Last daze

Well last night was interesting. The bar next door had some kind of DJ thing going on. And on. And on.
It wouldn't have been that bad, except every half hour or so either a drunk asshole would come outside, hooting, hollering, and talking to themselves. Or they would suddenly crank the music up to 11 and open the side doors to where there is no way anyone in the neighborhood could sleep, much less the hostel next door that shared an open space in between buildings. So I was only able to get to sleep around 5am in the morning. Not that big a deal though as I will be sleep deprived for a while tonight too and my flight leaves at 6am. Lack of sleep will help me sleep on the long flight back to home. Hopefully.

So awoken around 10am getting maybe 5 hours of sleep. I talked to the gal at the front desk and she said she would arrange a taxi to come pick me up at 5pm and take me to the Marriot Courtyard Airport. I figured I would have to get to the airport by 4am. Rather than try and get a taxi at 3:30am and get fucked, I simply got a room at the hotel right across the street from the airport. Also, while expensive, I would get some sleep before I had to wake up early. No noisy neighbors and a big fluffy bed and pillows.

Anyways, I got up and headed out on the tram to hit Hala Mirowska - the Warsaw Russian market.

The market consisted of two large buildings, a couple small ones, and a bunch of tents outside. There were even folks selling fruit and such out the back of their cars. It was huge and fun, but there really wasn't anything in terms of souvenirs.

So I headed out and wandered through the galleria near the center station, then headed back to the hostel. I stopped by the Tel Aviv cafe around the corner. It was a vegan, gluten free, and organic Israeli food stop. Not big on service though - it took them about an hour and a half to get me a bowl of tomato soup, ginger lemon sugar free drink, falafel pita sandwich, and some hummus and pita. The food was very meh - but I might be jaded considering I have been there three times. 

Food in my belly and it was heading towards 3pm. I took the time to make sure everything was packed good and waited for the taxi.

The taxi cost me only 20 zlotys - which goes to show I kinda got stiffed when I got my taxi from a "good" company via the airport. He charged me 50 zlotys, but I was okay with that since the websites I checked said it would cost around 40 and that was a couple years ago. Meh, live and learn. At least I didn't get a "mafia" black taxi and end up owing 140.

So the hotel room is a large two bed room with a nice bathroom and air conditioning. Nice, quiet, and cool. Just what I need while sleep deprived and needing to awaken early. I got some room service to bring me up a glass of milk, sparkling water, club sandwich, fried, and a panna cotta for desert.

Now all that needs to happen is me waking up early, showering, and heading across the street. Its been a fun trip, but I want to curl up with a kitteh and veg in my room with some Breaking Bad.

Ciao all.

Krakowskie Przedmiescie (and other really long street names)

Slept in a bit and got up at 10am this morning. It my vacation dammit and I'll sleep in if I want to!

First order of business is to head the central station and the galleria in hopes of finding a postage stamp. Welp, the galleria said that they didn't and maybe try central station. Central station said nope, and didn't say anything. Apparently, in Poland, folks aren't used to being able to get postage from stationary stores or news stands. Feh. I headed over to the Palace of Culture ans Science (that huge building in the center of town) and asked the tourist office. Yah! A post office in the building (not surprising, EVERYTHING is in that giant thing). Gots stamps!

So headed back over and found the bus that would drop me off at Old Town. The plan is to start at the bottom of Old Town and walk down Krakowskie Przedmiescie/Nowy Swiat into town. The street is a famous shopping main drag with a bunch of cool buildings to check out on the way. The first thing I did was take a brief trip up to a panorama view next to the bus stop.

 After my meager 15 flights of stairs to get to the roof, I realized I needed something to eat. I found a sushi place and got some ramen noodle with beef soup, kim chi, veggie and shrimp tempura, and a Coke. While filling, the Coke was maybe a 4oz glass of soda and not enough to keep me awake. Luckily right next door was a coffee shop were I could get a latte and some cherry and cream cheese pie covered in a crisp meringue cover. Somewhat of a sugar overload, but it was a very tasty pastry.

The street was a casual walk with some cool shop and interesting buildings to look at.

I noticed during my meal a guy outside with a hand written sign showing it to passersby and animatedly saying various things. When I used my camera to zoom in on his sign, I noticed what had to be various Bible verses - some from Genesis and older texts. I figured out that we was an End of the Worlder and was preaching to whoever walked by. Whew. Its good to know that the US doesn't have a monopoly on religious nutjobs. 

PacMan gets medieval on someone's ass.

I also got stopped by a Polish student and asked to rate her English skills and smile. I pretty much knew it was a pitch, but since we were near a university - I thought that it just might be a sociology experiment like she said. Nope. I got to write down how well I rated her English, my name, and signed it... and the very end box was how much I was willing to donate to feeding starving students. She said if I gave her 100 zlotys, she would give me a kiss. Err, that's a pretty expensive kiss. Anyway, I gave her 10 for the effort and she reached into her purse and pulled out a blown kiss sticker. Heh. So I would have got stiffed on the kiss too. Well played cute Polish student, but not good enough.

The street seemed to end a lot quicker than I had figured, but it dropped me next to the Warsaw National Museum. I had originally planned to hit that one on my last day, but I figured I had time and it was open late on Thursdays.

The museum was more of a gallery showing the Old Masters of Polish mainly, but other, paintings and statues from 1600 to 1800. I was hoping more for Polish history and traditions, but it seems that there isn't one in Warsaw - at least not that I found on the map. Cest la vie. I can dig me some art.

 And here we see the famous eighteenth century Dutch painter... wait a second...

DOWN KITTEH!! BAD KITTEH! BAD KITTEH!!!

The museum was huge consisting of a ground floor and two floors above that. The building was also very big, so I was able to keep wandering about for about four hours or so. I took snapshots of only those pieces that really struck a nerve or I found interesting, or creepy, or both. The top floor had one section of the museum dedicated to Polish Modern Art, so I was able to fill that little void fairly quickly.

Use #1 for Legos. Robbing a .... thing...

Use #2. Lego concentration camp. As part of the Nazi Lego collection.
Wasn't a big hit during WWII.

After this I was somewhat knacked, so I hopped on the tram (not a lot of them, so this was a first in Warsaw) that happened to run from the museum down to the central station. I headed back to the hostel for a bit, then headed back up towards the station where all the restaurants near the Marriot was located. Hit the Green Cafe for a tasty Tom Kha soup, hunk of cow with potatoes and grilled veggies, a carrot/celery/ginger fresh juice, and a shot of Polish vodka. 

I.m back at the hostel now and just in wonder that tomorrow is my last day in Warsaw, and my last day of sabbatical. Damn, time sure went by fast. Welp tomorrow I plan to hit Hala Mirowska, an old market area that dates back to 1900. The buildings were destroyed in WWII (with pretty much EVERYTHING in Warsaw), but rebuilt in the 1950s. Now they are were the traditional "Russian market" is held. I figure I can see if there is any cool handmade stuff to pick up on my last day here that I could stuff into my luggage now that I have some more room.

Park Lazienkowski

So I decided that today would be a day for chilling in the park. On the south side of town is a huge park where a palace once resided. Get away from folks and have me some more naturey time.

Hint: Under the meat choices menu, do NOT order the one marked "other".

My plan was to check out the mermaid statue this is famous in Warsaw. So I went down Swietokrzyska and found my favorite pirogi place (the chain I first went to, Zapiecek). Ordered the blueberry pirogis in sour cream, apple juice with crushed mint, and a latte.

The trip down the street, once past the touristy shopping areas, ran me through a more working neighborhood with a nice collection of street art. Now that the tourist season was essentially over, the road construction was on full force. Unfortunately, this meant that when I finally did get to the mermaid stature, they were rebuilding the entire area around her - so she was in a protective cage.

Despite all my rage, I'm still just a chick fish in a cage...

Meh, there was still a way around the construction luckily along the river. This was actually kind of cool because, with the weather, construction, and weekday -  I was the only person walking along the riverside. This allowed me a lot of peace and quiet along with some incredible views of the river and bridges.

The walk eventually dumped me off into the park. Again, there were very few people about and the leaves had just started turning and dropping in force. I love overcast fall days when the weather is just between a warm long sleeve shirt and having to wear a fleece sweater over it. It lets you walk at a slow pace with he zipper up, or a fast pace with the zipper down and the cool air hitting your chest. I think I like it so much as it reminds me of my days as a child in Boston. Regardless, the park was one long massive park filled with trees, street lamps, and a yellow, orange, and light brown carpet of leaves.

There were statues and monuments littered about the park to surprise you as you walked along. And occasional fountain, bridge, or art gallery would crop up. When I passed over a major freeway, the are just past it had a modern art gallery in a building that used to be a summer palace. It was showing an exhibition of the Polish and British art that shown in the early 90s. A time when Britain was in economic turmoil and Poland was trying to adjust to a life post-Communism. During this period some famous art works came into being whose sole purpose was to essentially shock the art world. As with most modern art galleries, I found about 70% of it to be not to my tastes and the rest to be oddly fascinating. I was especially taken by a set of three black and white photos showing a nude girl, then young woman with child, and then a mature woman with her late teenage son naked on her lap. If they weren't the same person, it was an incredible job of finding models that looked to be the same family. There was also a brilliant group of boxed "Barbie" dolls labeled as Ken's aunt. But instead of having the grotesque over sexed Barbie figures, they had Barbie faces and average middle aged housewife bodies in 1940s matronly nightgowns. They painted a subtle picture that the Barbies were a mockery of a real female form.

And, of course, they had weird shit like this. Its Mr. It's teenage siamese daughters.

 The museum was fun but I couldn't wait to get back out to the park. The more interesting views and monuments were located on the southern end of the park where the Modern Art Gallery was located.

View from the back of the gallery.

There was also another palace of some sort that was built directly on one of the mini lakes that decorated the park. Surrounding that were peacocks and tiny red squirrels zooming around int he trees. I even heard a noise and zoom in with the camera to catch a tiny mouse head peeking out from underneath the leaves. Unfortunately the pic was out of focus and the little guy bailed prior to me getting another snapshot.

I wandered about until about 4:30 when I realized I had seen pretty much everything in the six hours I had spent cruising around. Awesome day was had. I might be changing my mind about this Warsaw thing.

So anyway, I headed out to the bus stop and figured it out enough to head back to the hostel. I found that there is a bus stop just around the corner that I can hit, which made me very happy. On the way back I stopped by the cafe on the corner that happened to have some tasty smells wafting from inside. I ended up getting a beef and lamb cooked in an open filo doughish pastry, olive plate, beef tenderloin in a white wine basil sauce over noodle, and a glass some some excellent white wine. Yums.

Shopping and shlepping

This morning I got up somewhat early. I wanted to do some quick shopping and then drop off my stuff. Then go back out again and hit the hop on/off (since I pad for it) and hit the Old Town to walk around.

Cool street art on the way to the galleria.

I was looking for a number of things. A pair of socks (I had just enough clothes to wear until I left - except socks), a briefcase to put souvenirs in as a second carry on, a bar of nice smelling soap, and a bottle of milk. I ended up paying about 80 bucks (US) for a hard case from an electronics store (a bit much but it was mainly fragile things I was carrying). I found a Body Shop (chain) for some grapefruit soap (they had nothing more manly like mint or musk). No milk though. I was hard pressed to find milk so I decided to had back with my goods. On the way to hostel, there was what I though was a news stand across the street. It was instead a mini-market that just looked like a news stand - so milk problem solved.

I dropped off my stuff and headed out again. In front of the hop on/off bus stop was a small news stand. So I got my three day bus/tram pass from there and headed out on the hop on/off bus to Old Town.

I have no idea what a gofry is, but it sure looks tasty on a waffle.

Old City was the rebuilt city that had stood there with iconic buildings until Hitler decided he had an issue with Poland. Apparently, after he conquered Poland, he just wanted to be an asshole so he told his troops to destroy Old Town and the castle that stood there. 

See if I invite him to MY birthday party.

Anyway, there was a massive restoration of the Old Town to get it back to the state it was in prior to WWII. They did a pretty good job and it was cool just wandering around and admiring the various buildings. I started off admiring the inside of a restaurant so that my insides could admire some pirogis. After a fine meal of mixed pirogis, weak borsch with ravioli soup, mint tea, and a latte - headed back out.

One cool thing is that there is a legend in Old Town. One of the buildings supposedly housed a basilisk in its basement. The basilisk would lure rich traders into the trading house and then into the basement. When the traders seen the basilisk, its gaze would turn them into stone. One day a smart tailor went into the basement and tricked the basilisk into seeing its own reflection. Since then one of the buildings in Old Town has a basilisk motiff to show where the tale took place.

"Hey look! Its a basilisk! Oh wait... doh!"

The entire Old City is filled with interesting nooks and crannies, trinket vendors and galleries, restaurants and bars, and all manner of neat little shops.

The Black Night also made a brief appearance, before King Arthur cut his legs off.

The battlements and moat were cool, so I also spent a bit of time walking around the perimeter of Old Town.

"Josep! The Scots haf tried to invade town in middle of night!"
"Tak Piotr, maybe we should put water in moat?"

I made my way through the town back to my starting point. The castle was there and I wanted to check out the royal palace. I paid my 22 zlotys and headed in.

The palace was pretty cool. It was done mainly in a Baroque style and you could tell the rarely parts of the interior that was original. A lot of the palace was stolen by the Germans prior to them leveling it and then was returned after a decades of negotiations. They also used old photographs and the rare pieces of leftover wall to figure how to restore the rooms tho their former glory.

While the palace was amazing, I maybe shouldn't have seen Peterhof in St. Petersburg. Because after seeing that, the palaces in Riga and Poland just seem like smaller copies of a really amazing pace. I got that way after seeing St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican City. After seeing that monstrous and incredible work of art, the church I seen afterwards during my travels just seemed like lesser copies of a greater masterpiece.

Ok, from now on - I'll hit the smaller ones first and work my way up to the really cool stuff. That way I'm increasingly amazed rather than increasingly "meh" about things.

So I wandered out of Old Town and headed up north a ways until it started turning more residential, then headed towards the river and looped back around. There was a cool park along the river with a great view, interesting statues,

"Pardon me sir, but do you have an Grey Poupon?"

and also some pretty cool street art.

Fish!! Ok... I have no idea what's going on here...

I got back to my starting point a second time and wandered down to the bus stop. Figuring out which bus to take was pretty easy as all I have to do if find the one that goes to Centrum. So a quick bus trip and I get to hit the gallery and pick up the socks I forgot to get this morning. By this time its past five and I figure I can relax a bit at the hostel and then wander out for some munchies. 

I hit the main street to the other side of my block area and head up that figuring to cut across and head towards the giant Merriot hotel. Generally this works well in finding good places to eat as they always congregate around the high end large hotels. This was no exception as I found an entire couple of streets with some very tasty looking eating spots. I end up hitting a Japanese/sushi joint and getting kim chi, wonton soup, fried rice, pork slices with cabbage and chili, aloe juice, and an Ashai beer. I left happy with a nice full belly and headed back to the hostel to curl up with a book and drift off to sleep.

Baby steps

So I woke up this morning early. It wasn't my plan, I just happen to have forgotten to set my time clocks back when I crossed a time zone. So headed down to have breakies with the hostel, which was a cup of yogurt and a bowl of cereal. There were some pastries but they were tiny and somewhat stale-ish looking. Then I hopped in the awesome shower to find out the drain was clogged up, so it overflowed the shower area and started in on the bathroom floor. Feh.

Hey kids! Let's play "One of these things is not like the others"!
Hint: There are two things in the picture.

So I headed out with the idea of just figuring out where all the places are that I might be interested in. My usual way of doing this is finding out where the hop on/off bus is located. That usually an easy one as there always is one in any large European city and it usually starts by the central rail station. Warsaw was no different. It costs generally about $20 (80 zlotys for 48 hours) and does a 45 to 90 minutes loop around a city hitting all the major tourist points and cool monuments/buildings. I can then circle a couple on the map for checking out on foot later.

I thought I was late for the first bus but turned out I was an hour early due to not changing the clocks on my laptop/phone/camera. So I ended up heading across the way to check out the modern art themed galleria attached to the central station. It was pretty cool. The escalators where in different places, forcing you to walk through the oddly shaped open areas and balconies. This gave the whole thing a very natural and airy feel to it and the shops were all spotless. More of a high end shopping center though I may go there to get a briefcase to put souvenirs in on the trip back. That way I don't have to stress them breaking in the checked bag.

I then cruised across to the tourist center which was located in the Center for Science and Culture. Some Poles hate the center, though it is a major landmark and houses museum, cinemas, shopping centers, etc. Mainly because the Soviets built it back in 1955 at they didn't like that period in Polish history. The newer generation though seems to like it though and I think its pretty cool. There is a panoramic view at the top which gives you a great view of the whole city.

I didn't have time to figure out how to get up to the top by that time, so I hit the hop on/off bus and headed out through Warsaw.

The tour was only about 45 minutes and seemed even shorter as the bus driver didn't like stopping anywhere. I wanted to get out at the second to last stop, got up and headed down, and he kept on going. Eeerr, ok. I ended up getting off on the last stop and heading up towards the National Museum. I was hungry and the hop on/off brochure had an advertisement for some authentic Polish food. I hit that and it was essentially a pirogi joint. With a dozen different flavors of pirogi! Hmmmmm...

So I had Russian style (meat, potato and cheese), meat and cabbage, spinach and cheese, and mushroom cheese potato. I tried the pan fried style and had a glass of "fruit compose". It was basically apple/pear juice that they steeped in raisins, dried fruits, and spices. The whole lunch was really tasty, though the service sucked. I think its because they only hired cute, tiny, thin girls and forced them wear skimpy Polish peasant outfits. They seemed kind of annoyed to be serving folks. Cest la vie. I may have to hit it up again, them pirogis were tasty.

The National Museum was a bust unfortunately. It is closed on Mondays so I'll have to hit it up later this week. Friday would likely be a good day for it. So not much left to do but head back to the central station and check out the view from the cultural center.

I got to the building and managed to find the right entrance to head up on top of the main tower. This is harder than it seems as two parts of the building were museums and the entrance I went in an first was actually a multi-cineplex. It might be cook to check out later on as it seems there was some kind of film festival happening showing art films. There was also a shopping center but I couldn't figure out how to get to it. Like I said, this thing is HUGE. 

Anyway, for 18 zlotys I got to take the express elevator to the top and look out over Warsaw. 

The views were pretty spectacular, but it was mainly just a cityscape. There were no particularly striking buildings like in Rome or St. Petersburg. And there wasn't the immense grandeur of a city like Moscow or New York. It was just, well, standard blah colored buildings with the occasional architecture difference or color. I mean it was cool looking but not something I could spend a lot of time just looking around.

All new Alkohole! Alcohol... for assholes!

About this time I was getting tired and wanted to just chill for a bit. The lack of sleep and upset stomach the last couple of days have taken their toll, and besides - the plan was to just burn the day doing some wandering around and get my bearings. So I headed back, got some soda and ice tea for the hostel, and relaxed to read a bit.

This ended up with a two hour nap (just what I needed though actually) and I headed out to have some munchies at the Indian place down the street I had seen earlier. Chicken samosa with green lime mint spice sauce, mutton marsala, garlic nan, and a lime soda. It was tasty, but not anything to write home about. (Wait a second, I just did - didn't I? Crap.).

Now a short walk around the block and I'm feeling more situated. It seems like a pretty peaceful city. Might be due to a large police presence. Warsaw isn't as bad as my first impression.

So how many Pollocks does it take to change a light bulb?

No really...cause like there is one burnt out in my hostel room.

Just kidding folks.

So I woke up and headed down for a goodbye breakfast downstairs. I had about three Maß of beer at the small bar across the street while watching MMA. I figured some beer would help me sleep through the night. And for the most part it worked perfectly. But my belly was a little bit off, which any amount of beer over two seems to do nowadays.

Got me a cab to the airport and headed out. The Riga airport was clean and neat, though small. I had to wait for about a half hour to get my boarding pass - then another half hour for my check in luggage to be taken in. The belt behind the boarding gates was busted, so the entire airport had to use the oversized luggage belt - the only one working. Meh, whatever.

The flight was only an hour and the plane was clean and in better condition than most of the jumper jets I've used in the US. Chopin Airport (Warsaw) was a fairly big airport with some international flights. Got my luggage and headed over to the taxi area.

Its a good thing I read up on Warsaw taxis. There is a "recommended taxi area" at the airport where they suggest getting a taxi from. I didn't see it right off the bat. The second I got out of the customs area, some big Pole comes charging up "You want a taxi?"
"No thank you."
"You want a taxi later?"
"Yah, maybe later..."
"You want taxi? Let me take you to cash machine."

Uhm yah. At that point I completely blew the guy off. No fucking way was I getting in his taxi as he was obviously going to rip me off. Instead I headed to information and asked where the taxi kiosk was. She looked at me funny, but when I explained I wanted a reliable taxi and didn't want to get ripped off she said to just go out front to the recommended taxi area. The big pole followed me continually asking if I wanted a taxi but I didn't even bother looking at the guy.

Anyway, I got a taxi to get me to my hostel for 50 zlotys, which is fair considering the price it said on the Internet was around 40 to get to the main station. My hostel was a little bit past that and I figure I'm paying a price for the recommended taxi. The "rip off" price with the uber fast meters from non reputable taxis is between 80-100. IF they don't take you for a massive ride all around the city. Apparently the crooked taxis in Warsaw are infamous - hence having to have a "recommended taxi" station at the airport and signs throughout the airport to go there for a taxi.

The hostel in in a courtyard behind a locked gate. I had to buzz and holler a couple times to get the desk guy to let me in. But there is only four rooms here - three four bed, two bunk rooms and my room with just a double bunk. There are two pretty nice bathrooms downstairs. To get after check in, you have to type in a code to the gate keypad, then type in a code to the front door (sturdy door), and then my room (which I rented both bunks) has a key on a sturdy door. While some of the streets down by the station are sketchy, along with the main drag, there is a university a couple blocks away where the hostel manager and his buddy go to. So the streets right where I'm at are pretty nice and safe. On my stroll around the block I seen some ladies of the evening walking by me. I say ladies of the evening simply because it would have to be midnight without a moon to make them look good. When they gave me the eye, it made me cringe a bit.

I ended up finding a small cheap cafeteria near the train station with a sign in English. I ended up picking up some kraut/sausage/mushroom thingy with a Pepsi served by a dozen hard working Polish peasant women linebacker types. Seriously, if you would have put treads on them, they could be tanks. Not a lot of smiling but the food was dirt cheap and kinda tasty. It wasn't enough to fill me so I ended up stopping by a mini-mart (I had to anyway to get water) and picking up milk, some kind of sandwich (which I could only eat half of it was so hideous), and some cookies. I put them away quickly and headed out to the main street to find an ATM. This is when I seen the streetwalkers on the main drag.

So the place aint that bad. There is a bar next door, but it doesn't look like a big nightclub - more of an inexpensive student joint. The road out front doesn't get a lot of traffic and there is a small courtyard to block off the street noise. Warsaw itself looks like it is somewhat ugly, but I'll figure out. If it turns out to be that bad, the train station is down the street and I'll just take it out to nearby areas to have fun.

Jurmala and Art Nouveau

Last night was't that good for me. Friday night in Old Town is apparently party time. I had though that I was far enough away from the main square to avoid the loud noise. Well, yes and no. I'm far enough that can't hear the nightclubs. Also I'm away from any routes to major hotels, the galleria closes at 10pm and it takes up all the blocks to the east of me. The stuff to the northwest corner is all closed up also and all the hotels are somewhat farther away.

HOWEVER. Apparently I am on a favorite route from the clubs at the center to the railway. Not really as the main large street is just to the north of the square, but if you wanted to take the back way around to get to central station - my window is right above that route it seems. So very loud drunks in groups would come walking by arguing about stuff until 5am. Also for some reason, the last three nights I've gotten the crap bit out of me by mosquitoes. I learned the trick though, I think. They only started bugging me when I started shutting the balcony door at night. Counter intuitive, but the little buggers must not be coming from outside. There must be some trapped standing water in the plumbing, walls, or vents. So the first three nights when I kept the door open, it was too cold for the buggers.

So now the conundrum. If I leave the door open, I don't get woken by insects buzzing in my ear and biting me. However, now I will be able to hear the drunks even louder. Cest la vie. My plane doesn't leave til 2:30pm tomorrow, so I will be able to sleep in. Kinda sucks though because other than that, this room is incredible.

So I head out to the central station to head over to the resort town of Jurmala. Burnt out and frazzled, a long walk on the beach and a stroll through a beach town sounds like just the thing the doctor ordered. When I headed to the station though, the railway timetables were not in English, the ticket agent didn't speak any, and there was some kind of sheet paper tape to the platform table saying something about the train to Jurmala. Greeaaaaatttt. From the look of things, the trains might be running very infrequently due to it being October. The ticket only cost me 2 lats, so what the hell. I was hungry so I headed in for a burger, fries, and Coke in the station. I figured that if I came out of my meal and the train was looking like it would be an hour wait, I would skip Jurmala.

Well once I got done eating and hit the platform, there was a train sitting right there about to take off. Fate gave me a cookie. Yay!

The train ride out was about 30 minutes and the countryside between Riga and Jurmala was autumn kissed trees, rivers, and farmland mostly. I got to Jurmala and it was gorgeous. You could tell it was mainly an upper class Latvian resort town. Nice houses, art everywhere,

 long beaches with white sand, and a touristy strip through the middle of town with nice shops and restaurants.

And, of course, Gamera! Friend of children, enemy of Godzilla!

I walked around for a good couple of hours, alternating between hitting the beach and the cobblestone strip. The walk helped me shake off some of the more fried brain feeling and wake up a bit more.

After the beach walks, I headed back into town in hopes of hitting the Art Nouveau Museum. I had a bitch of a time finding it as it was tucked away in a bunch of building in that architectural style. apparently, back in the last 1800, early 1900s - Riga enjoyed a kind of Renaissance where hundreds of buildings were built up. Matter of fact, so many of them were built during this time that Riga is now on the UNESCO World Heritage List. I can totally see that because over 40% of the buildings in the downtown Riga area are in the Art Nouveau style. It really is a gorgeous city. Every corner you turn around gives you a different artistic set of buildings. The only place that I can think of with anything similar would be the outer rings in Amsterdam.

The museum itself was actually very tiny. It consisted of about a dozen rooms in a house with the original furniture from that period, showing how the inside of the buildings would have looked at the time. They also had about four dozen hats people could wear while walking through the museum and all the gals working there were wearing 1900 outfits. Unfortunately they were all women's hats. I would have worn one anyway, but I had on my Scottish hat at the time.

Even the ceilings were cool.

I left there and hit up the souvenir across the street. The stuff was pretty cool so I ended up picking up a handful of things for gifts to myself and others. I got a really framed glass/ceramic art panel that I can stuff in my luggage to bring back.

Thar be dragons!!

So I headed out, taking pictures around the block of the cool buildings and stopped by the Flying Frog restaurant. It was a cool little joint with a frog based Art Nouveau interior. Had me some spring rolls with bilberry spicy chili sauce, homemade kvass (I think I need to learn how to make this - the bottled stuff sucks but the homemade stuff is tasty), and a spaghetti bolognese.

Meal accomplished, all the sights I wanted to see have been seen, and its my last night in Riga. No sleep last night, so partying is out of the question. I might go have a beer or two in the lobby, but that's it. Its hard to believe I have less than a week left. Next Saturday at this time, I'll be curled up in my bed at home with a kitteh. Maybe watching a no brainer movie or something else equally mind numbing.

Wait...its a clothing store...called Nude...BUT ITS CLOTHING...BUT ITS NUDE?!?!?

Riga and Uncle Vanya

Got up this morning and decided to sleep in a bit. I had awoken at 8am and decided that it wasn't fair, so then slept in until 10am. My original plan was to make it out to the island of Jormala to check it out, but I wanted to do this when I had more time.

So I decided instead to have an authentic Russian meal down at a Uncle Vanya. I ordered three meat dumplings with sour cream, solyanka with sour cream, and beef stroganoff with sour cream (I'm seeing a pattern here I think). To drink, fresh squeezed orange juice and homemade kvass. Kvass is a lightly fermented soft drink made from rye bread that is dried out and tossed into water with sugar and yeast. It ferments to less than 1% alcohol (just enough to malt some of the starches and provide a fizz). As a compliment for the chef, they sent out a beef and goose liver pate in a sealed mason jar. She said it was smoked but I didn't really understand what she meant until I opened the jar up and seen it was filled with smoke. So sorry to be THAT GUY, but I'm going to have to post food pics. The meal was really that good.

Kvass, OJ, and some smoking pate. The only thing without sour cream.

Three meat dumplings.

My new favorite soup, soylanka (wait... what's that white stuff?)

Beef stroganoff with pickles and potato pancakes. Sour cream off to the side.

That was likely the tastiest meal I've had on the trip.The kvass was delicious, though the bottled version I had earlier this week wasn't all that good.

Kvass recycling at Uncle Vanya's.

Next stop was a stroll past the old Swedish gate, the oldest gate in the battlements still around from the war with the Swedes (Craig, this is all your fault - you know this, right?). Then down the lazy and picturesque cobblestone alleys to the Latvian National Museum - which was temporarily closed for repair. Meh.

That's ok. They Riga Museum detailing the city's history was still open. It was a pretty cool museum. Riga was always a trading town on the Baltic and as such, was fought over by the Swedes, Germans, and Russians since the 1300s. The  Germans especially left their mark in that they established numerous guilds in Riga. The town used to be mainly concerned with the goods themselves but this changed over time. During which, there was always an internal struggle between the church and the town, the guilds and the town, or the occupying nation and the town. The Latvians have always wanted independence, but had the bad luck of having a city on the Baltic and a major river.

The guilds were always one upping each other in Riga and their most prized possession was generally their guild goblet that signified what they did.

Roofing, pottery, and shoemaker goblets.

One of the things that Riga did that was clever was they made a series of mechanical drummers that they could activate to warn the town of approaching danger (which, considering how often Riga changed hands, was constant).

 The Ron Jeremy marching band.

Now with MOAR STEAMPUNK!

The museum was interesting and shown a very distinct and proud heritage behind the city of Riga. Many skilled craftsmen converged there with access to materials from both the eats and west. 

When I had first headed out in the morning, the sky was clear with the sun shining down and warmth in the air. When I left the museum, the wind had picked up and it was chilly enough that I headed back to the hotel (not that far away - Riga is all of a 20 minute walk to get from one end to the other of Old Town). When I got there, Uncle Vanya's meal caught up to me and rather then head out to the Art Nouveau Museum - decided to take a quick nap. And woke up at 5pm. Oh well, I can do it some other time. If not, no biggie. Its a vacation because you can do what you want, right?

So I ended up reading for a couple hours, then heading over to the mall to get some milk and a bite to take away. I ended up hitting a Mongolian Grill type place where you pile noodles and what have you in a bowl, which they cook up for you. Cheap, but healthy good eats.

So all this is left is to drift away to la la land and awake to head over to Jurmala. But I think I must leave you with this:

How can you not love a city that is infatuated with black cats?