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Šiauliai: OCD Edition – Obsessive Cross Disorder
The Hill of Crosses is 12km out of Šiauliai, and its literally in the middle of country bumpkin nowhere. There’s no buses that go directly there, unlike Rundāle Palace, and the closest bus stop is 2km from the site. I didn’t fancy that walk on a 26 degree day, and what I would see later…
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Trakai: There is a Castle on an Island
On the train to Trakai, a woman on across from me had what I thought was ASMR playing out loud on her phone. If you don’t know what ASMR is, count yourself lucky. Take a gross sound, like someone eating, record it really close so it picks up all the slurps and plops, now fetishise…
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Vilnius: Leafy and Dreamy
Four hours from Riga to Vilnius, on a mostly full bus. I didn’t note anything obvious to let me know we’d crossed the border, until my phone went off with an SMS – Telstra welcoming me to Luthuania, and kindly letting me know I can’t get roaming here. Thanks! The first notable difference from Tallinn…
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Rundāle Palace: Ostentatious in the Countryside
Originally built in for 1736 for the Duke of Courland, Rundāle Palace sure had its ups and downs. From the opulent halls once filled with aristocrats conversing in room after room of sitting rooms, great balls full of dancing and frivolities, to being used as a bunker for allied forces in WWII. It was painstakingly…
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Sigulda: Castle Estate and Moving House
The train is an hour ride from Riga, and this train is not in a hurry. It slowly puttered it way forward, and I had assumed half the train was going to alight in Sigulda too, as a group of about 50 people had appeared at Riga station and my brain immediately convinced itself this…
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Riga Part 2: Sports Day in Old Riga (and Museums too!)
Visiting the Old Town of Riga, I picked a spectacularly wild day. As I approached from the city centre just about everyone walking by had a marathon bib on, and steady stream of kids were adorned on medals. At the freedom monument, marking the entrance from new to old Riga, it seemed like the entire…
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Riga Part 1: Latvia and Entry Codes
The four hour bus journey to Riga, Latvia, was as smooth and uneventful as I expected it would be. The Lux Express coaches are comfy and have onboard wifi, which I kept checking on my email for any new messages from the apartment I booked. But for most of the journey, I had already downloaded…
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Valjandi: Picturesque and Teutonic Remains
The bus from Tartu to Valjandi was a little over an hour, and couldn’t purchase tickets at the times I’d planned out in my head for a day trip here. So with taking what I could book, I arrived at the ungodly hour of 9:30am, while the majority of Estonia still slept. Thankfully there was…
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Tartu: Academica on a Hill
Immediately obvious is that Tartu is a university city. The city centre is filled with millennials, 20 year old’s wearing hipster fashion to make them stand out from the other sheep, and with a music festival heating up the coming weekend, the muso’s and goths began filtering into the city by the end of the…
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Pärnu: Relaxed and Taking it Slow
The bus station was a 45min walk from the Old Town. A small station that had buses running to a variety cities, from St Petersburg to Vilnius in Lithuania. With the cold weather and the grey sky above threatening rain, it was hardly a surprise the bus was close to empty, as Pärnu was known…
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