Our plan included 6 nights in the Baltic countries –
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Not a
lot of time to see things in depth, but enough to see some highlights and
hopefully give us a flavor of these countries that we had never been to
before. We would spend 2 nights in the
capital in each country. That would give
us a full day each to explore Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius. We would also have some time to explore the
countryside as each capital is only ~300 km from the adjacent one.
Day 41 – Saturday,
July 27. Tallinn, Estonia. We
arrived in Tallinn at 3:30 PM after a 2 hour ferry ride from Helsinki. The B&B that we were staying at was only
5 minutes from the ferry terminal according to our GPS as well as Google
maps. However, there was a lot of street
construction, with roads closed and it took us 45 minutes to finally find a way
to get to the B&B – everything we kept trying resulted in a dead end. After checking in we drove to Kadriorg Park. This large park (almost 200 acres) and the centerpiece
palace were commissioned by Peter the Great for his wife Catherine I. Construction started in 1718. The palace is now an art museum. Next to the palace in the park is the home
and office of the president of Estonia.
At the “pink house” (the building is mostly pink), we saw a brief
changing of the guard ceremony – two guards going off duty, two coming on duty,
and one officer to inspect the guards and transfer duty. All over in about 1 minute. It appears they must do this every hour,
since later we saw another two guards and an officer heading towards the pink
house. The park is very large (we only
walked through a small portion of it in 1.5 hours) and has a lot of variety -
formal gardens by the palace, terraced rose gardens, children’s play areas,
fountains, large trees, grassy fields, etc. Something for everybody. After
the park we headed to dinner and then back to the B&B to plan our
adventures for the next day.
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| Informal gardens |
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| Side wing of the palace |
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| Formal gardens behind the palace |
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| The President's house |
Our B&B was definitely the most “interesting” place that
we have stayed so far. We had a large 2
bedroom apartment on the 4
th floor of a drab concrete building. The walls in the rooms were all different
colors, with peeling paint, and a mismatch of furniture. The place had a distinct smell that Karen
said reminded her of the smell of mink food on the mink ranch that her grandparents
used to own when she was young. The
kitchen was mostly non-functional, with appliances that were not plugged in. There was lots of extra furniture in the
hallways of our apartment and on the landings in the stairwell. The bathroom had a tank less hot water heater
mounted above the end of the bathtub. If
you wanted hot water, you had to light a match, turn on the gas, and light the
burner. As you took a shower you could
see the rows of gas flames heating the water through the open side of the hot
water heater which was located at eye level.
I imagine (but don’t know) that our accommodations were similar to how
many working class Estonian’s live, except they probably keep their apartments
cleaner. The apartment met our basic needs,
and the old lady who ran the place was very nice, but I think that most of our
friends and relatives would not find this type of accommodation
acceptable. It was definitely on the
other end of the spectrum from our apartment in Helsinki that was ultra-modern
and clean.
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| Water heater in bathroom of our apartment |
Day 42 – Sunday, July
28. Tallinn. We spent the entire day
exploring the medieval Old Town section of Tallinn on foot. Old Town is compact, and much of it is still
surrounded by its 2.5 km (1.5 mile) defensive wall. Most of the old moat has been filled in a
long time ago, but the space is now well maintained parks, and the park area is
quite wide, so the old city has a large greenbelt surrounding it, providing a
buffer from the newer areas of the city.
When you are in Old Town you are truly insulated from the glass
skyscrapers in the new core of the city and the drab soviet era buildings. I will probably use many nice adjectives to
describe Tallinn, but overall it was WONDERFUL.
It is hard to compare very dissimilar places, but overall Tallinn is the
best place we have been on our trip so far. It probably helped that we had
perfect blue skies and a temperature of around 75° F (24° C).
We decided to walk to the entrance to the old part of town
as it was only ~ 1 km. We could have
taken the tram, but we would have had to walk about half that distance to catch
the tram, so it didn't seem worthwhile to figure out how to buy tickets and which
tram to get on, where to get off, etc.
We entered town through the Old Coast Gate – the medieval exit to
Tallinn’s port. The main street, Pikk,
is lined with houses and shops from the 15
th century. Our first stop after taking photos of the
entrance towers and gate was St. Olaf’s Church.
Karen and the kids talked up the 250+ steps of the church tower while I
headed to the west side of the town where the original walls are intact and
there are 8 well preserved towers.
Outside the gates in the park they were having a flower festival, with
beautiful flower gardens and garden art.
It was very peaceful with no automobile traffic. It was also nice to visit a place without
buses full of tourists. There were a
number of people going through the gardens and walking along the walls, but
most of them appeared to be local families enjoying a beautiful Sunday in the
park and old city. Karen and the kids rejoined me and we found a nice cafe with outside seating for lunch.
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| Towers by Old Coast Gate |
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| Street in Old Town Tallinn |
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| Towers on town wall |
After lunch we continued our walk through the narrow
cobble-stoned streets. We found a section
of the town wall where we could go up in the towers and walk along the covered
walkways at the top of the wall, and then worked our way to Raekoja plats, the
town square. One side of the square is
northern Europe’s only surviving Gothic town hall, while the other three sides
are dominated by restaurants with seating in the square. We saw more tourists in this area of town,
but it still did not feel like a big tourist area. We finished our visit to Old Town by working
our way up through Toompea, which is a neighborhood on a hill on the southwest
corner of town. To reach Toompea we
walked up narrow winding alleyways (some with stairs due to the
steepness). On top we were rewarded with
views of the large 19
th century Russian Orthodox Alexander Nevsky
Cathedral, the Estonian parliament building, and lots of large old houses, many
now functioning as foreign embassies. At
the edge of the neighborhood there are viewing platforms that are 100+ feet
above the old city, with great views of the old city, the harbor, and the
modern city. We descended a series of
steps to get back to Raekoja plats where we had dinner. After dinner we walked back to our B&B
and collapsed with exhaustion.
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| Raekoja Plats |
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| Town Hall |
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| Section of path up to Toompea |
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| View of Toompea (the elevated area on hill) |
Update on my foot.
Every day it gets a little better.
The visible bruises are mostly gone – my foot just has a light yellow tint. It is still swollen, but very gradually the
swelling is reducing. A couple of times
I have slipped and put my full weight on it, experienced severe pain, and
thought I had broken it again. However,
after a few hours it was back to normal (the new normal, not the pre-break
normal). After we finished going up onto
the old town wall and up some very steep irregular stairways in three towers on
the wall Karen said “Thank God you broke your foot or we wouldn't be able to
keep up with you.” She was exaggerating,
but I guess that means I am starting to get around a little better. Today was a lot of walking, more than 4 miles
(6.5 km), with a lot of stairs. My foot
doesn't feel too bad tonight after all that walking, but my hands, wrists,
arms, and shoulders are very tired and sore from using the crutches. Crutches are a lot of fun on irregular cobblestone roads and sidewalks. If we weren't on this trip I would probably
be sitting on the couch waiting for my foot to heal and gaining weight. As it is, I am getting a great upper body
workout in addition to a lower body workout from all the walking. The crutches are also getting a good workout. One of the rubber/plastic ends split due to all the abuse on the cobblestones, so I reinforced it with duct tape - not pretty, but hopefully will hold. Always carry duct tape - I consider it one of the "ten essentials".
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| Cobblestones and crutches |
Day 43 – Monday, July
29. Riga, Latvia. We packed up and
got ready to head to Estonia. When we
were loading the car to leave, there was an old woman who had gone through the
garbage bin from the B&B who kept standing there as we were cleaning out
our card. We had we had several empty
cans and plastic bottles that we were going to leave by the garbage, and she
gladly took the bag from us before we could set it down. We had seen old women
the day before doing the same thing, going through garbage bins to pull out
items that could be recycled for money or other items of value. It is a good life lesson for the kids that
everyone is not as fortunate as we are. Hopefully they will better appreciate
how blessed they are. While the old town
in Tallinn was wonderful, once you got away from the medieval part of town the inner
city more closely resembled our apartment.
Most of the buildings had peeling paint, things were generally ran down,
and there was a fair amount of graffiti.
The exception was the central part of the new town, with glass
skyscrapers and lots of new development.
We had about 200 km to drive in Estonia before we entered
Latvia. Once we left Tallinn most of the
drive was through farmland on two lane roads.
Many Estonian drivers are very aggressive when passing – they pull out to pass when there is not
enough space to pass, forcing either the oncoming vehicle or the vehicle being
passed to brake. Total distance driven
in Estonia, 160 miles (250 km). Total distance driven to date, 4890 miles (7870
km). Our favorite things in Estonia were: Karen – the
many great photo opportunities, Elizabeth – climbing all the towers, Matthew – the
Town Hall, Mike – view of the city walls with the flower festival plantings in the
foreground.
Shortly after
entering Latvia there were a number of parking areas with access to the
beach. We stopped for a while to go down
on the beach and dip our toes in the Bay of Riga. Well – I didn’t go all the way down – my foot
is still wrapped and crutches and sand are not a good mix. We then turned inland and drove to the town
of Cēsis to visit the Cēsis Castle. This
castle was built in 1214 by the Order of the Swordbrothers, and then taken over
about 20 years later by the Teutonic Knights.
The castle was abandoned in the early 18th century and
gradually fell into a state of disrepair.
Today you can go in one of the towers that is largely intact, and tour
the rest of the grounds. Some of the
narrow circular staircases in the tower are almost pitch black. They provide you with candle lanterns so you
can see to ascend and descend the steps – unique and keeping in character with
a medieval castle. We stayed until the
castle closed at 6PM, and then drove to Riga, arriving about 8 PM.
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| Matthew and Elizabeth having fun at the beach |
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| Cēsis Castle |
Our hotel in
Riga was a pleasant change from Tallinn.
Most importantly it was clean and did not have a funky odor! Our suite was huge – large enough to
actually live in comfortably on a long term basis. There
were three large bedrooms (~16’x10’ each), a large living room, a bathroom, and
a large kitchen with full size refrigerator, gas range and oven, washing
machine, and an eating area. The only
downside was the 103 steps to get to our room – not that anyone was counting! It seemed like a waste to just be using our
large suite just as a place to sleep.
Day 44 – Tuesday,
July 30. Riga. During the night
there was very heavy rain. By
mid-morning when we left the hotel there were just intermittent light rain
showers. By noon the rain had stopped
for good. We spent the entire day in the
old portion of Riga. Unlike Tallinn,
there is not a clearly distinguished old town section – no city walls to define
the area. We spent most of the time in
an area bounded by the Daugava River on the west, and the canal lined with parks that connects with the river to the north and south and makes a roughly flat
letter “D”. The old portion of Riga is
also less heterogeneous than Tallin, with a mix of buildings from different
eras. It was a very nice town, with lots of wonderful architecture, but a bit
of a letdown after Tallinn – it is always difficult to follow perfection.
From our hotel we walked about 1 km to reach the canal that roughly marks the boundary of the old city.
Along the way we passes a number of Art Nouveau buildings. About a third of Riga’s city center is built
in this style, making it the premier Art Nouveau destination in Europe. Our first stop in the old city was the Powder
Tower, one of Riga’s originally fortification towers, dating to 1330. We then continued south along the canal to the
Freedom Monument which is the symbol of Latvian independence. We stopped for lunch in Līvu Square. This square was built after WWII, but has a
number of large 18
th century buildings that have been
preserved. We then continued to Dome
Square, the largest square in Riga. One
side of the square is dominated by the large Dome Cathedral. The rest of the square’s appearance dates to
the 1930's when a portion of the old medieval buildings were torn down.
L
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| Art Nouveau building |
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| Freedom Monument |
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| Līvu Square. |
We continued our journey through Riga to St. Peter’s
Church. There is a lift inside the spire so
we were all able to go up to the viewing platform high above the city. Unfortunately people who cannot navigate any
stairs would not be able to go as you have to go up about 40 stairs to get the
entrance to the lift. The views at the
top of the old city were great as well as the views to the west access the
river to a newer area of town that had some modernistic glass and steel office
buildings. After St. Peter’s Church I
decided to take a break, and Matthew decided to stay with me while Karen and
Elizabeth walked a few hundred meters further south to Central Market. The market is one of the largest on Europe
with food pavilions located inside large converted Zeppelin hangers, as well as a large number of outdoor vendors selling almost anything that you could ever
want. They joined us when they were done at Rātslaukums Square, the town square.
During WWII the square was completely destroyed, but the town hall and
the House of Blackheads have been rebuilt to match their original
appearance. The House of Blackheads was
originally built in the 14
th century and was the guild hall for the
Guild of Unmarried Merchants. I had some critical work emails that I needed to respond to
L,
so Karen and the kids went back to the area around the Freedom Monument to have
dinner and I joined them about an hour later.
After dinner we walked back to our hotel. My foot did OK today, but the last 1 km back
to the hotel and the 100 steps up to our room was a challenge, and I had to
stop 3 or 4 times to rest.
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| View from St. Peter's Church tower |
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| House of Blackheads |
Day 45 – Wednesday, July 31. Vilnius, Lithuania. Today we would drive to Vilnius, the capital
of Lithuania, with a couple of stops in other towns in Lithuania along the
way. Total distance driven in Latvia, 160 miles (260 km).
Total distance driven to date, 5050 miles (8130 km). Our favorite things in Latvia were: Karen – amber
jewelry, Elizabeth – the beach and the castle in Cēsis, Matthew & Mike – St.
Peter’s Church, especially the view from the tower.
One unique
thing that we noticed in the rural portion of the drive in Estonia and in Latvia
is the large number of storks. We saw
many storks in their nests, as well as flying around. Another thing that we noticed was that Estonia
and Latvia censor music on the radio like they do in the US. The other countries we have been to in Europe
appear to play the original unedited music, without making the “bad words”
unintelligible.
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| Storks in nest |
On our way to Vilnius we stopped at the geographical center of Europe. There are disputes on exactly where the
geographical center of Europe is depending on what land area is included/excluded
in the calculations, but almost all point to a location in Lithuania north of
Vilnius. As I read on one site discussing
this, “Europe is a concept, not a continent, so there are not definite boundaries”. The
location we went to is recognized by several international groups, and the
Lithuanian government has built a monument there. There is an obelisk, a large plaza, informational
plaques, and flag poles with flags of all the European countries. It was nicely maintained but doesn't appear to
be visited much. We were the only ones
there, and there were only space for a few cars to park. It is located out in the middle of a farm/forest
area, so you really need a car to get there.
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| Elizabeth and Matthew at center of Europe monument |
We arrived in Vilnius about 5 PM. Our hotel was in the middle of the old city
in Vilnius, in a converted monastery. We
had a hard time finding it since our GPS told us to drive where there was no
road. Finally we parked and Karen and
Matthew walked to find it, and then they got directions on how to get to it in
the car. We never would have gotten
there on our own as you had to go through three different places that said “do
not enter” and drive on what are basically pedestrian streets/alleys. The hotel gave her directions and said to
just ignore the signs. The hotel was
very nice – it looked like it had recently been renovated, but it had tons of character
both inside and outside. It is nice to
be staying in the old part of the city – we only have to step out of the hotel
courtyard to start seeing sights. After
dinner and some planning for the next day we relaxed and read before retiring
for the night.
Day 46 – Thursday,
August 1. Vilnius. Wow – it is
August already! Even though we still
have almost 4 weeks left on our trip and many places let to see, being in the
last month of our trip makes it seem so close to the end. We spent the entire day on a self-guided
walking tour visiting places that were of interest to us. We started right outside our hotel at the
Gates of Dawn. This is the only
remaining of the original ten defense gates when the city walls that were
originally built in 1514. We then
continued down the main street of town, heading north to the Neris River which
bounds the edge of the old town. There
are a lot of churches in Vilnius – certainly more concentrated than in any city
we have been to so far. There were 31
churches identified on our map just in the old section of Vilnius. Outside of each church there is a plaque
giving the history of the church, both in Lithuanian and English. Very interesting. As an example, the Church of St. Casimir was
the first Baroque church built in Vilnius, built in 1604. Much of interior was destroyed by Napoleon’s
army, and then late in the 19th century it was modified to become a
Russian Orthodox Church. In the 20th
century it was converted by the Soviets into the Museum of Atheism – some
interesting symbolism there. In 1991 it
was returned to the Jesuits. In the
United States we take freedom of religion for granted, but it certainly is not
a universal concept, and many of the churches we have visited have been re-purposed
over the years based on the whims of the current rulers. We
detoured off the main street to see the Lithuanian Presidential Palace, and
then had lunch in a slightly newer area of town.
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| Dawn Gate |
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| Church of St. Casimir |
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| Narrow street in city center |
After lunch we went to the Cathedral-Basilica of St.
Stanislaus & St. Ladislaus, Lithuania’s most important sanctuary. This cathedral was another example of the Soviet
influence and repression of religion. During
the occupation years this beautiful cathedral was converted to an automobile
repair shop. Fortunately it has been fully restored, and it
was hard to envision mechanics working on cars when we were in the sanctuary. Next
we headed up to Gediminas’ Tower. The
tower is located on the top of a 48 meter (160 foot) high hill and is the only
remaining part of the Upper Castle which stood here from the 10th to
14th century. We then headed
over to the east part of town and went to St. Anne and Bernardine Church
Ensemble. These churches are built in
the gothic style and date to the late 15th century. St. Anne’s brick façade is especially impressive. Matthew and Elizabeth walked back to the
hotel at this point, while Karen and I continued our sightseeing. We walked along the Vilnia River, a shallow
but swift tributary of the Neris River that forms the eastern boundary of the
old section of Vilnius. We watched
several people in kayaks going by. We
then went through a large park and up another hill to a viewpoint before
returning to our hotel. After a rest we
walked back into town for a later dinner.
Our hotel room was on the top floor, and faced in towards a central
courtyard. It was in general very quiet,
but while we were resting we heard lots of loud shouting and chanting in unison,
and many police sirens. It sounded like
there was a large protest or riot was going on.
This went on for probably 45 minutes.
When we left for dinner it had been quiet for a while, but there was evidence
that the “event” had happened right outside the entrance to our hotel. The street that had been full of tourists was
almost totally empty, there were a lot of empty bottles in the street, and a
number of discharged tubes were in the street that looked like they had held some type of gas,
potentially used by the police to disperse the crowd. There was a large police presence visible. When we came back to the hotel after dinner
things seemed to be back to normal – there were a lot more pedestrians walking
down the street, and a less visible police presence. Not sure what happened. Searched online and again in the morning to
see if there was anything in the news but couldn't find any references to
protests in Vilnius.
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| Cathedral-Basilica
of St. Stanislaus & St. Ladislaus |
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| Interior of cathedral |
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| St.
Anne and Bernardine Church Ensemble |
Day 47– Friday,
August 2. Onward to Poland. We left
our hotel mid-morning to drive to Poland.
We had an uneventful drive to the Polish border, stopping to purchase
groceries for lunch and diesel. Total distance driven in Lithuania, 265
miles (425 km). Total distance driven to date, 5320 miles (8550 km). Our favorite things in Lithuania were: Karen –being inside
our hotel (vs. in the street) during the “riot in Vlnius”, Elizabeth - Gediminas’
Tower, Matthew – the “auto
repair church” (the cathedral/basilica), Mike – the variety of architectural styles
of the churches and reading about their history.
Other observations: Smoking. Everywhere we have been in Europe we see
large number of people smoking. Fortunately
smoking indoors is banned almost all places we have visited so far, but outside
is a different story, with seemingly half the people with a cigarette in their
hand or mouth many places. It seemed
like significantly more people smoke here than in the US, maybe 5-10 times as
many people. I finally got around to
looking up some statistics to see if my observations were correct. The answer was both yes and no – statistics
are never simple. Smoking rate varies by
country, but roughly 30-35% of Europeans smoke on average (about 50% of males
in the Baltic countries smoke, and 25% of females) compared to 20% of
Americans. So, overall, Europeans smoke
at a rate of 1.5X Americans. However,
the rate I found for Americans seemed very high – I would only say 1-2% of adults
I know smoke, not the 20% statistic that I saw for Americans. So, I went to the next level. The smoking rate in Oregon where we live is
the 6th lowest out of the 50 states.
However, most telling was the statistics on smoking and education
level. 40% of Americans without a high
school diploma smoke, 24% of Americans whose formal education stopped at high
school smoke, 9% with an undergraduate college degree smoke, and only 5% of
adults with a postgraduate college degree smoke. Almost all the people I work with at Intel
have college degrees, many with postgraduate degrees. There is also a high percentage of Asian
Americans at Intel, and Asian Americans smoke at a rate of less than half that
of the general American population. So,
throw all those factors together – the people I spend most my time around are
highly educated, they come from ethnic backgrounds that smoke less, and I live
in a state that smokes much less than the national average and that means that
it probably is accurate than only 1-2% of the adults I know smoke, and hence my
observation that the smoking rate here seems very, very high. I guess if I lived in an area with low
education level in Kentucky (the state with the highest smoking rate) then the
smoking rate in Europe might seem similar to what I would see back at home.
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