31/05-02/06/2019: Seville
Km travelled today/sum: 227km / 5280km
Hot, mostly highway

Today we were aiming for Seville, which was just a 2 hour ride from Albufeira. So we had a slow start with a nice breakfast.

The border crossing went without any problems… well, there was no border crossing so that’s probably why there were no problems 😉 . After 100km, we had a petrol stop and thought we would give our host a call. As it turned out, he had to go to the hospital to have his dialysis done – which takes 3 hours – so he would be back home around 19:00. This was a bit of a surprise. Since it was really warm (~ 35 degrees), we decided to stay at the petrol stations restaurant a bit longer, which had good WiFi. After an hour we decided to ride to the accommodation and wait there. When we arrived we explored the area ’till close to 19:00 then our host turned up. We were able to park the bikes in his front yard, which was really convenient.

He also told us that this weekend there would be a military show and that the Spanish king comes to Seville on Saturday. So we planned to have a look at the army exhibition and maybe get a glimps of the king. Well, as usual we started the day slowly and when we arrived at the train station we realised that it was pretty packed. As we found out, that was nothing compared to how packed the train was. In the end, the carriage was so crowded that nobody could get in anymore. We got off the train one station earlier (we may have remembered the wrong station name…), but that was not bad, since we left the crowd behind for a short while.

A short walk later we had a look at the ‘Plaza de España’. This was huge place, there were even small channels with bridges and boats on them.The Palaza was in front of a nice park. When we strolled through the park, Sigrid found a orange tree with plenty of oranges. So Sigrid had a go at one, but it was really dry. I guess they don’t water the trees regularly.

 

 

When we left the park, we saw the crowd. We waited a bit and then we could hear some tanks coming. Unfortunately, this was the moment where we realised that we were waiting at the wrong spot. I tried to take some pictures above the crowd with very limited success.

 

A bit frustrated we tried reach the channel, but there was no way we could get there. So instead, we used a back road to get to the main street from there. That was when two young ladies approached us, asking if we would like to be part of a tasting group for olive oil and beer. This was organised from the University of Seville and it would be free… Cool! we’ll have that instead! A guy came to us and translated the proceedings from Portuguese to English. Now we could understand what it was all about. We learned that when tasting olive oil, you are looking for defects, and there were a couple of oils which were emphasising these defects so you could work out what it was all about. Anyway, the olive oil was ok. Now it was onto the beers – there however they tried a couple of new strange things. Some of them they shouldn’t waste the nice beer on (my opinion) but one other was quite nice, it was a mixture of Guinness with a hint of coffee. I liked it, Sigrid didn’t.

 

 

Anyway, when the tasting was finished, so was the parade. The streets were nearly empty. We walked along the river and it was really hot. Sigrid had some water from a nice fountain.

 

Our next idea was to hop on a boat and take a river cruise. The boats were leaving from the ‘Torre del Oro” (tower of gold), which was not far from us. So we walked there and hopped on the boat. On the left is the ‘Torre del Oro” and on the right the the building for the ‘Ministry of Education and Sport’.

The bridge on the left was built by the French architect Alexandre Gustave Eifel. It replaced a pontoon bridge build by the Moors in the 12th century – really-this floating bridge exists seven centuries! On the right, there is the Schindler tower, which is just an observation tower build for the Exposition of Seville 1992.

After the boat trip, we decided to have a look at the ‘Torre del Oro’, which is also a nautical museum. From the top of the tower, we had a great view over the ‘Canal de Alfonso XIII‘ one of the arms of the River Guadalquivir. We also had a glimpse of the ‘Catedral de Sevilla’, which we would visit tomorrow.

On our way back to the train station, we came across some nice arabic houses, and when we walked into the archway we found some beautiful tranquile court jards. In one court jard we found a reminance of the town wall and a water fountain.

 

This was enough for one day, so we caught the train back. This time the train was empty 😁

26-30/05/2019: Albufeira
Km travelled today/sum: 198km / 5053 km
Sun shine, 29 degrees, country road, highway

Our first stop was the ‘Lighthouse of Cabo de São Vicente’ the place where Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic ocean meet.

Oh, and there is this sausage stall which sells “The last bratwurst before America” (Die letzte Bratwurst vor America). We thought we should definitely give it a try.

 

 

On our way to the light house we saw a large fortress, so on the way back we stopped to have a look. This fortress was not a standard one, it was just a wall that divided the mainland from the headland. The headland itself was protected by 3 steep cliff sides. Left is the entrance to the fortress, on the right is the gate from the inside.

After we explored most of the building and walked along the cliffs, we hopped on our bikes and drove to our accommodation in Albufeira. We got a room on the top floor and could park our bikes just in front of the stair case. This was our view J

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sigrid couldn’t resist and hopped immediately into the pool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next couple of days we relaxed on the pool, tried some different restaurants, walked along the beaches, found some sleeping Snoralex (Poekmon), ate some more creepy crawlers and enjoyed the sunsets.

During our stay it turned out that the aircon was not working and the internet was very slow. The aircon couldn’t be fixed, so we got a fan and a free nights stay, we didn’t complain J. The stay here was over in no time. The next stop will be Seville, where we would like to have a look at the ‘Catedral de Sevilla’. Looking at the temperature, Seville will be 10 degrees hotter than the Algarve!

24-25/05/2019: Villa Nova de Milfontes

Km travelled today/sum: 218km / 4855km
Sun shine, 25 degrees, highway and nice country roads

We left Lisboa over the ‘Ponte 25 de Abril‘, a huge hanging bridge which didn’t allow motorcycle rider to use the left lane. Not long after, we turned off the highway to follow some of the more scenic roads through a national park. At one point, we saw a lot of stork nests on any imaginable place with height.

So we stopped and took some pictures.

 

We continued through the national park on the curvy roads meandering through the green hills. It was just enjoyable. Our next planned stop was ‘Die letzte Wurst vor America’ and then to Albufeira, but that would have been a long day. Instead, during a petrol stop, we looked around and found something close by, on the side of the national park. So we booked it and when we arrived, we got a room on the first floor with a nice balcony. Since we would like to call Germany to congratulate my mum for her birthday, we would be up late/early, so we decided to stay a day longer.

Since we still had time before sunset, we explored the village close by. There was an old castle and the river mouth leading to the ocean and a nice beach.

The next morning we slept in and started to walk around after lunch time. We went back to the beach, this time walked up to the ocean. At the end of the road was an extraordinary sculpture. As we found out, it was the ‘Arcanjo Statue’ symbolising a cry, an alert to the planet that melts.

From this point we could see the Atlantic beaches as well as back to the castle in town and the bridge, spanning over the Mira River.

When we were passing the restaurants, we noticed that people were eating something like peanuts, but with a snail shell. The items in this dish looked too small for snails. So we got adventurous in the next restaurant and ordered one serve. Well, it turned out that this are snails, Portuguese snails (Há Caracois) but much smaller than the French once. I must admit, they didn’t taste bad.

After all the hard work so far, we thought we need a holiday. So we looked for accommodation in Albufeira, which has a kitchen, is close to the beach, doesn’t cost the world, has free Wi-Fi and secure motorcycle parking. To our surprise, Sigrid found some accommodation ticking all these boxes. So tomorrow, we will have a look at the point where the Atlantic and the Mediterranean sea meet and then set off to Albufeira.

Date: 13/4 Saturday

Km ridden: 280

Location: Lübeck

It’s an unfortunate truth that even a great time must eventually to come to an end. On Saturday we packed up and prepared to leave the island, but this time using a different route. But first, breakfast! Unfortunately our breakfast plans at the nearby bakery were foiled because all the seats were taken, so we went for breakfast at Nielson which is a great coffee shop with a view over the Wattenmeer (ocean).

Then we took a ferry to the Danish island of Romo.

A long bridge joins Romo island to the mainland.

We followed Matthias, our faithful guide, over that bridge and then from Denmark back to Germany – without a notable border.

Our destination was the Nolde museum.

This famous expressionist has very colourful art and benefited from his reputation that he refused to work under the Nazi regime. Even though that’s correct it turns out that he was actually supportive of the Nazies, only withdrawing his support after they rejected and banned his art!

Seeing this garden…

…one can imagine where he got his inspiration for his colourfulness from

Shortly after that our path separated. Matthias and Gaby had to return to Berlin, while we were heading in the direction of Rügen (another German island) to visit Reni.

As it turned out, the trip would have been too long for today unless we were willing to ride in the dark, which is something we really try and avoid… aaaand it was quite cold (6 degrees!!! 🥶) bearable with our heated jackets but not much fun.

So we stopped in Lubeck for the night. We had found this hotel on the internet:

On the picture you can see the main hotel, however the offer was for a building to the side, a few hundred meters away. Our room there was cheap, warm and comfortable enough, but no hot water cooker or coffee making facilities. That seems to be normal in German hotels – darn 😩 . We had no camping equipment to help us out here, but a supermarket nearby helped us out with all we needed. Another bug bear was that internet was only available in ‘common spaces’ – meaning the common places in the main hotel which shut shop after 8:00 pm – meaning no internet for us….

 

Date: 14 April 2019

Km ridden: 263

Location: Ruegen

The next morning was still cold, but after a good breakfast at the hotel, which did well to negate our negative feelings from the night before, we were off.

We had a short look at the gate of Lubeck

For fun we did some of our exercises in front of the gate to send to our fitness club friends

 

It started to drizzle, but luckily not too badly, so we reached Renie’s Esperanca Feriendomizil a bit after lunch.

We were excitedly greeted by her and her dog JK

We unpacked, and for dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant. Back at Renie’s place we had some wine

and talked till the wee hours of the morning.

The first day we went sightseeing the colossus of Prora , a building complex started by the Nazies, then used during GDR times for the police, now being rebuild for modern times and sold as investment flats.

Later we found a Gosh fish shop in Binz, yummy! And we noticed the 700 year sign on the Binz peer.

Turns out this little village really exists for at least 700 years… coming to prominence only after sea side holidays came into vogue.

The next few days we spent with Reni. We caught up with her parents as well; they were visiting from Berlin and had the new dog in tow, a very lively golden retriever mix.

For the next day she promised that we’d take him along the beach for a long walk. Said and done we set off with him the next day – or should I say he took off with us?

He was so energetic that he pulled us along the whole way – the whole 8 km way along the beach! We didn’t dare to let him off the lead for fear that we wouldn’t get him back. Still it was great fun, albeit exhausting.

That did not hinder us from having a great lunch by the beach

Finally we could help with some lawn mowing and carrying some of Renie’s collected artwork to the appropriate places in the garden of the holiday complex.

Now the place was ready for the Easter rush.. to see the art you’ll need to visit her J

http://www.feriendomizil-speranza.de/

Date: 15 April 2019

Location: Mahlow

In the morning we packed up and said our farewells, promising to see each other again in October.

Then it was off again direction Berlin. Our target for the day was Mahlow and we arrived there in the early afternoon.

The next days were spent washing, planning and preparing for the big trip!

We will travel back to Europe in a few days to explore more of it. After returning to Australia October 2017 we bussied ourselfs with the grandchildren and family commitments.

In 2018 we travelled sans Blog to northern QLD. The intention was to reach Cape York , however we only got to 25 km out of Laura. There we both came off on the dirt road. Not thinking much of it we lifted up the bikes to survey the damage. After that it became apparent that Sigrid had sustained some more injuries than originally thought. A kind lady in pickup drove her back to Laura first aid station. From there she got air lifted with suspected spleen rupture.

Helicopter landing place where Sigrids helicopter landed

Bjorn and Sigrid having the first coffee together after the accident

The spleen rupture turned out to be a minor tear, so no operation was required. It did however hospitalise her in Cairns for a week.

Bjorn in the meantime had his hands full with getting the bikes out of the dirt and back to Cairns which he managed with the help of kind strangers and friends currently living up there. Repairs proved to be difficult. But after 4 weeks we were back on the road and returned home for a big family event-our son’s wedding.

The happy couple

The happy couple

This was followed by Bjorn reaching his 60 year milestone

and us planning a new trip ,which brings us to present days.🤗

Date: 18 – 23/09/2017
From/To: Prague – Venice
Distance: 195 Km
Total Distance: 16066 Km
Weather: Cold, Drizzle, Rain, Windy
Road: Paved

 

We said good bye to our host Blanca. She had to go to work and we started to pack our bikes.

The weather forecast was predicting rain, so we put our rain gear on, just in case.

It didn’t rain, but it was cold. On the way we found the ‘Motorest U Dubu – E 55’ restaurant, so we stopped and had some nice lunch.


Not long after we arrived in Austria, problem was now to find where the vignette- Required as proof for maud payment were sold. You need the vignette to travel on the Austria highways. Normally you can buy them at the patrol stations, but there were no petrol stations after the Czechian border. No surprise, comparing the petrol price in both countries. Anyway, it took us an hour to find a petrol station that sold the vignette, and another 30min before we found a petrol station that sell the vignette for motorcycles J

In the evening it started to rain, so we stopped in ‘Eben im Pongau ‘ looked for an accommodation. We found a nice hotel but the weather forecast for the next day was dim. Rain thew hole day, from Eben to Venice. When we started the next morning it was raining, the temperature was around 5 degrees. The snow line was dropped over night to 1000m , so we started to see white trees left and right from the highway and the temperature dropped to +0.5 degrees. Lucky there was no ice on the highway.

The rest of the right was as expected, rainy. We arrived in Cavallino, a peninsula in front of the Venice.

 

The next day the rain stopped and the sun started to come out. From our hotel we could see the mountains close by.

 


At night we had some sea food platter in a nice restaurante nearby.


The after was the day, we went to Venice using the public transport. Here some pictures approaching Venice with the ferry.


Below a picture of the famous sigh bridge-Ponte dei Sospiri .


Below you can see a prisoners hand, the last time before he went to the prison cell …, or it might be a tourist J.

And here is a picture from the famous ‘Piazza San Marco’ and the clock tower.


It started to get flooded, as it does twice a day. On the right picture you can see the water rising.


Here is a closer picture from the St. Marks Basilica.



I liked the channels, here particular with the reflection of the house in the canal.

Sigrid had to feel if the water is cold… it was. J

The pictures below from our way to the Rialto Bridge.


And here it is, the Rialto Bridge. On the left hand side you can see the middle of the bridge with shops and on the right hand side the outer stairs.



The mandoatory picture of us on the rialto bridge.

In Venice there are no roads, so the parcel delivery is done with boats and from here on a sack truck by foot. The right picture shows the garbage collection points. Here comes the garbage boat and picks up the rubbish and recycling material.


Some customer got wet feet when having dinner when the high tide started to come in.

And there was the house with the hands rising out of the water. It is a statement of the climate change impact and the rising sea level effecting Venice. The hands meant to support the side of the building.

The end of the fish marked, the left over fish was donated to the seagulls J

Just some building on the canale grande.


Narrow streets in Venice.

Some more canals.


And a dead end, we have to go back J


The old house facade was expose, it looked more impressive then the new one. And Sigrid with the lion on the ‘Piazza San Marco’


After so much walking, we sat down on a nice coffee at a channel. The weather was just perfect.

And we decided to have a gondola tour.

Here we are just passing the sigh bridge, and on the right gondola traffic jam.


 


At the end of our gondola trip we went up the ‘St Mark’s Campanile’, actually… we use the lift J. The view was stunning, particular at the end of the day. Below are some pictures from the top.


After all that hard work we sat down and had a glas of wine, as a finish of a marvellous day.

On our ferry trip back I saw metal Rino in a park.

Sunset at the harbour, when waiting for the bus.

Tomorrow we will start our way back to Berlin, maybe with a short detour over the Garda See.

Date: 14-17/09/2017
From/To: Dubrauke – Prague
Distance: 195 Km
Total Distance: 16066 Km
Weather: Cold, Drizzle, Warm, Sunny
Road: Paved

We left Dubrauke in the afternoon, after Marion left for her physio therapy. It started drizzling on the way (we have our personally cloud) but it stopped when we arrived in Prague. Here we had our first traffic jam for a long time. We were greeted by Blanca on arrival at the booked accommodation. There was a pool and a hot tub to relax. I didn’t feel that well (got Sigrid’s stomach bug), so we deferred the hot tub session.


The next day we explored Prague. There was a subway- the train, not the restaurant..- close by, so we hopped on it and arrived in the city within 15 min. Since we didn’t have a map, we just guessed the direction and stumbled over a small marked with all sorts of art and food.


After we found the tourist information, we had a map and some directions. First we looked at the old town hall with the astronomical clock build at the beginning of the 15th century. The clock has two dials, one showing the position of the sun and moon and other astronomical details, the other is a calender dial, representing the month. Each hour, there is “The Walk of the Apostles”, a clockwork showing the figures of the Apostles. By chance we were there right at 12:00, as you can see there was a large crowd to see the ‘Walk of the Aposteles’.

 


Unfortunatelly they renovated the town hall so we couldn’t appreciate it. Anyway, there is the picture from both of us in front of the old town hall and the old town square.

 


On the square was as well the ‘Church of Our Lady before Týn’ (I love wiki). I took the pictures only of the small spires, because they look like out of a cindarella movie.


We found wonderful restored houses walking through the old town


Sigrid found a devil and had to hold it on his horns

We found the fireman sculpture rescuing a victim from fire. I it was at the top of house


When we enquired in the tourist office if there were free guided tours in Prague, we meet Jan. He was very friendly and knowledgable. He just returned from China, so we spend quite a bit of time in the tourist office to talk about Prague and the possibility of traveling on our own through China. .

From here we walked to the Charles Bridge, well that was the plan. We must have turned somewhere too early; we ended up at this monument, which looked rather interesting.

From there we could take a picture of the Charles Bridge from the side.


This is the bridge tower, the entrance to the Charles Bridge.

On the Charles Bridge there are a lot of sculptures, each is fascinating on its own right.


This is the other side of the bridge, the entrance to the little city.

Uphill from the little city, there is the Prague Castle

The Prague Castle is the largest ancient castle in the world. It is more a castle complex, with a cathedral inside. You can see the tower over the top of the main gate.


The cathedral and one of the gargolyes.


Looking a bit closer shows how much work is put into all the details


Here is the cathedral from the side with the St.Vitus tower, which can be climbed-We’ll leave that for another day….

On our way back we realised how deep the subway goes, the escalator was long and steep.

The next day we took the tram to the city when we came across this lightning rod on a car park. It was in the middle of a staircase. I would use the elevator instead of the staircase J

.

Back in the old city we noticed at one house some windows only painted J


We came across this restaurant where you eat in middle age style, no forks and knives, use only the hands.


Back in the castle we visited the church treasury; it is one of the most extensive treasuries in Europe. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures. There was at least one guard in each room who was watching you. So the only picture is Sigrid at the entrance. I was impressed by the craftsmanship of the 10th century.

We thought we need some exercise after so much culture, so we climbed the ‘Great Tower’.

At the top we were exhausted, but the view was worth it. On the left is the view down to the square and a bit of the ‘Little Town’ and on the right both towers of the cathedral.


A view over Prague with it bridges.

On our way we found again an Irish Pub J But we didn’t go in, there was still too much to visit J

We hopped onto the ‘Funicular Railway‘ to get onto the top of the ‘Petrin Hill’ were a small Eifel Tower is located.


Here is the tower from the bottom. We didn’t climb up since we already had a great view over the city earlier in the day


Next we went to the other side of town, to the ‘Krizikova Fountain‘. The fountains are located in a park and they have a show to different types of music. Since it started to get cold, we picked the earliest show, it was classical music. Below you can see the setup before the show.

I liked the idea to use water as a screen and projects short movie scenes on it. This reminded us at the ‘Bellagio’ in Las Vegas.


The following pictures are from our way back as we passed a brigde. The buildings looked nice, I liked the purple towerJ

And the Prague Castle at night.

Tomorrow we pack up and leave for Venice. Apparently it should be warmer there -we shall see…

Date: 09- 10/09/2017
From/To: Vilnius – Przewloka
Distance: 501 Km
Total Distance: 15152 Km
Weather: Sunny
Road: Paved

We left Vilnius relatively early and had lunch break just before the border. There was a Doener shop, with American touch. The interior was like an old American Dinner and opposite was an old American school bus parked. We enjoyed the little break and continued to the border.


Well, I passed the sign but Sigrid stop just in time, so I turned around and could take the border shot (no, nothing to drink).

The next stop was at a road house. Sigrid mentioned it on her Facebook, what is missing here. Well it’s not that my ice is bigger than Sigrid’s, and the bikes are not parked in the shop and we are outside, no, we didn’t wear raingear at all and instead of having a hot drink we had iceceam J

At the evening we arrived at the Village Andrew was living in, he picked us up from the chapel and guided us home. The right picture is a bit short, Andrew is on the left hand side, just outside the picture J


Next day we visited with Andrew his home church, quite interesting. It is in an imarcular condition. We witnessed a service, and the church was so full that people were standing during the whole service.


After visiting the church, we had lunch and picked Margaret up from the bus stop. She had visited her Mother first before she joined Andrew. On Andrews farm is still a well, here is Sigrid trying to fetch some water without getting knocked unconcious.


After a short rest we visitd the part of forest that belongs to Andrew. He had the exact measurment, so we counted the step and found his section. During the walk we talked about what to do with the forest. Wood harvesting is the obvious answer, but I wouldn’d have a clou how to do it, so Andrew explained how he has done it hundreds of times with his dad. I was keen to participate in it, unfortunatelly harvest time is in January/February, so at this time we will be at home in Australia.


Andrew pointing out a field that belongs to him as well. Back home Andrew started a BBQ and we had some meat and some ‘Moonshine’. Well the night was long, and the morning too early.


The next morning we packed ‘slowly’ our bikes, said quitely good bye to Margaret and Andrew and left ‘slowly’ J

Date: 07- 08/09/2017
From/To: Riga – Vilnius
Distance: 295 Km
Total Distance: 14651 Km
Weather: Sunny
Road: Paved

We found a spot to stop on the border.

The ride into Vilnius was much nicer as Riga, it seemed to be more wellcoming and the drivers seemed to be less stressed. We arrived at the booked accommodation and our host gave us some hints what to see and some nice traditional restaurants.

Since there was still daylight, we had a brief walk to the edge of the old town. Sigrid started to feel unwell, she must have gotten a stomach bug. Close to our accommodation we found an Easter egg sculpture. It signifies the restoration and revival of this part of the Old Town.

We had a look around and found a couple of old churches. Since we didn’t had a guide, we wouldn’t have any information about them, but still the looked quite nice.


The next day we organize a map and off we went. First we found the ‘Oldtown’ pub, it seems to be a pub for bachalor parties J

We had a guide now, so at least we could look up the churches we came across. Here are some pictures of the ‘Church of St. Casimir’, the first and the oldest baroque church in Vilnius.


Some street with nicly restored houses and some art on he side of the road.


At lunch we went to one of the recommended restaurants. Sigrid ordered a soup, I liked the plate it was served inJ. When finished with the soup, eat the dish J


And there was some pork with beet root and some cabbage, it tasted quite good particular the crackling.

After lunch we went to the ‘Cathedral Square’, where most of the attractions were located. On the left is a picture of the ‘Bell Tower’ and on the right the main entrance of the ‘Cathedral’


There was an option to climb the bell tower, so we did. On one of the level there were bells hanging with a clople to play with them. Sigrid couldn’t resist, well I couldn’t either, but there are no pictures of me J. The small bell on the rigth if from the 15th Century. On the right is the view up into the bell tower. This is the wooden structure we would walk up.


Here are the wooden framework form the top. You can see the bells on the top and right of the picture. To put it in perspective, these bells were around half a tone each. The biggest bell did weigh more then 1.5 tones.

The view from the top was great. We could the square and the castle..


The old clock work was still there and the small bell, which rung every quarter of an hour.



Next we had a look inside the cathedral. It was quite impressive, but we had seen so many beautiful churches, that it started to feel a bit like same old, same olde.


Next we had a look at the ‘Vilnius upper castle’, which included a steep incline.


Th view from the top was better then from the bell tower. The tower is on the right picture.


We could see the ‘Church of St. Anne’, which is one of the most intersting Gothic churches in Lithuania. Our accomodation was close to the Vilnius Choral Synagogue, which we could see from here.
From here we could even see where our accomodation was


And Sigird dicovered the Vilan and by zooming in with the camerea, there is a coffee shop at the river.

So we went down and were headding straight to the coffee, were sitting in the sun and had some ice cream. There we were sitting for a while, enjoying the sun.


After it started to get a bit cooler, we walked home. Passing a carpark, that was covered with a screen with pictures from waterfall.

And we saw some rings hanging under a bridge, not sure if this was art or had some other functions. During the time we tried to figure out what the rings were, a Wiking boat was passing by J, looks like a boat tour on the Vilna.


And here Sigrid got framed J

Well, we forgot the map at our accomodation, and as it turned out, I made some additional sight seeing on our way home. I thought we had to visit the ‘Gate of Dawn’. As you can see, we made it and it was sort of on our way J.


Tomorrow we will leave for Poland, to visit our Australian neighbour at his farm in Poland.

Date: 04 – 06/09/2017
From/To: Tallinn – Riga
Distance: 310 Km
Total Distance: 14356 Km
Weather: Cloudy, Sunny
Road: Paved

Today we head for Riga, the capital of Latvia. Below you can see the border between Estonia and Latvia, which was single lane traffic, since they tried to extend the highway.

Riga is a big city and we felt it as soon we entered it. The traffic was hectic and people were quite pushy. At our accomodation we were welcomed by our host and could park the bike on the property in front of the flat. That was great since we didn’t have to carry all the luggage upstairs.

 

After we settled in, we walked towards the old city. Since it was late, we just walked to the train station and back.


On the way we found these two nice shops. One was a bakery and the second one a game café, with exceptional cocktails, as we were assured by some young guys when we took a picture of the sign.


Below are just a couple of pictures taken by nicely restored houses.


The next day we walked up the old town, got to the tourist office and followed the yellow brick road J, a maped out walked where we would see most of the Riga inner City attractions. Below some pictures takes of the old town.

We were surprised to find so much german heritage. Some house have german verses over the entrance.

The ‘Balsam’ is a type of ‘Schnaps’, I would say similar to ‘Jaegermeister’. And again, some traces of German in Riga.

 


These are beautiful restored houses.


And here is the ‘Freedom Monument’. It symbolises the suffering of the Latvian people on the way to freedom.


Below is the famous ‘House of the Blackheads’ which was currently under reconstruction, so they hang a screen with a picture in front of the building side. These houses were errected in the beginning of the 14th Century, and got demolished during the second world war, but were now reconstructed.

 

Below is Sigrid with her famous dress (would fit with the chariot from St. Petersburg:-)

Below some more impressive buildings.

 

And we found a playground with sculptures of a small dragon and an amadillo, which Sigrid tried to pull back J


And here is Sigrid, checking that the playground is also fit for heavy children.

The ‘Key of Riga’ was just a nice restaurant close to the market square. On the right hand side is the marked square with an old fire engine that had a sort of Flower Power painting at the back.


And there was the knitting shop, there was everything nitted. I guess if you stay to long there, you would be knitted in, as you can see happened to the horse.


There is a monument for the ‘1991 Barricades’. In 1991 the Baltic states fought for independence, in Riga they protected strategic important buildings with barricades.

Here are the three brothers, it is the oldest building complex in Riga (15th …17th century)


And here is the ‘Big Christopher’. By a legent, he was the founder of Riga.

The Big Christopher was on the ‘Daugava’, so Sigrid couldn’t resist and had to feel the temperature. At the back you can see the modern Riga with some fency buildings.

Beeing after Lunch time, we had a look for something nice, so we found a restaurante in the cellar. Sigrid is trying a traditional (colourful) soup. J


And after lunch we found that sign, so we couldn’t resist. It was so romantic that I forgot to take pictures from the inside. I can only say, it is worth it J


On our way home we found some more town walls and Gate towers.


Walking through the park we found a larger group of people shouting. When we looked a bit closer, we saw that they watch a basketball game, and were supporting the Letvian national team.

Sgirid posing with with a french guy J

The sculpture of Barcley de Toley, he was the invetor of the scorched earthpolic, which was important to Napoleons defeat.

Some more nice churches, each of them is amazing in its own rights, but after so many churches, they start to look all the same, still beautiful.

This would be a cheaper accomodation J. Really, it is opposite of our accomodation, seems that the insurance is dragging their feeds, it was burned before 2011 (first google street picture).

This is our accomodation, just at the back of the park.


In the park, close to the fountain and some pokemon gyms, there was a nice coffee, which had a great pavlova and coffee wih authentic Latvian Balsam J