Monday, August 28, 2017

Tallinn II

We started our 2nd day in Tallinn by walking to the nearby Kadriorg Park, built for Peter the Great when Estonia was under Tsarist rule and Tallinn was popular with the Russians as a seaside resort. (St. Petersburg is about 350 km away.)



After ducking into a csfe to get out of the rainshower you can see coming on in the above photo, we came upon this fantasy fixer upper a few blocks away.


Actually, it was in a pretty upscale neighbourhood with lots of big trees and nicely kept houses and apartments.

We spent the rest of the day taking a walking tour, which took us to many nooks and crannies we would have missed just wandering around on our own, such a the viewing platforms that offer a panoramic view over Tallinn,


This arched walkway through the oldest part of the Old Town,


And even a couple of Jugendstil houses in the mix:


We had lunch in this quiet courtyard.  The cafe was part of a pottery gallery that featured the work of a whole family of artists, and the food was served on their dinnerware.


It was a real respite from the crowds of tourists that must have arrived for the weekend.  I had pickled herring and boiled potatoes, a very typical Estonian meal.  Also my German father's favourite, if you substitute cottage cheese for the sour cream on my plate.

At one point the walk led us outside of the wall where we found a group of themed gardens, including one based on Estonia's many boglands, with ceramic additions such as this giant carnivorous sundew


and a bog siren who lures men to their doom.


We happened upon the Estonian version of Great Big Sea performing a free concert in the town square:


The best part was the older couples dancing to the music!

We came back later in the evening but mistimed our arrival in the hourlong break between bands, so it was early to bed for us.



Saturday, August 26, 2017

On to Estonia

The next day we headed north to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

We booked a room online, with the prime requirements being a place to park and walking distance to the old town.  And guess what!  We're staying in a Soviet-style apartment block!



It's the ugliest building on the block, and a small portion of it has been turned into about 5 rooms for tourists.  Our room is small, but recently renovated with a tiny bathroom, a fridge and a small microwave.  It meets our needs.

We walked downtown and ate dinner at the Reval Cafe on the edge of the Old Town,



which has turned out to be our go to place in Tallinn, i.e. we went back there once again in our 2-night stay.

Back for kohvi, kook and wifi, all the essentials.  That's candlewax dripping down the wall behind Leo.

We had heard that Tallinn would be full of drunken Brits who catch cheap flights for the weekend, but this rainy Friday was pretty quiet.  We did run into one stag party of very polite young, not very drunk (yet) Estonians.  The groom-to-be had a list he had to accomplish, but I refused to give him "a lady's sock." Hey, they were my favourite quick-dry travelling socks!

Tallinn's Old Town is huge and walled with 27 of the original 45 towers still standing.


So far, Estonia looks to be more prosperous than Latvia with fewer derelict buildings and more modern buildings.

No we have to learn how to say Hello and Thank You in a new language.






Friday, August 25, 2017

Cesis

On our second day in Gauja National Park we did a walking tour of  the town of Cesis.

First we had to duck into the Black Swan Kafija for a coffee and an interesting Russian cookie thing to get out of the rain. Coffee in Latvia is universally of high quality and strong the way we like it.



Cesis has its own castle




and lots of nice restored buildings, but its main shopping street is under reconstruction.



We stopped in the city park for a little birdwatching.


Bird of the day: Scandinavian Nuthatch

The old city gate has been partially reconstructed and turned into a flower garden.



In the afternoon we did a nature hike along the Gauja River.


But there were more birds in the city park. No canoeists in sight on this rainy day.

Gauja National Park

Heading North we spent 2 Days in Gauja National Park.  European National parks are not like Canadian ones.  Gauja is full of castles and towns and farmland.

We met a German couple in Riga who had just spent 4 days canoeing down the Gauja River, thy recommended it, but the weather has turned rainy and we are not equiped, so instead we toured some historic towns and castles.

We were forced by the weather to abandon our tent and hole up in a camping cabin.  The lap of luxury (electricity and heat, but no bathroom or kitchen facilities).



We visited the Turaida Museum Reserve is a reconstructed medieval fort built in 1214 on the remains of an older Livonian stronghold.



There's an exhibit of Livonian artifacts found on the site.  I always like to look at the personal effects of long ago peoples.



A bird pin!  The round ones are the clasps that hold one's cloak together.

There's also extensive buildings of a manor on the site, a church, farm buildings, a bathhouse and a blacksmith shop.



And this being Latvia, a sculpture garden in honour of Latvian folk songs. Leo went to town photographing all of them, but I'll just share one.




Thursday, August 24, 2017

Last Day in Riga - Jugendstil, sculpture and Central Market


Our last day in Riga we walked to Alberta iela (Street) which is full of buildings built in the Jugendstil style, the German/eastern European version of Art Nouveau.  The most ornate buildings were the work of architect Mikhail Eisenstein, interestingly enough the father of famed Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, director of the Battleship Potemkin, and the inventor of the montage sequence.



I have to say I prefer the geometric designs to



the more exuberant faces,



and I also prefer the more restrained Finnish version of Jugendstil that we checked out in Helsinki.  Let's not even talk about the Spanish version of Art Nouveau!

But my favourite of all is the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh of Glasgow, Scotland (pretty Internet blog days).  We even ate in the Willow Tea Room, which he decorated.

I think I detect a pattern here.  It seems I spend the last day of every trip to the capital city of a European country looking for Art Nouveau architecture.

We also checked out some Soviet Style sculpture (sculpture is Leo's interest, he took lots of pictures, which I so far have not been able to download off his cellphone). Riga is BIG on sculpture, especially commemorating Latvian Nationalists.


And we visited Riga's giant City Market,

There are 3 of these massive halls, plus outdoor vendors

full of vendors ranging from senior citizens selling a few cups of chanterelles and blueberries they picked in the forest to acres of  vendors of cheap plastic items.


And we spotted this artfully designed bench/public art made of glued laminated lumber.

and do I detect some Jugendstil influence in the building in the background?


Monday, August 21, 2017

Rogaine Over, Back to Riga


Two weary rogainers return from 24 hours in the woods 

By noon the Rogaine was over.  Leo and Bryan did not do as well as they'd hoped, but they came 5th in their age class.  They found the course very difficult, with the foliage in the meadows over their heads.

The worst was the presence of giant hogweed, which was growing throughout the course.  It contains a photosynthetic toxin that causes horrible blistering and even blindness. Leo and Bryan were very careful, but Leo got a very small patch on his hand.  We saw other participants with big blisters on their backs and faces.

We bagged all their clothes and threw them in the wash when we got to Riga.

Leo and Bryan napped the rest of the day and in the morning we drove back to Riga.  Highlight of the day was when we stopped for lunch in a small town kafejnica.  No English spoken, but I was ablessed to decipher potato pancakes.  For 1.50 each we got 3 delicious potato pancakes and a dab of sour cream.  Bryan went all out and for 1 euro more got an additional mystery ingredient which turned out to be a pile of lox!  Soup was .95 euro.  What a deal!

We're back at Riga City Campings.

Our home in Riga, with decontaminated clothing hanging on the line

Last night we had supper at a place that served Russian dumplings cafeteria style, also super cheap, though it took us a while to figure out how it's done.  You serve yourself, then pay by the gram.

This morning was devoted to laundry and sorting out rental car and cellphone issues.

In the afternoon we walked into town and did a walking tour of the old town. I forgot my camera so no photos, but it's very pretty.

Again the highlight was lunch in a vast cafeteria of traditional Latvian food, with I don't know, 30 different menu items.



The campsite is on an island so I went for a short walk and found a row of sheds which were used to house boats.  That's an old abandoned factory in the background.

Friday, August 18, 2017

Sunshine Coast Vacation and Devacuation

Just discovered I never published this post.

After a week of evacuation we took the long route via McBride and the Coquilhalla to the Sunshine Coast for a pre-wildfire planned vacation.

We stopped off to visit our nieces family in Gibsons.  Sybille and Dave were already down there and Leo helped with a little home renovation while Sybille and I went for a hike along the beach at Roberts Creek


with Jan, who along with her husband Gerry, we're happy to host two wildfire refugees as they used to live a block fom us in Williams Lake.  Thanks!

We checked out this floating garden at the Gibsons wharf.


Then we moved on to Pender Harbour where we stayed at our friend's Ken and Sue's family cabin.


We had a blast, swimming every day in one of the many lakes, going down to the wharf at night to stir up some bioluminescence (sorry no photos, it was dark! But trust me it was cool.), watching classic movies in the evening, and mining malachite, among other cool things.

Here Ken and Leo are looking for sea life in the daytime:


Score!


After two weeks of evacuation, it was downgraded to an alert, and we returned home.  The City of Williams Lake was unharmed but homes were lost on the surrounding rural areas, and the fire rages on across the Fraser River in the Chilcotin, and most of BC is still under smokey skies.

A Walk in Razna National Park

Border Area with Rogaine hash tent in background

With time to kill yesterday I went for a walk along the road past abandoned homes


and farmsteads


Some roadside flowers:

A few lupines still blooming

in two colours


Geraniums

Geranium robertianum, I think

a relative of fireweed

Epilobium hirsutum

Chickens and old farm machinery:




And a cemetery in the woods.


Can you spot the bird of the day?

Great spotted woodpecker