I just got back from a family Euro trip to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam and it made me think about travelling in general. It's one of the things I could not do without in my life because it makes you richer and richer and richer.
I guess that you only start to like travelling when you start to grow up and leave childhood or, at least, that's what happened to me. I remember myself as a 10-year-old or 11-year-old not being really keen on leaving my house to discover new places. I felt like it was a waste of time and I couldn't get anything from it!
I could never be more wrong!! Now I take the opportunity to visit new places whenever I have enough time (and enough money!). I feel like every place in the world is worth visiting and I try not to be prejudiced on any of them. This doesn't mean, needless to say, that I liked all the places I visited but I would never not reccomend a location just based on my own judgement. The experience is not only made by the enjoyment.
Anyway, today I wanted to talk about two cities I visited at the end of last year that I really liked but which are not traditional destinations: Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia.
As you probably know if you've read my previous post, the first semester of the last academic year I lived in Vilnius, Lithuania as an Erasmus student and while there with a group of friends met there (we were a mix of nationalities: Italians, French, Spaniers, Romanians etc.) we decided to visit the two other Baltic capitals.
The first trip was to Riga at the beginning of October. We
took a bus in the morning and arrived in Riga after more or less 5
hours (travelling by bus is really cheap and it was also the easiest way
since there were not direct connections between the Baltic capitals by
train!). After checking in at the hostel we started discovering the
city. I must say it's quite a small city so two days were enough to
visit it all; and also, being so small, we hadn't had to take any mean
of trasport to move around. I remember I instantly started to like the
city a lot mostly because of the atmosphere. In some parts you can
really feel its past as a Sovietic city but it also feels really young
and full of things to do. We easily found places where to eat (there is a sort of dumpling fast food, which is cheap, good and easy to find being on the main street and it's called Pelmeni) and where to hang out even at night (Rokkafejnīca bar, for example); and it never felt dangerous. It also is a city with history and important monuments especially expressions of the Art Noveau.
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| One of the new bridges that connects the old (Vecriga) and the modern part of the city |
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| A view of the Esplanade Park |
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| Melngalvju nams (House of the Blackheads) |
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| The Freedom Monument |
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| The cat on the roof, a really famous tourist attraction |
A bit of time had passed by when at the end of November we went to visit Tallinn. This time we took the bus late at night (I think more or less at 11pm) and arrived in the Estonian capital really early in the morning (I have to say the journey was kind of a nightmare for me since I really cannot sleep on buses, but it was again the cheapest way, soooo..you must adapt!). After taking the tram from the station to reach the centre where the hostel was, we checked in and slept for a couple of hours before starting our new adventure. There was a free guided tour organized by the city so we decided to take it and a lovely Estonian student showed us all the highlights of Tallinn old town in about two hours. As I said before for Riga, also Tallinn is quite small so even there two days are enough to visit it well. I really liked Tallinn since it was a surprise: the old town is surrounded by Medieval walls, which you can also walk on, and full of nice spots (like a really nice cafè/bakery/chocolate bar just behind the Town Hall square).
I think part of me liking it so much was also because the day we arrived was the day the Christmas market started, so it was really nice to see the city so Christmassy enlighted.
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| The old town door |
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| A view of Tallinn from a panoramic spot |
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| The Town Hall with Christmas lights |
We also got the chance to go a bit further from the centre to visit the Kadriorg park, which is really relaxing and it also has a Japanese garden in it, and the beach. It was really cold and windy so I didn't put my bare feet in the water, I kept my boots on ;)
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| The beach :) |
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| Kadriorg park |
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| Here they are: my feet in the Baltic sea ;) |
I hope you like this post as much as I liked remembering the memories I have about these trips. And if you happen to want to go there by bus as we did here are the links we used: http://www.luxexpress.eu/ and http://ecolines.net/en/.
A smile.
Xo
Cami
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