Travelling in Latvia or 'The Turtle Experience'

Last weekend I embarked on a great adventure with a group of awesome people to the distant shores of... Latvia. Ok, so visiting a neighbouring country might not be the most exotic experience, but the trip was truly wonderful. The company was amazing, to say the least, the sites were spectacular (here's hoping my phone camera managed to capture that...) and much fun was had.

Our first stop was Sigulda - a town not too far from Riga, with a long history, lovely castles to visit and the biggest cave in the Baltics. The castles were in fact pretty cool and I was able to try on some medieval armour (with the help of the guys as it was quite heavy to lift over my head...). The cave... kind of expected more, but I guess the Baltics were never really famous for our 'magnificent' caves. However, the writing engraved into the cave wall was an interesting touch.

Fearless fighters

Very form fitting I must add :P

We finished the evening off in Riga, where we met our wonderful hosts and went out for a meal at a local restaurant whose vegetarian dish quality was a pleasant surprise. Has inspired me to cook more interesting and ambitious meals. After the meal, we headed off to the river for some lovely night time views followed by a bar for champagne after midnight to celebrate one of my fellow travellers birthdays :)

The next day the weather was not on our side so we decided to postpone our trip to the seaside and take a stroll in Riga for the day. This involved going up to the top of the Science Academy building (first high-rise Soviet building in the Baltics, if I am not mistaken) for a panoramic view of the city followed by the marketplace that used to hold blimps before those stopped being a thing. There we bought some local sweets which in Lithuania we call 'Karvute' (little cow). The special thing about these ones was that they were a special 'naughty folk song' edition sweets. I will let you translate them for yourselves if you're curious ;)

After buying some more goodies to bring back home to our families we headed back to our hosts flat where 2 of our companions were planning to cook an authentic Italian dinner for us. Unfortunately, 2 other fellow travellers had to leave earlier that day and didn't get a chance to try what was a very delicious meal. Eating this meal had turned out to be a bit of a challenge as there weren't enough forks so I volunteered to attempt using a spoon which was quite interesting.

"Do you like Tuscany? You should"

We left Riga behind to visit Jurmala and nearby regions on the third day of our stay. This included hiking to and through a huge bog with some distinct plant species (2 of which I had come into contact with a lot in New Zealand! crazy ei?). Unlike the bogs, I tramped through in New Zealand this one was more accommodated for tourists and had a wooden path to take so I didn't need to bush hop around in order not to be knee deep in mud. 

After hitching a ride for a couple kilometres to save time and energy we made our way back to the train station where we took a train to Jurmala which in itself had a few, maybe not so pleasant experiences... 

So, this is the part of the trip you've all been waiting to hear about. That's right, the Turtle! Truly, and I think I speak for everyone when I say, the highlight of the whole trip, deserving its 5th place  of top things to see in Jurmala and certificate of excellence on trip advisor.

Anyway... the sea was nice too :) And I think we can forgive Jurmala for running out of cucumbers for our beach picnic and say we all enjoyed spending the evening there.

So, the last day arrived and after yet another awesome breakfast we made our way to the last destination - the National library. I loved the fact that they included multiple exhibitions in its halls although the very large open spaces did take away from the cosiness I would like to feel in a library.

Song festival posters during independence 

Song festival posters during Soviet occupation

The climax of the trip (apart from the turtle of course) or at least the most stressful part would have to be the journey to the coach station to catch our bus back to Vilnius. As we were low on time and money we decided to save on both by not 'beeping' our bus tickets a couple of times because, man, they are expensive by Lithuanian standards. This worked fine the first time, but unfortunately, we were not so lucky the second and got caught... after losing precious time we managed to talk ourselves out of paying most of the fine, but can now say we really did have the 'local Latvian experience'. By the time we were done talking with the passenger control, we were left with about 45 minutes to get home, buy food and get to the coach in time. And so the running commenced. Local knowledge was on our side and we managed to get there with time to spare to find out our bus is delayed :P that's travelling for you. 

Wales

Finishing final exams earned me and my flatmates a vacation so we ventured out to Wales hoping for an exception to the usual rainy weather that Wales seems to be famous for and a nice break from spending all day in the library.

We began our trip by visiting Cardiff, an awesome, progressive city that offers fee wifi in the whole city centre fast enough to call people online as one of us found out.

Only in Cardiff could you have a shrine to a fictional character from Dr. Who 

After walking around the city and stopping for some interesting photo opportunities we came to the docks where we got mesmerised by  Tim Cronin - a busking musician and ended up chilling for 3 hours listening to him perform. The sun was out, children and elderly couples were dancing and people were enjoying bank holiday Monday out in town.

After trying a local Clark's pie and listening to more lovely music we took a boat taxi back to the city centre passing the most swans I had ever seen in my life, a little foreshadowing of our next destination which just happened to be Swansea.

Ok, we didn't see much of Swansea, instead, we went to Mumbles (or Mwmbwls in the local Welsh), a small town just about 9km away in the Gower peninsula. We spent the first evening walking on the beach, and taking silly photos, one of which ended in a bit of a collision... we did not follow health and safety precautions that go along with jumping photo attempts...

Bit of a posh neighbourhood

You and I collide... :P

The next day we decided to go for a longer walk and reach Three Cliffs Bay- in our host's opinion the nicest beach of the peninsula. What we thought was going to be a 45-minute walk turned into a 4-hour walk, but totally worth the sore feet (didn't think I would need proper walking boots for this...).

The next day after visiting the castle and lighthouse we braved the walk to Swansea (I know, the 16km walk the day before was just not enough for the likes of us). Walking by the coast was great, but left us in pain by the end resulting in us spending the rest of the evening resting in a pub before catching our bus back to Brum.

The three of us spent a great three days, finally resting from the books, notes and past papers. Guess we're done with uni now... interested to see what comes next :)

Bremen

On our way back from Lithuania to the UK after the winter holidays, my friend and I made a short stop in Bremen, as you do. We were only there for one day but seems like we managed to fit in a lot of what this lovely city has to offer.

Having always associated Bremen to the Bremen musicians it was a surprise to themselves advertising themselves as 'Bremen- city of trams'. Trams? Really? Oh Bremen, give yourself more credit. Not that I have anything against trams, they're great, just not the reason I would go somewhere... Bremen: come for the trams, stay for the music :P 

After filling up on some flammkuchen at one of the only open cafes we could find in the area (great thinking flying on a Sunday...) we set off to the old town in search of the Bremen musician sculpture - the one monument we could not miss.

Feminist traffic lights ftw!

Having successfully found the sculpture, overjoyed that we managed to take some photos without other people in the way and inspiring others to take pictures with poses we used, we set of to the narrow streets of Schnoor, another must see in Bremen. 

We decided to walk back to the tram stop via an alternative route walking passed by a very artsy area unfortunately not so lively as again, Sunday... However, many more touristy areas were accidentally found which led to us managing to see practically everything the city guide recommended seeing.

Funky side of Bremen

We finished our day at a restaurant splitting a traditional dish and made our way back to the airport where our journey back to the UK was with its own surprises, Ryanair never fails to make your journey an experience...

All in all, loved Bremen, Such a cosy and lovely city, would love to come back someday in the future, maybe not on a Sunday, to experience it in a more lively light.