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@home, 2024 | baltics24, estonia, europe, finland, helsinki, istanbul, latvia, lithuania, riga, tallinn, turkiye, vilnius
Baltics24: Days 19-20 – Istanbul – Home
Home. Not Istanbul, nor Constantinople, nor Byzantium. Not Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki, Stockholm. Just a couch with a dog that has mostly forgiven, and the heater on, because we’d certainly acclimatised to 30 degree weather and are feeling the chill of an otherwise mild Perth winter. The journey home was uneventful, Singapore Airlines generally took care of us well (except for their website stuffing up L’s gf selection, and their online help being next to useless to correct it — Jeshua I’m keeping my eye on you). We bounced through Changi with enough time to grab some duty-free, and it’s good to see Changi airport has a lot more stores…
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Baltics24: Day 13 – Vilnius
Vilnius (though the locals barely pronounce the second i) the capital of Lithuania (which is spelt locally as Lietuva) is an interesting place. It’s the second largest city in the Baltics, with just a few less people than Riga, Lithuania is the most populous of the three countries, and as Laura told us yesterday, has a more spread out population (of the 6 cities with more than 100k pop, 4 are in Lithuania). This morning was the obligatory wander to see where things were, it was also about 30 degrees so a part of the wander was just to find patches of shade. There was an occasional breeze which helped.…
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Baltics24: Day 12 – Riga – Vilnius
A long day on the road. We booked a transfer tour from Riga to Vilnius with Traveller.ee, so we were up and ready before 9am, having a breakfast of the last of the smoked pork and other random bits. We met Laura (pronounced more like lauw-ra rather than lora) and soon a group of eight of us were on the road (several USians, a Chinese/US/Swiss, a Kiwi, and an Argentinian/Kiwi). Lithuanian Laura was very entertaining from the outset, full of the dry, ironic, slightly self deprecating humour that is prevalent in the Baltic region. Her potted history of the Baltics was a hoot, especially with the deadpan delivery, around how…
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Baltics24: Day 11 – Riga
The Riga Aviation Museum is a museum in a very different sense of the word to how we would generally understand it. It’s out by the Riga airport, so it takes about 20-30 minutes to get to, including a bit of forest where you start to wonder if you’ll ever be seen again. Through this, we pulled up at a gate, or just past a gate as the driver didn’t realise we’d arrived, where we could see some old planes and helicopters sitting just the other side. There was a a strip of razor-wire atop the fence, an opened padlock on the gate, and a number to call, and after…
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Baltics24: Day 10 – Riga
Our first full day in Riga and, well, it’s closed for Jani Day, their midsummer public holiday. It turns out that in these parts, the pagan cosplay also involves staying up until dawn, screaming at the dawn, then going to bed. So we missed out on the majority of the celebration, but I’m okay with that, it’s cool that we are here at the right time but the Latvians have been through enough in their lifetimes, they don’t need a few extra tourists bumbling through their traditions and celebrations. While I’m sure we’d have been welcomed, from all we’ve seen Latvians are a friendly, hospitable people, but being real, we’re…
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Baltics24: Day 9 – Tallinn – Riga
Hello Latvia! Having set an alarm to make sure that we’d be up in time for breakfast, check out, and a taxi to the bus station, we were awake well before. First there were the crowd of folks who decided to have a bit of a street party outside our window at 4am, I guess in fairness it was already light, but really? As much as no one really wants to be threatened with being dumped in a fountain at 4am, similarly no one wants to be woken up by the sound of this going on. All I can say is, thankfully, whatever nationality the group were, they weren’t English…
