Journey: Turaida Castle – Saulkrasti – Piejura – Riga
A huge bonus of me getting my bum out of bed earlier is having the whole gorgeous Turaida reserve site to ourselves. We were able to climb the tiny spiral tower stairs and walk the castle grounds with the pups and had just finished as the first coach load appeared. Add in multiple gardens, sculptures and traditional out buildings relaying the history of life here and it’s no wonder it’s so popular.
Latvia has some glorious coastline and Saulkrasti is the quieter but arguably more beautiful option – we are going to Jamala the busier beach soon so can compare. We did two walks at different ends. Firstly the White Cliffs sunset trail and secondly the Gejaju Paku trail through the Piejura National Park. It’s wonderful walking out through the pine trees to white sands and such long quiet beaches. Our sand rolling aficionado Mabel loved both, but was initially dawdling on the second walk as it was on boards and she didn’t realise it led to the beach…as soon as she realised, she suddenly popped straight into speedy mode – she does make me laugh 😂
And then to Riga, Mark is meant to plan the cities as I generally get stressed in them and fair play he found a campsite just 20min walk from centre, then handed me a notepad with 8 barely legible suggestions, two of which were street names but he couldn’t remember why he had written 😂 In future I’m going to ask he just find the parking, otherwise we would have missed a whole host of amazing sites. I know I’m a nerd with my route planning but it’s obviously more my skill set, and he wouldn’t want to miss out on seeing such gems as a cat hostel and armildillo sculpture 😜
Again it’s a quite a compact city so you can see so much in quite a short time. The old town has a gorgeous maze of architecturally beautiful streets and there are pockets of different things, lots of churches, squares, shops, bars. Remembering to look up at the roof line and around for little quirks. There are obviously lots of tourists but it’s not heaving and it feels like a proper city, not solely catering for them.
We walked for miles, and outside the old town visited the best and biggest food market…I may need to go again, my god the nectarines were huge and so juicey 🤤. There were also stunning views from the Latvian Academy of Sciences Observation Deck and a deeply moving holocaust museum. Each lantern is decorated with files and photos of a life lost…I cried – seeing smiling photos and reading snippets of what happened to them. In today’s world of communication it’s hard to comprehend that people just didn’t know/believe this was happening and chose to stay until ultimately rounded up. Also the power of rumours and negative feelings that can run riot and turn the average person against a whole group of people. It was a very sombre experience ☹️
As a special treat we had a scrumptious meal at the Fat Pumpkin, visited Freedom Square and glimpsed Cat House which I later couldn’t find. A young lad had set up a 5min chess game for 1euro, and Mark had a go. I’m a luddite at chess, but it was obviously a really good game and a crowd of 30+ people watched them. I could see people whispering stretegy options with their friends. Ultimately Mark lost but it was very close.
We then picked up the pups and following good old Google walked 35minutes through a rougher part of town to a great outdoor bar with multiple food trucks and live music called Kalnciema Kvartãls . I had a devine slice of cake but had to take it in turns to eat as Ernest was desperate to get it 🙈 Once food was dealt with, a couple of ladies joined us and fussed the pups for ages while nattering away. Jasper will lap up cuddles all day long and even Mabel was sociable. Ernest has the attention span of a gnat with ADHD and can’t sit still 😂
We got back to the van at 10:25pm – dirty stop outs! And I realised I needed to do my run. I’m guessing it was a sugar high from the cake but I actually enjoyed it and ended up doing 4miles and over 50,000 steps! Can’t wait to go explore some more 😄
SofaWolves 