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Friday, July 29, 2011

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You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-27 Riga

2011-07-27 Riga

Jul 25, 2011
by gil.even

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on cold showers, showers and food in Riga

We got off the boat at Riga port and walked to the tram. The tram came and we boarded, but another tourist couple, the wife walking with 2 crutches slowly were hurrying to catch the same tram, the husband tried to plea for the tram lady driver to wait 20 seconds. She shouted at him in Russian or Estonian something about holding back the transport system in the city; Welcome to Riga.

Regardless of that incident we loved Riga. The city is clean and pretty.

We left the tram at the opera house and walked a few blocks to our cinnamon sally hostel, we walk the street with all the bags and a woman approaches me and asks if I need directions, I automatically go into scam mode and protect my valuables (the pouch), we show her on the map where we want to go and she introduces herself as Cinnamon sally, our hostel owner, talk about luck. She is not a red head btw (cinnamon) but used to bake cinnamon rolls and got the nick name for that. So she walks us to the hostel and explains about Riga.

We put our bags at 11:43 or so and ask the staff in the friendly hostel of what to do in Riga, since we didn’t plan much. And she marks on the map what to do and says that there is a free Riga alternative tour at 12:00 from down town old city, its now 11:50 and we decide to go. So after having only a small not good cake on the ferry for breakfast and nothing to drink, we leave the hostel and run to the old city to st peter’s church. The initial tour introduction has begun but we made it. For the next 2 hours the guide walks us out of the old city and in to the interesting markets, passing by art galleries, the Russian quarter, explains about Latvian history, all the occupations and burning down of the city, shows us where to eat and over all gives an excellent introduction to the city. The tour focuses on Riga beyond the old city, the Real Riga. We end the tour by the KGB building (presumably not in use today, though some people say otherwise) , this building, a 3 story high is the tallest in Riga, why? Because from its basement you could already see Siberia in soviet times.

The tour ended and we went to Fabrika, a local cafeteria restaurant. We tried some turkey with honey mustard sauce which was divine! With great mash potatoes , alla had also 3 salads (tomatoes and cabbages , beet salad and cucumber and tomatoes salad) and I had a great spicy carrot salad with some sort of seeds. After sandwiches and even the ships buffet, this was the best meal for me In the whole trip.

The best thing is that it was so cheap (compared to Scandinavia). After that we walked the streets and reaching the art Nuevo district. They say Riga is the premier site for such buildings and I agree (though, have not seen the competitions) wow houses with sculptures and other stuff, really impressive, it started raining in the middle so we stopped at a local café and had good deserts. The 10 minutes downpour stopped after 9.30 minutes and we continued walking the Alberta and Elizabeth ilea (streets). We continued towards the old town passed the statue of freedom which is a woman holding 3 stars to represent the 3 areas of Latvia, the soviets didn’t tear it down cause they said it was mother Russia holding the 3 Baltic states.

The old town is very nice, full of cobble stones , shops, narrow lane, tourist and lots of restaurants. We completed the town tour quickly with a stop at the Latvian occupation museum and pass the amazing blackhead house (the house of unmarried merchants, if you are unmarried, then you are deemed to not have an interest in Riga, therefore your status is low and you get drafted sooner)

We had some ice cream by the best ice cream shop in Riga (said the guide, I tend to disagree on this one) and returned to the hostel, later we went to drinks with fellow hostellers for a fun evening with an English accent speaking Russian, a Serb chef from Norway who speaks too much about how many immigrants in Switzerland . a Polish guy who drank too much and spoke about the large amounts of drinks poles can drink, a new Yorker from Michigan who asked Alla for tips on hitting on the locals and us. I had a low quality Mai Tai and alla had a Cosmo.

We had to check out of the hostel, it was full and we didn’t book the 2^nd night early enough, and the next morning we headed for the Israeli embassy.

One of us forgot a passport! And it’s not me! I call it now diplomatic samathoch (general chaos). After forgetting the passport papers in Alaska, and having to go to the ministry of the interior in Israel, one should learn to bring all passports so we can go to st Petersburg. Unlucky for us the console is out of town, it would cost a lot to ship the passport here, and also a lot to make a new one in a hurry, so it appears that st Petersburg is out.

After the embassy we tried the Russian embassy go get a crash visa, but there is over a week queue so no go. We went to lunch at Lido which is a chain serving traditional foods (and waiters dressed in traditional clothing) serving excellent simple food so we had some more chicken with fries this time, alla tried more salads and we were both very pleased.

From there we went to the markets full of smells sounds and sights, with fresh quality food. We tried krushovnik (I call it cancer grape) which is grape size, thicker peel, with whit lines on the outside, looks sickly. But alla likes it. We tried some red currents and various samples of bread, tevorek cheese, honey cake, cucumbers that actually taste like and look like cucumbers should taste and look ,and Alla tried some Kvass (local root beer). From there we saw the Jewish ghetto museum.

It was dinner time by now and we went back to Fabrika which was about to close and did not have the honey mustard sauce or the mash potatoes so I tried the carrot salad and a nice desert and there went to Lido for the real dinner of chicken shishlik (very good , made like in Israel), carrot salad ( I need this recipe) and some strawberry kefir (I thing its “rivion” in Israel), not sure what in us ). I am not a fan of yogurts, but I love these kefir. It like a very thick milk, not as thick as yogurt, but when you add strawberries or other stuff to it, it’s great. Very very full later we packed our bags, relocated to the other hostel and planned to sleep for an hour to go karaoke later with the hostel gang, but we woke up in the morning.

It’s about 11 am now. We called the embassy to see if the consol is back, but we decide to skip the hassle and after having left over breakfast and cold showers (no hot water, something is wrong with the pipes) we left rainy Riga (it rained a few minutes yesterday and the day before, but today it rains all day), we couldn’t go to the beach as planned for the rain.

We reached the nearby bus station and tried to catch a Tallinn bus, it was full, instead of waiting 2 hours for the buss, we hopped on another bus, to Vilna (Vilnius), and another country , 5^th in this trip!, we will be there in 3 hours, I hope it want rain, I hoped we will find a hostel quickly, we have no knowledge of the city, but worry not, I don’t (notice I didn’t say we).

Cheers from the Vilnius bus, seat number 33,34

FW: gil.even shared an album with you.

We will likely leave cheap, good food and pretty Riga for Tallin, for now here are a few Stockholm pics

You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-24 stockholm

2011-07-24 stockholm

Jul 21, 2011
by gil.even

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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

what makes Alla tick

We are now on a nice cruise ship heading for Riga.

After 3 says with a salad for me I needed some non food food and we went to Max (the local burger joint) for exactly what I expected, round and ok burger, not more, but I had a craving, but if you can skip Max, skip Max.

We took a train, then a bus to the ship and carried are bags in. it is so different then American cruise ships, no security!! Not even a passport check, so nice, we just self checked ourselves and went in.

Since we spent last night in nature, n nights ago in the car, and a night before in nature as well and many nights with time showers (4-6 minutes each) , a shower is luxury!!, I already took 2 this evening and plan for 3 more just because I can, from now on no more tenting, it’s harder to tent in cities and its cheaper most place we go from now on, but perhaps we will tent again.

Today we saw something unusual on alla’s back that looked like a tiny tree branch, after a close examination we found it was a tick, a small one borrowing in, so we took the tick out and found another. This is one more reason why we may not be tenting any more, but that is what happens when you spend an hour in the bush squatting for blueberries, nature’s revenge.

In the ship after eating cheap mostly we splurged and went to the buffet and we pigged out like starving pigs in a pig sty buffet.

Back to Flam

On the next day we took the car to Visgody, then took the bus to Aurlandsen to start our hike. It started in a nice valley with a lake and green hills, then followed a river with many flowers. At one point the trail split and we took the high trail, the harder one and climbed up through narrow high brush to a small peak where we took some playful photos of amazing waterfalls and regular us. From there we started walking down for 5-6 hours the valley was long and the descend difficult but all in the views of waterfalls and high mountains. I don’t know if you know but alla has a fear of bridges (tall ones especially) and here we had to walk over several rivers on top of serious waterfall, the kind you don’t survive (“I will survive” is played now by the cruise band). At first she wouldn’t cross, but got some courage and slowly went to the other side. We crossed several bridges on this hike and others all the way to jumping over the bridge to the rive a few days ago. I guess this is the best way to overcome a fear, tackle it head on, she did and it feels great, now all we have to do is find a tall bridge to drive over. We kept walking passing tiny cheese making farms and reached the end with tired feet and knees but satisfied from a very beautiful hike. After the hike we left Flam , passed gudvangen again and drove in a very nice green mountain pass with awesome views passed Voss to town of Vik.

At Vik we stopped for a major nature stop and during this stop I spoke to the owner of the restaurant we pulled over by. She was sweeping up and berating her husband. She said Norwegians are the worst (they dropped food on the floor and walked on it). This was after closing time and the place was empty. But has amazing views of Vick and the fjords so I took some shots. We continued to Vick and Alla splurged on a salmon burger at a somewhat fancy place and I had a chicken burger at the gas station (surprisingly ok). Then we drove to Vangese for the car ferry crossing. We checked the prices on the bulitin boards and noticed we are about to get wallet raped, but not much choice. On the ferry we found we had to pay 101 instead of 800 (kronars.. 16$ instead of 128$) for a 20 minutes cross, so we pleased, we decided to skip balestrand as we originally planned (needed two more ferry crossings) and drove towards solvorn, we stayed the night in another camp with timed showers. The next day we reached the glacier, it was our 1^st day of rain (we had amazing weather till then) and we were late for the last tour, so we walked up to the glacier but did not go on it (that day) , that was our most wasted day of the trip, but we spent time to make sure such a day does not return.

That is it , I think we are all caught up

Now I am busy booking my Riga hostel, we already know where to go to see Riga in 2 days, then off to Tallinn, st Petersburg and Helsinki, or perhaps our plans will changes J

Cheers from the music lounge on the ship Romantika