Endless Summer Tiny World

From karosta prison we headed for kuldiga where we were hoping to find some sand caves you can crawl around in. The caves were not open but we did find europe’s longest waterfall, which is actually kind of funny because it is only 2 meters high! The old town was pretty cute and nice to walk around though. We then drove up to ventspils where we visited a very nicely restored castle. We drove up around the cape of kolka in Latvia and ended up in tukums where there is a place called cineville. Cineville is a huge area that has been made only for making movies set in Latvia in a certain period. All the buildings are very small and only the fronts of buildings. They also have an area that can be a canal or lake and a whole train section. It is still off season so everythings not completely set up but it was still pretty cool to wander around.
From tukums we headed down south to rundale palace. This was a palace that is HUGE and was designed by the architect who later worked for all the cars of Russia. It was really cool and you were able to go through a lot of rooms. After going there my only question is when did we stop putting secret doors in rooms?? From the palace we headed into Riga for a couple days. Riga is the most contemporary of all the capital cities but is really nicely restored. We spent the next couple days walking around admiring all the cool architecture, visiting the old buildings, climbing the church steeples to view the city from above and visiting the huge Saturday market. We also stumbled across the Riga marathon which was always entertaining to watch and cheer people on through the old streets.
From Riga we went out to estonia’s largest island, saaremaa. We spent time wandering the huge museum inside the old castle, which might be the best one we’ve gone to yet as all the old stairways and passageways are used throughout the museum so it’s almost a maze. We also went out and saw a spot where a meteorite landed 3,000 yrs ago and got to go out to the ruins if an old castle that still had underground rooms you could crawl around in. The next morning we were planning to head for another island but just missed the ferry so instead we headed back to mainland and back to tallinn. Mom’s allergies are pretty bad so were just kind of taking it easy here in Tallinn until our flight out tomorrow. Were off to England and Scotland tomorrow and staying in one of mom’s condos for the week! Only 9 days until I’m back in the states! I’m excited to see everyone again!!!

We’ve been having a good time, but were still enduring the cold up here! I told mom that I think were in the tundra! From the north of Estonia we headed down to tarty further south. Tartu is a cute university town and we were lucky enough to stumble upon some kind of festival so there were people out selling all kinds of local goodies and we were able to try some! We also headed to a museum that was actually in the basement of an apartment building and it was the old KGB cells and head quarters. Very interesting but sad to see these cells and how tiny they were. We then headed to a little town called viljandi that had lots of old wooden houses and an old castle overlooking a lake. It is actually really amazing how small these countries really are and how our longest drive never seems to be more than an hour or two! In viljandi we also found a bike race, so were able to enjoy watching a road race and the next day we watched the end of an off road race which turned out to be the Estonian cup. They actually won sone awesome prizes too… Computers, digital cameras, cell phones and of course champagne, I was impressed! We spent quite a bit of time relaxing as well since I had a pretty bad cold! After viljandi it was time to head into Latvia and we headed to Sigulda, a touristy area with lots to do. We got there and headed out to a castle that had been partially rebuilt. Then we headed to a neighboring town that had a castle that was still in ruins but they sent you around it with a candle burning in a lantern so that was very cool. We also tried looking for a few more places and got lost and enjoyed the countryside instead! The next morning we headed off to an old soviet bunker that was so top secret it’s location was only released in 1994! It is 9 m underground and is all original furnishings and everything. We were on tour with a large group of Danish people and they were pretty entertaining to go through the bunker with. From here we went into Lithuania and the city of siauliai. This is where the famous hill of crosses is located. This hill has had crosses on it since the 19th century and right now it has at least 200,000 crosses of all sizes all over it. The crosses were taken down, bulldozed, removed and forbidden by the soviets at least 4 times and they say that every time, overnight more crosses would show up. It was pretty interesting to see and you would never believe how there are crosses everywhere! From here it was time to head to Vilnius, the capital of lithuania. We arrived and proceeded to be lost in the traffic, confusing streets and one ways for at least an hour and a half looking for our hotel, so our first picture of Vilnius was not a great one! We visited the large cathedral, a bridge with locks all over it from the uzupis (ppl who used to be gypsies), they put a lock on the bridge when they get married to seal their marriage. We also wandered into the area of the city they claim to be their own country and looked at their very interesting constitution in several languages posted on a wall in the middle of the city! I had an afternoon at the US embassy where I had to have pages added to my passport and we saw two really interesting museums. One was the KGB museum, it had a lot of their old spy documents and equipment as well as the basement which was a prison. It was extremely sax to go down to the basement and see the cells, bathrooms, showers, and even pictures of beaten prisoners and the execution room. It is amazing people were still locked in this prison in the 80’s and 90’s. The other museum we saw was the holocaust museum. It was so interesting but also horrifying! They have very graphic pictures and some horrible accounts of events that happened in the Jewish ghettos that were set up in Vilnius and Kaunas.
We made a brief pitstop outside of Vilnius at the trakai castle, which has been almost completely restored. It’s amazing how small the rooms seem inside when the whole palace seems so big outside! After the castle we headed to Kaunas. In Kaunas we spent the night and in the morning headed to the sugihara house. It’s the house of a Japanese consulate who saved the lives of at least 3,00 Jews by issuing transit visas to them and allowing them to leave the horrors of the German invasion behind. From Kaunas we headed out to Nida on the curonian spit. This is a fairly large island made all from sand, though you wouldn’t guess it if you were on it. We spent two nights there and had our own little apartment. We hiked up one of the dunes and could look out over most the spit and over to the mainland. We also spent a day biking, and biked half the island! We probably biked about 35 miles but it was nice to get exercise, fresh air and see the pine forests. This morning we stopped to see the colony of cormorants and grey herons and watch them feed their young before heading for leipaja in Latvia. In leipaja we stopped briefly for a tour of the karosta prison. Karosta was and old naval base for the soviets so the prison was for punishing soldiers. No one was tortured or murdered here, they just had to face uncomfortable living conditions and hard work. We opted out of the option to stay the night at the prison as our tour guide seemed to think we wouldn’t make it as we already had a hard time with following directions and answering questions correctly on our 45 minute tour! From there we have stopped in a little town called kuldiga and we will explore the west side of Latvia for a day or two before heading into Riga. I am enjoying my time but I’m also very excited to get back home and get back intoa somewhat normal life again! Only a little over two weeks left!

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