Trip to Latvia, day 1

About a month ago, I and @raili decided we needed to explore a bit further away from home, so we filled up the tank on our car and headed south, towards Latvia.

I've been to Latvia multiple times, as a child and even a couple years back, so I had a fairly good idea of it. Boy, how everything is different from memories - we often see places a bit different in our minds.

I will share some of the photos we took.

We set off on a dark and rainy day, but the more south we headed, the clearer the sky became. After passing Pärnu, the summer capital of Estonia, we had our last raindrops and 3 days of sunshine and warm summer air was ahead of us.

If you're coming to Latvia from north, along the shore, you will realize this side of Latvia is nothing but a long beach along the freeway, so our first day's order of business was to visit a couple of beaches.

First one we visited was Salacgriva beach.

As you see on the photos, the beaches were almost empty, and possibly the reason for that is the sheer amount of beach around these parts - there a private beach for every party here.

There might have been other factors at play - being away from any major cities, Friday lunchtime and the famous Positivus festival going on during our trip.

Above you can see the plantation on Salacgriva singing beaches. Singing sand - it's this cool squeaky sound, that this special kind of sand does under your feet when you walk.

Due to the hot summer, we were not satiated yet. After swimming and laying in the sun a bit, we decided to head on towards Riga, but stop in Saulkrasti on the way, to visit the famous beaches of Saulkrasti as well.

A lonely and deserted ferris wheel greets us, once we got past the scary crow, who was blocking our way on the path to the beach.

While I don't understand why keep this broken piece of metal around here, I must admit it adds a bit to the atmosphere.

This place is totally different than I remember from a few years back. We were closer to Riga now, the capital city of Latvia, so one can see more signs of people here on this beach. A plastic cup laying here, a glass bottle a bit further away in the sand. And the sand, it's not nearly as smooth under your feet as the one in Salacgriva.

Swimming here is nice though. The water is warm and it gets deep fast, so one doesn't have to walk too much to jump in.

Two beaches was enough for us for the first day, so we headed to Riga, to find our hotel, but before heading there, we stopped at the promenade at the Daugava River and managed to grab some cool shots.

A short walk in the old town as well and we were ready to find our accommodations.

I won't stop to write about our hotel too much, in fact, it was more of a hostel type near the edge of the city, but it was suitable for our first night and the friendlyness of the staff made up for what the place lacked.

But what caught my eye was this giant deserted building, for which we stopped our car and I immediately felt the urge of going exploring.

Alas, our access was blocked by a pond. There was a locked bridge, which we could've crossed with a bit of aerobics, or we could have circled around taking a bigger detour, but I din't feel like spending the rest of my trip in jail for stumbling around on some private property. Homework needs to be done first. Perhaps next time...

This is where I leave you for today. I will continue tomorrow with photos from the second day of our trip.

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_{Title image from pixabay}

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