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40 d! It’s just going too fast…

For once, I’m moving my ass and go for a morning walk in the old city of Rīga [Riga]. What a beautiful city! While I loved Tallinn, I only ever saw the old town, and nothing else. It was cute and quiet and small, but I haven’t really seen the rest of the city, so I have an image of a very small capital city.

Now Rīga is something else, with its super large boulevard, wide streets and hide buildings kinda reminiscent of Paris’ nice bits. But it turned out to be quite gorgeous. Especially the old center, obviously. I went past the National Opera House, which looks like a strange mix of multiple buildings from several different time period, put together in one unconventional assembly. It does look great though.

Then there are the old monuments, like the Powder Tower, the Rīga castle, and a few impressive and beautiful churches. I ended up on the bank of the Daugava, with a great skyline from the old town. There I met with a Lithuanian guy who was visiting. He was an overly friendly and expensive guy, and got really interested in my travel. We walked for a bit and talked a lot, giving me some good advices for Lithuania, before we parted ways for our respective transports.

Today, the plan was to take the train to Cēsis, a small city located in the middle of (but not part of) Gauja NP, then find some hiking trail and walk wherever I may roam around the city.

Turns out that the spot I had noted down was on the opposite side of the train station, so most of the path was actually urban. Well, Cēsis is not unpleasant, so that’s alright. However, the walk in the forest was rather short, even though I took my time. The path was running between the mighty Gauja river and some small red-rock cliffs.

When travelling by train, while taking few moments with a day-trip opportunity like this, a nature walk is a bit of a luxury, and I enjoyed every bit of the clean air, forest surrounding, solitude and calm.

But still, there is only one train that can get me back to Rīga today, so I have to walk back to Cēsis. I did a detour through the wonderful castle park. It’s a typical medieval affair, with large round towers, pointy roof, ruined walls and the lot. Lovely.

Finally, it’s time for the train to Rīga. In the evening, I went to a cheap restaurant for cheap bolognese pasta and beer, but got interrupted in finishing the latter by an emergency alarm in the building. We’ll see tomorrow if it was a real fire or not, I guess.

Today, I also noticed that I had lost my sunglasses, probably yesterday somewhere in Valga, I must have made them fall when being too lazy to put them in my pocket. The issue with that, it’s that they weren’t only sunglasses, they were adapted to my sight. So now, no more unblurring filter for me when it’s get dark or I’m getting tired…

On the plus side, I found my first ever Croatian euro coin.

And here’s already the video from Week number 5: