Latvia Day 1: Riga

Meet Uncle Igor: A man in his 60, with an opinion about everything, a knowledge of an encyclopedia, the stamina of a healthy marathon runner, and a care of a true uncle.

After making sure that we had all the food that we can fit into our stomachs (relatives and overfeeding is the theme of the journey thus far), at 11 am we headed to the old city.
Riga’s old city is slightly smaller than Tallinn’s, has a different charm and we covered all of it! And we mean ALL of it! Just look at the pictures, if you don’t believe us. As mentioned before, Uncle Igor is a walking encyclopedia. He gave us a better tour than any tour guide could have. All was done with sarcasm, care and some beers to break up the day. (Of course we forgot most of it right away, but we were still very engaged and impressed).

Highlights of the day:

- We found a clock in a café that is identical to the one that my parents own and has been in the family for generations. See picture: Parents, please send a picture of our clock so we can make a true comparison. (I can guarantee that the chime is EXACTLY the same)

- We found the statue of Bremenskie Muzykanty and we were able to reach the highest nose. (This is supposed bring us luck in our journey!)

- As we stood and watched a photo shoot of one of the many weddings, the groom approached us and handed candies asking something like, “Be happy for us”. We thought it was cute!
- A cock the size of a pony (see pictures)
- A lavishly restored Russian Orthodox church (Moscow calling?), and a completely deserted VEF (one of the biggest Soviet times manufacturers of various equipment)

Overall we loved Riga, the old town is beautiful, interesting, and hold tremendous amount of history that we hope Uncle Igor will put down in writing one day. 

Cheers,
us

Parnu

As we write this post, we’re three days behind. This is due to a couple factors.
- The unavailability of the access to the Internet (apparently Riga is not covered in Wi-Fi as we hoped)
- We had quite a busy itinerary

So, 3 days ago on Aug. 12, 2011 we made a bus journey from Tallinn to Riga with a stop at Parnu. We heard that Parnu was a great beach town and worth the visit. Upon arrival, we once again realized that the beach wear will not be necessary as we’re still quite North of the beach weather. So we spent the day exploring the town. It turns out that aside from the beach, Parnu holds little historical significance. We explored what little the town had to offer, 3 churches, some cute cafes and the beach.
And we became real travellers on that day. Instead of eating at the cafes/restaurants we purchased fresh fruits at a local farmer’s market (at Tallinn) and bread, cheese and meat and kefir at a grocery store. Then we had a lovely lunch on the beach. Hello budget travelling!

And then we caught a super-fly-business-class bus to Tallinn, with wifi, food and comfy seats. The only down side was that our seats were separate. But we took this as an opportunity to miss each other, per the recommendation of our mothers J (See, we DO listen!) Gtalk over Wi-Fi was no help though.
At 11 pm we arrived at the Riga bus station to be greeted by Lev’s uncle. From then on, we were at his complete mercy, hence the tardiness of this post J

More about this in the next post.

Hugs,

L&J

Tallinn History

As I mentioned in a previous post, Vadim took us around Tallinn and shared some of the history with us. I was most impressed that he used to live in a 500 year old apartment that is fully preserved and updated with modern amenities. Here are the pictures of the place that he shared:
Would you ever like to live in a museum. I personally think that this would be awesome!






j.

Tallinn - Day 2

For the second day of Estonia (Aug 11, 2011) we decided to explore around Tallinn. Our wonderful guidebook recommended that we head to Kadriorg Park and to a little beach city, Pirita.

Kadriorg was a very short tram ride away. It turned out to be a beautiful park that was built by Peter I for his wife Catherine. So we enjoyed the fountains and the gardens and the gorgeous weather. We even found a summer residence of the Estonian president and watched the change of guard. Then we were off to Pirita.

As I mentioned before, Pirita is a beach / port town. During the Soviet times it was used to train the Soviet Olympic teams. The remnants of that are still visible with the Olympic symbols and old unused ports for the yachts.

As it is proper when you head to the beach, we packed bathing suits and towels. However, when we got there, it started to rain and the beach-wear could only be used as an additional layer to keep ourselves warm :) Since the rain was on and off we still managed to do quite a bit of walking on the beach, the piers and in the forest.
In the evening we headed back to the Old City and accomplished two great things:
1. We went to Kompressor, which a crepe (blinchiki) place that Levka has been telling me about since the day that we decided to go to Tallinn. Apparently he went there 5 years ago and with his memory he managed to remember the name of the place and the street that it is on. I guess his bad memory makes exceptions for great things! This place was well worth it :)
2. We met up with Vadim (Lim's friend) who showed us around the Old town once again and told us about the history.

All in all a wonderful day!

A side note: Somewhere during the day, the aforementioned travel book went missing. It put a slight damper in the mood (many of you may be aware of my attachment to books), but it was all resolved very late in the day when that someone brought it back. Good travel spirits are definitely with us!

Hugs to all the readers,

j.

I'm finally in Europe

We just spent two days in Tallinn. Yes, its true that this is the first time that I actually made it to Europe. (And, no, I've never been to Piter, so I don't want to hear any comments that it's very similar).

Yesterday, was an extremely long day that started around 5am in Kiev.

Two words about Kiev: Thank you to our gracious hosts, Lena and Sasha, for taking care of us, feeding us, showing us around and just being your wonderful selves.

So around noon, we arrived at Tallinn, found our hostel very quickly and headed out to the old city. Levka has been here before so he doesn't appreciate the beauty nearly as much as I do. But I loved the little streets, old churches and the whole feel of the city. It is amazing how clean and restored this city is. We spent hours and hours and hours walking around. Got lost several times, which only added to the fun. We photographed everything that was photographable, climbed everything that was climable, walked everything that was walkable, etc etc
At around 9pm we realized that we're very North when the sun was still up. It finally got dark around mindnight and after another snack we headed back to the hostel.

Here is the 9pm picture, in case you don't believe me:



Anyway, I highly recommend Tallinn to anybody who has not been.

Off to get more food and meet with a friend of a friend. (Lim, thank you for the introduction)
Will write a little later.

Hugs,

j.

Kiev

We spent 2 nights and one day in Kiev.  My friend Lena and her man Sasha were our gracious hosts, and showed us around.  As far as long legs go there were plenty, but here we concentrated on looking at churches.   The weather was kind enough to give us a very warm morning/afternoon, and the insane rain started only after we bought some groceries to cook dinner.  The rain continued for about 2 hours, which is apparently the norm with the climate change and all.  It rains one day, and is super-hot the other.   We were lucky to walk around in about 28-30C weather.  Last summer temperatures reached high 40s, and people would take vacations to Egypt to cool down.

Anyway, Kiev and Dnepr were great - check out the latest pictures.   We’ll consider coming back to Ukraine on our way back down, and visiting Odessa.  We hear there are some sarcastic people over there worth checking out.

Now we’re on the plane to Tallinn via Riga.  Had to get up at 5:30am to make this flight – our nights are getting progressively shorter since we left the comfort of Julie’s relatives’ home in Dnepr.  Orbitz failed to let me know that the price of the ticket did not include checked bags, and that it’s going to cost us an additional $45 per bag.  That’s 30% of the ticket price (we only check my backpack.)  If anyone sent complaints to Orbitz before, let me know what works because I want to yell at them a little bit.

Well, hopefully Riga’s airport will have Wi-Fi, and I’ll be able to upload this post along with pictures there.  (It does)


And here are the pictures.

Moscow here we come!

So we safely arrived to Moscow. There was some stress before we got here as we thought that we may need a Russian visa to transfer from Sheremetevo 1 to 2 (or the other way around, not sure where we are). But all turned out well and civil. It did of course take 3 hrs to pass 3 passport controls and 3 security checks. Also it seemed like we woke up 15 people, who otherwise would have been happily sleeping. But 2 of us needed 3 separate escorts from one place to the other, a huge bus where the driver joked that once again he is forced to drive 1.5 people. (not sure if that was a figure of speech or a reference to my weight).
All in all, pretty uneventful.
One note about food:
Za $27 nam prinesli dve maaaalenkie sosisechki. Srazu vspomnilsya anekdot pro studentov. A potom prinesli dve vilochki y my pinyali chto na samom delete shikuem.
Next destination: Ukraine
Hugs to all the readers!

Ukraine with all the food and all the legs

So we're in Dnepropetrovsk visiting my relatives. Our days are spent with mostly sleeping, then eating, then walking, then eating, then spending time with relatives, then eating... Well, you guys get the drift. During the walks, we spend time chasing after leggy blondes as they live up to all the stereotypes and make a great picture. And when I say "we", I really only mean Levka ;) For a better description, see our album.

In the free time from all the eating, we decided to try out something crazy... a V-Up. A wonderful thing that was taught to us by Sonechka. Here is Levka's version of a V-up.

You may or may not know that Sonechka does 50 of these during her gymnastics practice. We decided to make it our goal that by the end of this little adventure we will be able to do this many. After actually trying the whole thing and almost passing out after the first 7, we decided to decrease our goal to a more realistic one.
New goal: 25 v-ups in 6 months

Also, we read some important Ukranian news. Russian speakers see the picture below.
Short digest for non-Russian speakers:
Tanya Bulanova (a famous singer) ate a pound of salt.
Raymond Pauls (a famous composer) deceived a killer.

We feel like NOW we're well versed in the Ukranian culture :)

Hugs to all,

j.

Напутствие мамы

This was written and read by my mother at our going away party. We found it on her site and decided to share with those who may have missed it.

В добрый путь, в добрый путь, в добрый путь!
За мечтой, за судьбой, за туманами...
Промолчу, что хочу вас вернуть -
Вам смешны опасения мамины

Перед вами планета - пирог
С незнакомой начинкой прекрасною,
Но из тысячи славных дорог
Выбирайте не слишком опасные.

И ещё не забудьте писать
И звонить при малейшей возможности,
Буду изредка напоминать
О разумности и осторожности

Пусть любви будет всё по плечу -
И падения и восхождения,
Пожелать вам удачи хочу,
И вернуться скорей, тем не менее.

For more of my mom's poems click here. I highly recommend it :)

Off to see more Dnepr...

Hugs,

j.