in Riga, the capital city of Latvia. I knew little to nothing about either. In a nice turn of events we had arrived well into the morning, and from the looks of the market outside the train station things were already in full swing. I had been getting intermittent blisters from walking eight hours a day in new shoes, so we decided not to explore and just walk straight to the hotel.
We had booked just two days in our hotel, which we figured would give us the same ability to combine wandering and targeted tourism. Sure enough, we saw a few museums and also got in a great deal of exploration of the old and new towns. The Occupation Museum was rated poorly by every Russian on TripAdvisor, which brought me back to the War Remnants Museum in Vietnam. It told the moving story of Latvia's struggle for independence against the Germans and later the Russians. A short video clip showed what I felt to be too little of the amazing nonviolent protests of 1989, when millions of people joined hands to create an unbroken line from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius.
The state history museum deserves a mention too, since for a miniscule entrance fee we had four floors of exhibits to ourselves. It was much more of a traditional arrowheads-under-glass museum, and most of it was in Latvian, but I liked the atmosphere. They had several life size dioramas of typical rooms at different points in history, and the silence of the museum lent these exhibits an eerie edge.
There was definitely a beauty to Riga, but we reached a certain point quickly where we felt like moving on. In the train station I impulsively suggested that we take the next train to the coast, and after discovering the incredibly low price of the Latvian intercity rail, we did. We ended up in Vecaki, which was mostly a road leading to the beach with a few lucky restaurants on either side. Vecaki seemed like a fairly popular destination even in this off season, and we followed other tourists to the water's edge.
It was gorgeous, especially so because of the flat shore and flat surf, surely the most gentle I've seen. The sun was slowly setting to the west, though the ocean horizon stretched out northward. We had come from the Pacific coast in Nha Trang across desert, forest, grassland, and more to make it to the shore of the Baltic Sea halfway around the world.
The next day we took another train to Sigulda, a smaller town at the edge of a national park. Our guesthouse was on the outskirts, a huge log house that had a dining hall for fifty people or more. But in this in-between season (past summer and not yet to snowfall) it was not only cheap but ours entirely. We walked for a while in both directions of the road, raising the attention of a neighbor's friendly dog who accompanied us into some small woods. The other dogs were less pleased to see us, but there was no trouble. I wonder if they can tell how far we've come.
Sigulda is a few hours' hike from another town, Turaida, known chiefly for its castle. We walked through some very nice forest, past a malfunctioning cable car, and over a few flights of nice new wooden stairs to get to this castle, stopping at a lovely little café for nourishment. The castle was red, clearly a bit different from the classic Western European stone towers. Inside there were a few guides in period costume and some brief descriptions of the restoration efforts. Only the main tower was accessible to the public, but the view over the forested countryside was very fine. Back in the courtyard I surprised all present by paying a euro and scoring a bullseye with my first shot from a bow and arrow. This feat earned me another free shot, where it was revealed that the first was entirely luck and I had no idea how to handle a bow.
We took a bus back to Sigulda after seeing a small sculpture park next to the castle (known as Folk Song Park but with hills that remained silent). By then some other guests had moved into the house, though we hardly saw any of them. The next morning we went off to Riga again, headed for the bus station and a route south to Lithuania.
Pictured: Auberon exploring the Baltic Sea, Riga from a rooftop, and Turaida Castle.
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