The original plan was to take the road to Riga, Latvia, via the seaside resort of Liepaja. But that didn't quite work out.
Riga - Railway bridge over the Daugava River
Liepāja is located in Latvia about 60 km from Klaipeda. There is a nice first class road drawn on the map, so you think that you have to drive there every now and then. But I was wrong, there is practically nothing going there, but I didn't want to believe that until D-day itself. The only search engine that found anything for me was Rome2Rio, so I had no choice but to trust that he wasn't lying. He's usually telling the truth. He said we would leave around 11:00, so we slowly but surely left our accommodation before 10:00. We won't use the bus today and will walk as part of our training.
Klaipeda
Klaipeda - Bus station
Klaipeda - Weather reports say we need to leave this place
At the bus station we go straight to the counter. There we are told that the bus runs every other day and that day is tomorrow. So first failure. There is, however, an option to go to Palanga and from there the bus goes to Liepaja. But the bus from Palanga doesn't leave until 6:00, which doesn't make sense for us because the night is booked in Riga. So we choose option B and go directly to Riga. In the end this change of plan doesn't matter so much, because in the meantime it was brutally raining outside and it wasn't going to stop, so we wouldn't have anything from the sea again. The drive to Riga took about four hours. The only stops were in Šiuliaj and at Riga airport. We finally got there at four o'clock. The bus dropped us off at the main bus station, conveniently located next to Abava, the largest market in Europe. The main train station is also a short walk away, where a massive reconstruction is underway as part of the Rail Baltica project. This is a rail corridor linking Helsinki via an undersea tunnel, the Baltics with Warsaw and Berlin. This dream has been dreamt for perhaps over twenty years and still most of the project is still only on paper.
We're off to find our hostel. Thanks to the reconstruction of the train station, it's pretty chaotic here, and you can feel at first glance that this is a post-Soviet city. We wander a bit, but after about half an hour we reach our destination. We rest a bit on the way and don't head into town until 7pm. First to the market, but it's closed. Then towards the historic centre. A technical attraction of Riga. All the trams in the city are made in the Czech Republic, either the new ones, which resemble the Prague ones, or all the old ones. What's interesting about the old trams is that they don't use a pantograph but a pulley mechanism to contact the trolley.
Riga - Bus station
Riga - Abava Market
Riga - Ongoing reconstruction of the main railway station
The historic centre of Riga is quite small. It is worth visiting St. Peter's Church, the Evangelist Cathedral and the Riga Technical University building. A short walk away is the Lido Canteen, where we will have dinner.
Riga - Railway bridge over the Daugava River
Riga - Church of St. Peter
Riga - Evangelistic Cathedral
Riga Technical University
Riga - Lido Restaurant in the city centre
Then we stop at the station in a Rimi hypermarket for breakfast and vodka (no time limits here) and then we go to our accommodation and sleep in the twilight. Tomorrow the city of Jelgava awaits us.
Useful links:
Lido restaurant chain
Central Hostel Riga
Hotels around Riga
Hotels around Jelgava
Flights to Riga
Hotels around Klaipeda
