Latvian Whirlwind

This past weekend was our last out of the country vacation and we spent it in Riga, Latvia. We ended up leaving after teaching on Thursday night and we were on the bus and on our way at 9:40 pm.

This trip was just the three of us, Victoria, Kelsey and I. We got to Riga at a little after 7 am and it was snowing! It was so ridiculously cold, we found our hostel right away and tried to see if we could check in, but unfortunately we couldn't until 2 pm. We had time to kill and not a lot of energy to do so with. (Sleeping on a bus is extremely hard)

We explored the city a little bit, but everything is closed until 10 am so we ended up finding a cafe to stay in and "warm up" a little. I say "warm up" because we never actually did, it was freezing and I'm pretty sure our internal organs had froze by that point.

Once things opened up at 10 am we braved the cold again and went to look at souvenir shops and all that jazz, we mainly walked around and went to shops. The Christmas Market in Riga was opened so that was cool, but there weren't as many shops as we expected I think.

The Musicians of Bremen based on the fairytale by the Grimm Brothers

Laima Chocolate is made in Riga

I loved seeing sweaters on the poles outside this little shop

Around 1 pm we couldn't take it any longer and we tried to go check into our hostel (again) and they told us it needed to be cleaned still but that we could hang out in their common area, so we did, hoping it would be warmer (it wasn't). They had a candle on the table and we all kept trying to warm ourselves up with it. We waited until 2 and then we were let up to our room, it had 5 beds but just the three of us stayed in it, so that was cool. As soon as we got into the room we all huddled around the space heater they had just plugged in (none of the other heaters worked) and we didn't move. We kept trying to lay on it and get as close as we could, we didn't even care at that point if we got burnt because we were fairly certain we would never know what warmth was again. We fondly gave the heater the name Hank.

Kelsey and I passed out in our jackets, hats, scarves, gloves, etc. with our beds pushed up to the heater and Victoria quickly followed suit, we all woke up around 7:30 pm realizing it was finally warm again! It was so nice to feel warm again because we had been so cold for so long, and it had stopped snowing so we went and found a grocery store to buy something to eat and then spent the rest of the night in the hostel hanging out.

The following day we explored a little bit and then we got to meet up with Alisa, a Riga native. We were lucky enough to be put into contact with her through Victoria's brother who is currently serving a mission in Latvia. It was really awesome getting a chance to be taught more about the city by someone who lives there, plus we got to know her and she is such an awesome person! I'm so glad we got to meet her and hear her stories!

Freedom Monument

The Cat House

I want to take a moment to highlight the Cat House in Riga, it's the best story of revenge ever -

Once upon a time there was a man who lived in this house, he was a merchant and wanted to become part of the German merchants Guild next door, unfortunately they told him they didn't want him to be a member. Distraught the man ordered two cat sculptures to be made that he could mount on the roof of his house - just so he could have their butts facing the Guild. THEIR BUTTS. No better revenge than that. The best part of the story is that there ended up being a lawsuit over the whole ordeal because the Guild was really offended by the cat butts and the man ended up being allowed into the Guild so long as he turned the cats around.

The oldest Latvian crest was moved here after the old weigh-house was destroyed in WWII

The Three Brothers are the oldest residential buildings in Riga.

Home of the first Riga Executioner

We really loved being shown around by Alisa and hearing the stories about the city and the different buildings, she also took us to go eat some traditional Latvian food! It was so amazing and we were definitely blessed to have that experience. (If only we could have had it last weekend when the light festival was in Riga, dang it!)

After Alisa had to go to work we went back to exploring and souvenir shopping, we had such a great second day in Riga, we were all pretty sad to be leaving it so early the next day, it was so pretty and we hung our heads out our hostel room window for a large majority of the night just admiring it (and also trying to get people to look up and wave at us)

The next morning we made our way to the bus station and said goodbye to Riga at 9 am, we didn't end up getting back to St. Petersburg until about 9:30 pm so it was a long day riding buses and that definitely wears on us, luckily we don't have to spend hours going through border control again or riding in those crazy buses.

We do have one more vacation planned and that will be this weekend. (We're traveling all over the place in November!) Really glad to be flying as well, our next adventure is Moscow!

Estonian Adventures

This past weekend we made a quick trip to Estonia (sounds funny to say, but that's exactly what it was). Victoria and I both had to teach on Friday morning so right after we all went to the bus station and left on our bus to Tallinn, Estonia. It was about a 5 hour bus ride, the thing that seems like it takes forever is the passport control when you're crossing borders, it gets a bit time consuming.

Once we got to Tallinn and found our hostel it was about 8 pm. Our hostel was adorable, it was a little bed and breakfast looking place and felt really home-y, except for the stupid hole right in front of the kitchen that I tripped in every time I went to the bathroom. We were all worn out, traveling really takes it out of you, so we went to bed and got up early the next morning to explore. After all of our time spent traveling so far, you'd think we would have learned, but again, nothing in Europe opens until after 10 am, so waking up early is pretty pointless. It's still pretty awesome exploring a city (in this case Old Town Tallinn) when no one else is around.

Kiek in de Kok and town wall

At the Maidens Tower

We ended up finding a lot of the tourist areas without even meaning to, it's pretty fun exploring a new place, Old Town had it's own map so that made it really nice, we were never too worried about getting lost because we had the map and could always find out way back to the Town Square if needed.

We actually learned a lot about the city just from wandering on our own, for example, the three lions are everywhere, it's the coat of arms for the city.

Those dolls are EVERYWHERE some are creepy and some have their arms out like they just want to hang out with you and be buds. It's pretty funny, we got a few pictures with them, but this was the only photo I had of one of the dolls on my phone.

We learned quite a bit about Tallinn and it's medieval-ness, it was very old fashion-y in a lot of places in Old Town, I thought it definitely added to the environment, it was such a fun place and everything was relatively close.

One day we wandered around and found the Cat Well, which, according to legend, was used in the olden days, townsfolk would throw cats as sacrifices to the well spirits so that their water supply would be fresh and so the water wouldn't run out. We all found this pretty funny, dead cats probably don't help with the freshness of water at all.

Fat Margaret

There aren't many other stories to tell from this trip, it was pretty fast and we mainly did a lot of exploring of the city (found our fair share of dead ends) and met some really funny townspeople. Probably the most interesting story I have from this trip comes from one of the most famous lookout spots in Tallinn.

Behind me in "The Times we had." photo is a crazy drunk guy. We found this lookout spot (which we had gone looking for because, look at the view!) and of course we wanted to get the awesome writing on the wall, but there was a crazy drunk man just chilling on the ledge right underneath the sign. We got upset, but took some pictures of the city and then decided to walk back down to Town Square and then come back before we had to leave town. We got distracted for awhile because we met some guys who let us hammer our own Tallinn coins! (According to old Estonian beliefs they're good luck coins because they have a hole in the center)

We walked down toward Town Square and halfway there Kelsey looks up and points to the lookout spot we were just at and the drunk guy was totally not on the ledge anymore, we got really excited and took a trek back up to the top of the lookout (trust me, it was all uphill) and as soon as we walk up to the lookout point again, the drunk guy (who just talks to the air) walks out of the shop right next to it and beats us to the ledge. We were so mad! We figured out that we could take the picture from an angle and you can't even tell the crazy drunk man is even there! So yes, there is some crazy, drunk Estonian man behind me in that beautiful picture!

I also got the chance to have a traditional Estonian breakfast the day we left, it's a grain mixture called Kama and you either put really thick milk in it or yogurt and it was super gross! But hey, it's all part of the experience.

We're in St. Petersburg for the moment, but we're gonna be off on another whirlwind adventure starting Thursday night, we're headed to Latvia for the weekend!

Scandinavian Adventure (Norway)

Pretty much the second we stepped off the flight from Sweden to Norway we realized life just got really expensive. Norway was ridiculously expensive, although Sweden was expensive, I'm pretty sure Norway was about twice as expensive. The first person we went and asked for help was super friendly and helpful, Norway is definitely the most tourist-friendly/helpful out of all the places we've traveled so far, at least in Oslo. They have maps everywhere so people just circle where you're at and where the things you want are at and they tell you what to take, etc. It was so nice and easy to get around in Norway, I personally felt like there was hardly any learning curve.

We probably did the most in Norway out of everywhere (not sure if it's because it was easier to travel around or just because we were there for a little bit longer). But the night we got in we needed to find a bus to take us to the center of the city from the airport, we heard that there was a bus leaving in 4 minutes and then another leaving in 40 so we tried to rush and get our tickets but for some reason our stuff wasn't working at the machine so that put us behind and we realized we could do it in Norwegian and it would work so we did that and then ran to find the bus/train that would take us and we ran down and up escalators all over the place only to realize our ride had already left quite a bit before. That night was filled with us running around like chickens with our heads cut off (since this was the same day as our Swedish airport craziness) and we just laughed it off and waited in the airport till our bus/train came to take us to the city, we all acquired our Norwegian currency so that was good. And yes, currency is different in each country and it gets super confusing.

Because Oslo is so easy to navigate we found our hostel pretty quickly, but it was still about 10pm or 11pm when we got there. It was a nice little room, we had a kitchen area (with a fridge!) and our own bathroom, and since tourist season is not at it's peak currently we got the whole 8 person room to ourselves which was nice but also kind of sad because we didn't get to have an awesome hostel family.

Our very first (full) day in Norway was packed full of adventures, we wanted to make sure we saw as much as possible, we were actually up planning the night before what we absolutely wanted to see while we were there until like 2am. We got up and went to the tourist place to buy our Oslo Pass, which allowed us to ride any type of public transportation within certain zones, gave us free entry into museums and gave us discounts at certain stores and restaurants. It was kind of pricey, but once we figured out the cost of transportation and entry into all the places we wanted to go, it definitely saved us money, plus we got student discounts!

The first place we visited was called the Folk Museum and it was an open air museum like Skansen (in Sweden) where they brought different buildings from all over Norway into one place so you can walk through them and see what old Norway would have been like. In the summers there they have actors all over the grounds like they live there and they make things the way they used to but unfortunately it's not that time of year now, but it was still really awesome to see and explore.

The old church.

The old church.

Showing off the tiny bench.

At the bottom of the stairwell in the 7 homes house.

Once we were done at the Folk Museum we headed over to the Viking ship museum, which was really cool to see. They were big, but also a lot different from what I imagined viking ships to look like, however the three viking ships they had at the museum were used for burials so that could be why they were a little different than I had imagined. We did get to see some artifacts and read some interesting facts about vikings, the museum was pretty small though so there wasn't a whole lot to see, it was sort of shaped like a "t".

After the viking ship museum we planned to go to a little castle we passed on the way there called Oscarshall, we got off the bus not knowing where to go, so we found a little path through this forest area that looked like it headed in the right direction so we decided to take it. It was a quest to find the castle and we gave ourselves nicknames of characters from The Hobbit. Kelsey was Bilbo, Victoria was Legolas, Keeley was Gandalf and I was Smaug.

We're gonna get lost and die!

We ended up finding the castle, but what we found next to it was much better (since the castle was closed and we couldn't even go near it). We just spent some time at this little bay area for probably over an hour, finding shells, skipping rocks, etc.

Enjoying the beauty.

Skipping rocks.

We walked a giant circle and ended up back over next to the Folk museum, we headed back to the hostel, exhausted from our adventures for that day, happy with how much we got to see.

Our next morning we got up basically at the butt-crack of dawn (5:45am) we left the hostel an hour later and the sun still hadn't risen, but we were on our way to see another castle, Akershus castle and fortress. It was pretty easy to find, but unfortunately it was closed and didn't open up until 10am, but the grounds were open to walk around so that's what we did, we got to walk around inside the entire fortress and it was awesome, there were maybe one or two other people there.

Sculpture called "Pillow Man" - apparently you're never alone on this bench.

The actual castle was pretty small (and they only do tours on the weekends) so we walked right past it at first thinking it was just a cathedral or something, pretty funny. But it was an awesome place to visit and experience.

After that we had some time to sit and get our Norwegian pastry before the next place we wanted to see opened up so we went and got our (super expensive) pastry from Norway and just sat in the warmth for awhile.

We went to the Holocaust center and although most of the information is in Norwegian they have tablets you can read in English and carry with you through the exhibits, it's not the same fullness of information but it gets the point across. A super helpful lady who is actually American helped us at the front desk and it was a very interesting and solemn experience.

Norwegian Holocaust victims

Bunker used to hide Jews in Norway

We ended up exploring the city a little bit more and searching for souvenir shops, and surprisingly it's very hard to find Viking stuff in Norway! Trolls are all over here too though!) Our next day we went to the Vigeland park which is an extremely weird sculpture park that has a bunch of naked statues in really weird poses, it's supposed to represent the human condition, but really it's just a park where you get to go imitate statues for fun and wonder what the heck is happening with each piece.

Juggling babies/Raining babies

 

Angry baby is one of the most famous sculptures.

When we're travelling we like to explore a lot so we did just that after the park adventure, we spent some time by the sea just taking pictures and enjoying the beauty of Oslo.

Unfortunately, that was our last day able to explore Norway. We met back at the hostel with some of the others from our group (who had split from us to go to Bergen Norway) and waited till it was a good time to head over to the airport. We spent the night in the Oslo Airport because we wanted to save money and not buy another night at the hostel (Norway is really expensive, remember?). Victoria drew some awesome pictures in my journal that I will cherish forever, they're so Norwegian I can't deal with it.

 Sleeping in an airport isn't something I would recommend, it's extremely uncomfortable. I pushed chairs together to sleep on in a cafe. We made our flight on time (obviously, we were there like 15 hours ahead of time) and the flight went great. 

It's nice being back in Russia for the moment, the land of cheap food, I'm now addicted to traveling so I'm glad next weekend we will be headed off to Estonia to learn about a new place and visit a new country and culture!

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Scandinavian Adventure (Finland)

Scandinavian Adventure (Sweden)