After coming and going for some months it was time to say farewell to Riga. Here’s a few other things that happened along the way.
Road trip with me ladies
So since Curly buggered off to France or elsewhere, me and my 3 other friends Julie, Ksusha and Katia decided it’s time to explore some local Latvian beauties that people tend to postpone for later and go to Egypt or Turkey for vacation instead. We got a car from Julie’s grandmother, which shared the age with her, but nevertheless was serving us really well and headed towards the coast in desire to escape the 35 degree heat in the city.
Italy, Italy, Italy!
This was a pretty short trip to Italy. From Zagreb we caught an overnight train to Monfalcone and from there it was a half hour ride down to Trieste. We were super tired from the journey, left our bags in a café and went on a self guided tour of the city, as provided by tourist information.
Natural Croatia- Plitvice
Saturday, 8.30am, 4.5 hour bus ride, 150 km and Curly and Dasha arrived to Plitvice. We arrived with no accommodation booked. Speaking to people this could be an expensive problem. We walked up to the first hotel we saw with the intention of asking for directions to the tourist information, but instead accepted the very last room they had available at a very reasonable price.
Sailing Croatia
I have been to Croatia before, and I liked it, so I thought I should take Dasha there for her to enjoy it also. We had a great reason to go too, Oatesy’s birthday! Big Jimmy was also on board for the occasion.
Old London Town
Lots of old friends to catch up with, which, as always, means lots of drinking. We arrived with the train into Waterloo, from there it was about a 300m walk to The Cut, Joz, Frase and Richelle’s house. Incredibly awesome location, and a nice spacious pad at the same time.
Tour De Froff
Hooray! Dasha’s Birthday!
Zhenya flew with me to Riga, so Dasha’s actual birthday consisted of a romantic stroll around the city, row boat down the canal and dinner for 3. But the party itself was the next day… and the next day and the next day, with a dozen or more closest friends and a heap of shashliks (meat skewers) helping the celebrations along. The theme for the party was Hippies versus Gypsies, and no surprises the Gypsies won. It was still hilarious watching a hippie join in a game of beach volleyball with some randoms.
Germany
Ok, I didn’t really run away. We had agreed previously that Dasha would have some time with her girl friends road tripping around Latvia, leaving me with a couple of weeks to spare. So many options. Was keen to go to Egypt and Israel to hang out with Unca Funka, but it was too expensive to get there and back. The black sea beaches of the Ukraine sounded enticing, but needing an invitation from a local and the embassy in Riga closed for a week made it very easy to put it in the too hard basket. So, why not fly to Germany (for the 7th time) to hang out with my mate Zhenya (Eugene), a couch surfer that stayed with us and Pete in Melbourne for a few months between us. He lives in the far North of Germany, Husum, about 150km North of Hamburg. He would be working during the day giving me plenty of time to relax by both the North Sea and Baltic Sea for 12 days or so… right? Wrong. This turned out to be, as most ‘holidays’ do, a flat out adventure from one day to the next.
Latvia, Midsummers!
Latvia. Home again.
Time to farewell Russia. It has been quite an amazing journey. And I highly rate both Lake Baikal, Lake Teletskoe (shame we didn’t get to explore the Altai Mountains a bit more), Moscow and Saint Petersburg. So time to do what we do best, catch another train. This train, or at least our carriage, was a different class to previous, Obshiy, which is one lower than Platzkart. This means that a bench seat is allocated to 3 people, and the bed above is a first in best slept arrangement. Of course that wasn’t us. So the 2 of us had to sleep sitting up. Worst night on a train ever! I highly recommend avoiding that class if you plan on travelling Russia or anywhere near.