Uncategorized

Hawaii – Road Tripping Around the Big Island or Black Sand, Sea Turtles and Snowbirds in Paradise

| 2suitcasesfor2years

There’s a saying in the low country, that “summer in Georgia is like living on Hell’s front porch.” Our winters here are usually very mild, and our neighbors tell us a dusting of snow falls about once every 13 years, and it melts away in hours. But this year 3 inches of snow fell and stayed frozen on the ground for 4 days. The counties along the coast and in southern Georgia can’t cope with this type of “unusual weather phenomenon,” and declared a state of emergency. Schools were closed, and folks were advised to stay off the roads. Traffic came to a standstill on Interstate 95 due to the icy roadway and was shut down for 2 days. State Police rescued stranded truckers by using ATVs. Our neighbors shared, “When it snows like this in Georgia, you know Hell has frozen over!”

Fortuitously, months earlier four of us from our lake community had booked a flight to Hawaii that departed the same day the runways at the Savanna Airport were cleared of ice and ready for business again.  

The balmy air was a welcome reprieve as we descended the stairs from the plane onto the runway in Kailua-Kona, on Hawaii Island or as the local folks like to say, The Big Island. But we were overdressed and overheated by the time we reached the baggage claim area and headed to the restrooms to strip off layers of now unseasonably warm clothing.

When we arrived at the Budget Car Rental office the queue was already out the door, and we watched our first Hawaiian sunset from the waiting line as the sun’s dying rays silhouetted the palm trees. This was not the romantic drinks-on-the-beach sunset we had envisioned for our first night on the island. The problem was a severely understaffed rental counter which gave priority to members of the company’s Fastbreak Program. We finally figured this out after waiting two hours, with more than one hundred other folks in a queue that now wrapped around the building. Donna realized we could download their app and take advantage of the expedited checkout program, and signed us up on the spot. As we switched lines, we shared our tip with folks around us, and we were headed out to our car within minutes. Donna acknowledges a twinge of guilt as we sashayed past all the other poor folks still stuck in that dreadful line. We’ve used Budget Car Rental flawlessly many times, but this was a horrendous experience. Fortunately, our lodging for the week at a Hilton property in Waikoloa was only a 30-minute drive north on Rt19.

Beyond the reception desk, the dancing patterns of light off the ripples of the hotel’s dramatically lit pool looked enticing. But after a long day of flying we needed a good night’s sleep.

The next morning we were up with the sunrise and out for a walk after a quick cup of coffee. The day was beautiful and there were many other like-minded couples out and about following the sidewalk that looped between the buildings of the sprawling resort.

Budha Point, a tranquil scenic spot on Waiulua Bay, that overlooked the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, was our destination. We visited here several times over the week and spotted whales breaching offshore a number of times.

It was less than a mile walk from our room through the beautifully manicured landscaping which coursed through the jagged lava fields that surrounded the Hilton Waikoloa Village, a sprawling complex with a tramway and footpaths connecting several towered hotels and pools along the seafront and the site’s lagoon.

Hawaiians have a great reverence for the ocean, and one of the wonderful things about the state are its laws that guarantee folks have a right of access along the beaches and shorelines, and that private property owners cannot obstruct access to it.

A little segway here: Hawaii is costly – think San Franciso or NYC expensive! The cost of parking is outrageous across the island, with residents parking for free and rental car drivers paying a high hourly rate at parking kiosks. Hilton guests staying in their premiere hotels around the resort’s lagoon or visitors wanting to attend the Legends of Hawaii Luau are charged $48 per day or $8 hourly for self-parking, and $55 per day for valet parking. Fortunately, the hotel we were staying in was farther away from the action and included free parking.

There was also a free shuttle bus that connected the hotels, shopping and restaurant courtyard within the complex. Several small free Beach Access Parking lots, which are closed to overnight parking, are across from excessively expensive Waikoloa Village parking lot.

Continuing our loop around the resort we came upon the Kings Highway Foot Trail, part of the Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail, a 175-mile narrow footpath that follows an ancient trading and communications route, through rough lava beds. Starting at the farthest spot north on the island, Upolu Point, the trail which dates from the 1500s, connected the ancient Polynesian fishing villages and religious sites along the western and southern coast of Hawaii island to the farming villages in the highlands. In places like the Waikōloa Petroglyph Reserve, ancient messages were carved into the lava stones.

Dinner and watching the sunset from the Lava Lava Beach Club on ʻAnaehoʻomalu Bay is a pleasant nightly ritual for many who visit the area.

We could have spent the entire week lounging by the pool, but that’s not really us, so we planned several road trips around the island. We had driven to the hotel in the dark two days earlier, and the area around the resort was a mix of verdant greenery and sporadic patches of lava. Exiting the hotel complex onto Rt19 revealed an immense Martian-like terrain of arid inhospitable lava fields that stretch for dozen of miles down from the 4205m (13,786 ft) tall snowcapped summit of the dormant volcano Mauna Kea, and Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano that sits 4170m (13,680ft) above sea level. They represent just one of the 11 climate zones found on the island. Which means when you circumnavigate the diverse landscapes of the island, you can experience everything from lush rainforests to arid deserts.

A short part of our drive that morning was through a landscape that reminded us of the American Southwest as we headed toward Hapuna Beach, the longest and widest stretch of white sand on the island. It consistently gets ranked as “one of world’s best beaches.”

The boulders of ancient lava, from the now extinct Mt Kohala, carpeted the shoreline at Kapa’a Beach Park. An estimated one million years old, it’s the oldest of the Big Islands’ six volcanoes, and last erupted 120,000 years ago.

Rain clouds threaten us as we stopped for coffee at the Kohala Coffee Mill, in the small town of Hawi, to indulge in our “drive a little then café,” philosophy. Rain poured for a few minutes as we sipped our coffees at tables under a covered sidewalk, and waited for the shower to pass. It’s a quiet one street town with a few small shops, galleries and artwork along the street. Away from the large resorts on the Kona coast a little bit of “old Hawaii,” shined through here.

A few minutes farther up the road we stopped in Kapaau at the Statue of King Kamehameha that commands the slope in front of the Old Kohala Courthouse. Ancient Hawaiian legends had foretold, “a light in the sky with feathers like a bird would signal the birth of a great chief.” Halley’s comet passed over the isalnds in 1758, the year Hawaiians believe Kamehameha was born. For centuries warfare between clans and inter-island raids were widespread throughout the Hawaiian archipelago. Kamehameha with an army of warriors on hundreds of peleleu, double-hulled 70ft long war canoes, sailed between the islands. In a series of battles he defeated the opposing chiefs on Hawaii, Oahu, Maui, and Molokai and united the islands into the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi in 1795. By 1810 the islands of Lanai, Kauai, and Niihau voluntarily joined the kingdom.

Leaving Kapaau we followed Rt 250 up into the Waimea highlands beneath Mt Kohala, a vast grasslands atop a long ridge, and home to the 135,000-acre Parker Ranch, one of the oldest and largest cattle ranches in the United States. From the road distant views of the west coast of the island were abundant. As we descended into Waimea the summit of the dormant volcano Mauna Kea poked through the clouds.

Waimea is the center of the Big Islands’ paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) country. It’s a large pretty town, with several old historic churches, colorful street murals and a tall cowboy boot marking the entrance to a shopping center. The first cattle on the island, 11 cows and 1 bull, were given to King Kamehameha by the British Naval Officer, Captain George Vancouver, in 1793. The king prohibited the islanders from slaughtering them and the small herd was left to freely roam the highlands.

In 1803 King Kamehameha received, from an American trader, the first horses to arrive on the island. The king invited vaqueros from Spanish California to the Big Island to teach some islanders cattle herding and roping skills. Eventually, the taboo against killing the cattle was lifted in 1830 by King Kamehameha III, when an estimated 25,000 wild cattle became troublesome as they destroyed farmer’s crops. Some of the cattle would be herded into the sea where they were swum out and then lifted onto waiting freighters and transported to the other islands. Hawaiian paniolos grew to be accomplished riders and over the years, have competed in numerous rodeos and world steer-roping championships. In 1999, Parker Ranch paniolo Ikua Purdy was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. We had hoped to attend a Paniolo BBQ at Kahua Ranch for a night of good food and cowboy stories, but the weather the week we were on the island was just too iffy for us to commit to it.

Oustide of Waimea on the Mamalahoa Hwy, the ring road, we headed to the eastern, or windward side of the island and traveled through verdant landscapes of thick forests and jungles, the beneficiaries of the 130 inches of rain that this side of the island annually receives from the tradewinds that bring moisture in from the Pacific Ocean.  It’s a sharp contrast to the arid western, or leeward side of the island that receives only 18 inches of rain.

The overcast sky persisted as we drove down a twisting road through a rainforest to Laupāhoehoe Point. It’s a small, beautiful peninsula, with a rough lava rock coastline. The ocean swelled and crashed against the coast with a ferocity that the beaches on the west side of the island don’t experience, unless there’s a storm.

Saffron finches scooted around the undergrowth near the water’s edge. Over the horizon Baja, Mexico was 2,000 miles away. Things are not always wonderful in paradise and a memorial commemorates the tragic deaths of 20 schoolchildren and 4 teachers who drowned as their school was swept away in the giant waves of a tsunami that pounded the northeastern shores of the Big Island on April 1, 1946. Farther south in Hilo 159 people drowned and 1,300 homes were swept away.

The Big Island has over 100 waterfalls with the tallest, Waihilau Falls at a lofty 792m (2,600ft) tall, hidden away in the remote Waimanu Valley. Some serious trekking through the rainforest is required to reach them, while there are others that are way easier to view. As much as I liked the idea of an expedition through the tropical forest with my crew to see this spectacular waterfall, they can be a mutinous car full towards happy hour. So, we opted to seek out some of the more readily accessible ones during our week on the island.

Continuing south on the Mamalahoa Hwy we stopped to view the cascading Triple-Tier Umauma Falls, thundering loudly from all the rain that had fallen lately. It’s on private property, so there was an admission fee, but they did have really tasty coconut, pineapple and mango ice-cream.

We ended our day with drinks and dinner at Jackie Rey’s Ohana Grill in Hilo. It’s interestingly set in an old bank building across from some street murals. Our dinners from the happy hour menu were delicious and quite filling. In our opinion it was one of the best values on the island, and we did in fact eat there twice. Occasionally, a feral goat or donkey would be illuminated by the car’s headlights as we followed Saddle Road across the center of the island. At one point we reached an elevation of 2,021m (6,632ft) as we passed between the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. On the downhill side we could have coasted all the way back to the hotel.

Two days later we headed to Kona for their Farmer’s Market. We very much enjoy wandering about the stands at a good street market. Sadly, the Kona market was a huge disappointment, with only a handful of vendors selling tourist souvenirs and clothing. Only one stand sold local fruit and vegetables, which we did purchase to enjoy back at the hotel. Across the street we had breakfast at Papa Kona Restaurant & Bar, which had a spectacular second-story balcony perched right above the rocky oceanfront, where fishermen were casting into the surf.

Our ambitious plan for the day was to follow the Hawaiʻi Belt Road, Rt11, to the Hikiau Heiau temple on the opposite side of Kealakekua Bay from which Captain Cook landed in 1779, then hit a number of other interesting spots as we continued south to Ka Lae, or South Point as it is also known, before swinging around to the eastern side of the island, and ending our day on the volcanic black sand of Punaluʻu Beach.

Cook happened to sail into Kealakekua Bay during a Makahiki festival, a religious festival to appease the Hawaiian deity Lono, who in legend returns to the islands on a large ship. Timing is everything! Cook lucked out, his skull could have hung with other victims who had been sacrificed to appease the wrath of their deity, amidst the towering fierce tikis which portrayed Lono. The High Chief of the island ceremoniously welcomed the captain and lavished him with gifts of feathered capes, helmets, lei, and tapa cloth along with hogs, taro, sweet potatoes, and bananas. The bay is a tranquil spot now, but during Cook’s visit it would have been filled with hundreds of islanders on wa’a, outrigger canoes, and surfboards.

Continuing south we reached the Pu’uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park, site of an ancient religious sanctuary. Few spots on the Big Island resemble paradise more than Pu’uhonua O Honaunau, with its brilliant white sandy beach lined with swaying palm trees, along a cove with clear blue water. For centuries before the Christianization of the island started with the first arrival of protestant missionaries in the 1820s, it was also known as the City of Refuge, where islanders who broke a kapu, an ancient law, could flee to safety to escape the death penalty their action incurred. Here an offender of the ancient ways would seek absolution from a high priest and be free to return to their village. Villagers and defeated warriors could also seek sanctuary here during periods of inter-chiefdom wars.

The most important structure on the site is Hale o Keawe, a stone and thatch royal mausoleum that contained the remains of 23 deified high chiefs. Around it, fierce looking tiki statues serve as guardians of the dead, and embody the spiritual power of the kapu.

The site also has two Hawaiian hale houses, open sided bamboo and palm frond or pili grass covered structures. Multiple hale houses were built in a village for specific uses: men’s meeting house, cooking house, separate eating houses for men and women, workshop and canoe house, and a menstruation house.

Uphill from Pu’uhonua O Honaunau we visited the Painted Church, aka St Benedict Catholic Church. It’s a simple wooden church that dates from the 1880’s, and easy enough to just drive by unless you know it has a spectacularly painted interior.

While it’s not Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, the message is the same with every surface of the interior illustrated with stories from the bible. It was all the work of one creative Belgian priest, Father Jean Berchmans Velghe. He painted these religious murals between 1899 – 1902 for his, largely illiterate congregation.

The Coffee Shack,  a laidback breakfast and lunch restaurant on Rt11 in Honaunau-Napoopoo, was recommended to us as a nice place to eat. Parking was a little difficult in their small lot, and the place doesn’t look like much from the outside, but inside they have a lanai, an open sided porch, with panoramic views over the hills leading down to the Kona coast and Kealakekua Bay. We had just gotten seated when the power went out, something that we were told happens quite frequently across the island, and the server informed us “the cook doesn’t open the refrigerator when this happens, so we only have pastries, and the coffee is still hot.” It wasn’t much of a sacrifice to content ourselves with coffee and luscious pastry.

After a snack we optimistically continued south in search of an open restaurant, and we were not having much luck. Talk of mutiny was fomenting in the back seat. This whole southern coast lies in the shadow of the Mauna Loa volcano. Past the town of Ocean View the road crossed scars of ancient lava flows that stretched from the volcano’s summit to the sea. Fortunately, we came upon the El Encanto Food Truck, which had its own generator, and was busily serving a long line of hungry patrons at its window. Our lunches were delicious! The mutiny was postponed.

The power outage also affected gas stations along our route. With the afternoon sky darkening we decided to forego visiting South Point and continue on to Punaluʻu Beach. It’s a graceful crescent shape, and we are sure on a sunny day its volcanic black sand beach lined with coconut palms would be stunning, but this afternoon it looked foreboding with a gray sea sweeping its shore, more apropos for the scene of a novel’s fictional shipwreck, than a place to sunbath.

Rain was threatening now, but as we walked back to the car, Donna was waving excitedly to us. On the beach were three large green sea turtles in a roped off nesting area. Native to the Hawaiian archipelago, they are the largest sea turtle that nests on the islands and are symbols of good luck, wisdom, and protection. It was such a pleasure to see them.

The Hawaiian legend of Kauila, tells of a mystical turtle born on the black sands of Punalu’u, who had the ability to shapeshift into a human to play with the islander’s children that came to the beach, and to protect them from the dangers of the ocean. Heavier rain sent us hurrying back to the car. It was a long but rewarding day; we agreed that the spotting of the turtles was a real highlight of the trip.

Our pursuit of waterfalls continued the next day. Recrossing the mountains during the day cast a new light on the arid windswept heights as we ascended the road under snowcapped Mauna Kea then descended towards Hilo and into verdant greenery of the eastern side of the Big Island. It was a contrast equivalent to night and day, like our two drives across the island.

Roaring from all the recent rain, Wai’ale Falls was easily seen from the bridge over the Wailuku River. There’s not any official parking, so folks just park along the side of the road and walk out onto the bridge. There is also a rough trail, through thick undergrowth, up and over the road embankment that leads to the upper falls. We followed the footpath for a while until it narrowed along the edge of a fall-off, and we decided to turn back. Though some younger, more adventurous folks had reached the top of the 17m (55ft) high falls and were fearlessly jumping into the pool below.

Downriver, Rainbow Falls, in Wailuku River State Park, was a short drive away. It’s known for, you guessed it, rainbows that frequently appear when the light is just right. The riverside park is quite pretty and has paved trails that overlook the falls where the river’s cascading water veils a shallow cave as it drops 24m (80ft) into a large stone basin created over the ages by erosion. “Legends say that the cave beneath the waterfall was the home of Hina, mother of the Hawaiian demigod, Maui.”

Our next “drive a little then café,” moment was satisfied at Coffee Girl, a cute café in a Hilo strip mall, on the way to Makuʻu Point.

Turbulent seas churned from storms blowing across the Pacific along with volcanic activity have prevented the creation of beaches on eastern coast of the Big Island. Dramatic volcanic cliffs and lava outcroppings line the windward coastline instead.

The next morning, we set out to find more ancient stone inscriptions at the Puakō Petroglyph Park, in nearby Waimea. The trail started in Holoholokai Beach Park, where there is a unique beach of black lava rocks mixed with white coral, and soon led to a gathering of petroglyphs.

The symbols were quite interesting, but it was obvious that the carvings were reproductions of ones that the trail led to. We followed what started out as a well-worn trail through a primeval forest full of twisted trees, until the trail seemed to vanish. It was a hot day, and we were concerned about getting lost, so we backtracked and turned our attention to discovering some of the smaller beaches near the resort.

Puako Bay is a few minutes south of Hapuna Beach, the island’s largest stretch of sand, which we had visited earlier in the week. It’s a tranquil bay with many public access trails from the road to small sandy beaches, and rocky coves, that folks like to snorkel in.

There was a small beach next the Hokuloa Church that offered a nice view of the bay with Mauna Kea in the distance. The church was built with lava rock and then whitewashed in the late 1850s.

Kikaua Point Park was south of our resort and access to it was, surprisingly, through a gated community. Where folks are allowed access to the beach after getting a parking permit from the security guard. A long concrete walkway led from the parking lot through a boulder strewn lava field to a lovely palm treed beach. Folks were enjoying the breeze in the shade of the trees and swimming in the warm water of an almost completely circular and shallow sandy bottom cove. It was the perfect spot to spread our towels out and go for a swim.

We only scratched the surface of this big, beautiful island. And if we ever return we would definitely go to see the array of telescopes at the observatory atop Mauna Kea. The cost of living is very high on the island, with even locally caught fish, fruit and vegetables being expenses. Folks always say eat at the food trucks; while less expensive, their prices are steep too. So, if we ever return to the island – Donna furrows her eyebrows when I say this – we are packing snacks, several bottles of wine, a jar of spaghetti sauce and pasta, along with a couple of frozen steaks that should be perfectly thawed by the time our flight lands.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Driving Through the Baltics: Part 11 – Lake Peipus or Old Believers, Onions, and Honey

| 2suitcasesfor2years

Gently undulating farmlands soon flanked the road as we departed Tartu for a day trip to the Old Believers villages that dot the southern shoreline of Lake Peipus, Estonia’s largest lake which creates part of the country’s border with Russia. The villages are also part of the Onion Route, a 30km (19mi) tourist drive that promotes the area’s culture and “Estonia’s most celebrated onions, the Peipsi sibul, a golden variety known for their long storage life and flavor,” which the Old Believers have cultivated in the sandy soil of the region for several centuries.

The group’s name stems from a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century, in which they did not abide with the reforms Orthodox clergy patriarchates were initiating, and wow, wow, wow regarded the reforms which curled the beards of its elders, “as a corruption of their faith which was heralding the End of Days, and as such the Russian church and state were servants of the Antichrist.” Their dissent wasn’t allowed, and during The Russian Orthodox Synod of 1666-1667 the church and Tsar Alexis sanctioned their persecution. The group’s oppression was so severe that some ardent followers self-immolated in the ultimate act of protest. Thousands of Old Believers chose to escape their persecution and fled across Lake Peipus for refuge, and established a series of farming and fishing communities, in then Swedish-controlled Estonia, in which they prided themselves on their self-sufficiency.

We passed more farm tractors than cars that morning, but it was still a surprise when a large John Deere tractor pulled up alongside us in the gas station to refuel. Varnja is the southernmost village and the gateway to outdoor activities in the Peipsiveere Nature Reserve, which protects the fish and wildlife of the Emajõgi delta.

It’s a beautiful area, and was nearly deserted mid-week at the beginning of October. Fishing was once a viable livelihood, but only a few boats go out nowadays. Instead, some folks have converted them into niche rentals, like the owners of Mesi Tare who have creatively repurposed several small boats into maritime bungalows, both floating and permanently beached.

There wasn’t a soul about in the village, only an idle tractor in front of a barn with bundles of onions hanging from its rafters, or a plume of smoke from a chimney, and the lone dog sunning obliviously in the middle of the lane. Winter preparations were underway with large free-standing globe shaped piles of freshly split wood stacked along the lane or piled in cords neatly along the sides of houses.

As we left the hamlet and headed north on Kesk Tn, the main road connecting all the settlements along the lake, we stopped at Varnja’s Old Believers Prayer House, a red brick structure built between 1928 and 1930, and the nearby Issanda Templisseviimise, the town’s youngest Old Believers chapel constructed in 2015.

As we headed farther north, long narrow inlets, like the fingers on our hands, stretched from the roadside into the lake. Baskets, bowls and buckets of apples were in front of homes with backyard orchards that had what is commonly called in Estonia, “the apple flood.” This abundance is shared with the community, and the apples are free. It’s a long-standing tradition that reflects a spirit of sharing and generosity within Estonian culture. Occasionally, an abandoned stork’s nest crowned a telephone pole along the road, their yearly winter migration to southern Africa had already started in August.

We turned off the main road at every sign that pointed to the way to a kirk, church. The Kasepää Old Believers Church and Cemetery were particularly interesting.  The current 1862 sanctuary sits atop the foundation of a building that is thought to be the site of one of the group’s earliest churches after their exodus from Russia. Graves in the cemetery were marked with the traditional three horizontal-bar Orthodox cross. The configuration dates from the 6th century in which the Top Bar represents the inscription ordered by Pontius Pilate, The Middle Bar, the main beam where Christ’s hands were nailed, and Bottom Slanted Bar symbolizes the footrest and its slant reflects the fate of the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus – upward towards the repentant thief (St. Dismas) and downward towards the unrepentant one.

In Kolkja, a village first mentioned in historical records of 1592, we climbed the Vaatetorn bird-watching tower for an expansive view across the marshes and 3,555km2 (1,373 sq mi) Lake Peipus. The 219km (136mi) long lake has an average width of 82km (51mi), and is surprisingly very shallow, with an average depth of 7m (23ft). At its northern end the lake feeds into the Narva River between the Estonian border city of Narva and the Russian city of Ivangorod into the Gulf of Finland. Ice fishing is a popular winter activity on the lake which typically stays frozen from November to March. Small ice flows remain on the northern part of the lake until early May. Though with the recent climate change folks living along Lake Peipus have noticed a shortening of the ice season.

Afterwards, we stopped at Suur-Kolkja Vanausuliste Palvemaja, an Old Believers house of worship that was constructed in 1883, and its cemetery which was down the lane.

As we left the village an enterprising older woman, with a babushka covering her head, was unloading bags of onions, loaves of bread, and jars of jam from the trunk of a taxi and arranging them on a foldable card table she had already set up along the road. We had assumed the area was nearly deserted, but maybe there was an end-of-day rush hour as people returned home from work.

Although several museums, cafes and restaurants were shown on Google Maps, they were only open on the weekends during shoulder season. Our search for coffee took us to the larger town of Alatskivi, where we were able to satisfy our “drive a little, then café,” philosophy with a good lunch at Kivi kõrts, a bright eclectically decorated tavern, including a restroom decorated in a quirky theme.

We drove farther to Kallaste, a still larger village on the shore of Lake Peipus, but were discouraged from investigating the town in depth by the number of roadwork closures that hindered our travel.

On our return route to Tartu we passed through Alatskivi again and purchased honey from an automated vending machine near beehives in front of a local beekeeper’s home. We enjoy the simplest of things and found this combination of ancient practice and modern technology delightful. The machine even accepted credit cards.

At the roundabout in town, we circled twice to figure out how to reach the town’s library, which had a large wooden sculpture of two hands, with fingers carved from tree trunks, protruding from the ground in front of the building.

Earlier, the server at the tavern suggested we visit Alatskivi Castle,an old Baltic German feudal estate with vast land holdings, that was first mentioned in the historical records of the early 1600s. In 1885 Baron Arved von Nolcken, a widely traveled aristocrat, purchased the estate and reconstructed the old manor house in a Scottish baronial style, that is said to closely resemble Balmoral Castle, which he had recently visited. The von Nolcken family lived in the manor house for twenty years before they left for Germany with all their possessions, including the manor’s silk wallpaper, at the beginning of the Estonian Peasant Revolution in 1905. During the Soviet occupation of Estonia the lands of the estate were a state-controlled collective farm, and the castle was used as school, cinema, and library. Today, after extensive renovations the manor features a fine-dining restaurantand 4 suites available for booking directly through the castle, along with offering  a ceramic studio and workshop in the cellar. There is also a wax museum featuring figures of the manor’s servants; a butler, lady’s maid, cook, baker, groomsman, stable hands, and laundry maid are just a few of the various trades depicted. The exterior of the castle is totally white, and during the winter, with snow on the ground, must shine brilliantly on a sunny day. Or vanish totally from view during an Estonian tuiskav lumi, a blizzard. We wondered – if the walls of the castle could speak, what tales would they tell?

We had a great time exploring the cultures and complex histories of Estonia, Latvia, and regrettably only a small part of Lithuania during our three week-long road trip through these fascinating Baltic countries.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Driving Through the Baltics: Part 9 – Sigulda, Latvia to Tartu, Estonia or Spires, Onion Domes and a Neat Cafe

| 2suitcasesfor2years

Mornings with overcast skies, which cleared by noon, had prevailed for the past two days. We hoped that this weather pattern would continue as we headed north from Sigulda to Tartu under a gunmetal gray sky. It would be less than a three-hour drive if we drove directly there, but that’s not our modus operandi. Over wine the night before we had scoured the map along our tentative route and highlighted some picturesque and fascinating stops for further exploration in the region.

After a short 20-minute drive from Sigulda we stopped at Lielstraupe Castle. It was originally constructed in the later part of the 13th century as a crusader fortress by Voldemar von Rosen, a Teutonic knight and vassal to the Archbishop of Riga, who had initiated a crusade into the region to forcibly convert the area’s pagan tribes to Christianity. The thriving medieval village of Straupe grew around the castle and was a merchant town within the Hanseatic League. It was totally destroyed during the Polish – Swedish wars in the early 1600s and never rebuilt. The castle, now a substantial manor home after being rebuilt from ruins after the wars of the 17th century, remained sporadically in the possession of the von Rosen family, through centuries of the region’s conflicts, until 1939. During the Soviet era the manor was used as the Lielstraupe Tractor Station, with its rooms and stables being used for classrooms, workshops, and dormitories. In the 1960s the estate was used as a psychiatric hospital. Since 2023 the castle has been owned by the Municipality of Cēsis, which has opened it to tourists as it undergoes renovations. Unfortunately, we were unable to tour the interior of the manor, since we stopped by before its opening time.

Our “drive a little then café” instincts took us to Valmiera, the largest town in the Vidzeme region with a population of about 51,000. Like Cēsis and Sigulda, its founding is tied to the Northern Crusade in the 13th century. Parking was conveniently located across from Valmiera’s St. Simon Church. Amazingly, the medieval building, which dates to 1283, is believed to have survived the centuries without any major alterations. Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible ruled during the Livonian War (1558-1583), a conflict which included the medieval superpowers Sweden, Denmark, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth fighting for control of Latvia. Several cannon balls fired by Russian troops into the church’s walls are on display in the church’s narthex as testimony to the strength of its construction. It was a Catholic church until Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation was brought to Latvia with the signing of the Truce of Altmark in 1629, which ended the Polish-Swedish War (1600-1629).

A short walk from the church were the 13th century ruins of a Livonian Order Castle. As ruins go, these were not very impressive, with only a small L-shaped wall section still standing. However, there was a very interesting 3D relief map of old Valmiera in the courtyard in front of the Museum of Valmiera which showed that the town was ringed with defensive fortifications, which signified the town’s importance within the Hanseatic League, second only to the town of Cēsis in the Vidzeme region. The ramparts stood until they were destroyed in the Russian Empire’s shelling of the city during the Great Northern War in 1702. After the war the castle’s ruins were used as a quarry to rebuild the villagers’ homes destroyed during the conflict. The church was easily located on the map and was a good reference point for understanding how the old town was laid out.

From the castle grounds we then followed a pretty path downhill to the bank of the Gaujas River before succumbing to our call for coffee. We stumbled upon Café Kekss totally by accident. They have several unique small greenhouses, with tables and chairs for 4 people in each enclosure, outside their small cafe. It was a chilly and windy day when we visited, but sitting in one of the glass houses was perfect. The staff was very nice and the barista who took our order delivered everything to our table.

We really enjoyed our experience there, and the greenhouses are a great way to extend the season. Before returning to the car we spent a little bit of time strolling along the Dzirnavu ezeriņa promenade in the park downhill from the café.

It was the last Saturday in September, and unexpectedly we had the road to ourselves, only occasionally seeing another car whiz by. As hoped for, the sun brightened the sky later that morning as we continued our drive through a mostly semi-rural landscape, dotted with farms, towards the Latvia/Estonia border.

Only a short distance away from the border we paused to stretch our legs at Valka-Lugaži’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, our last stop in Latvia. The church’s name first appears in medieval documents of 1477. Prominent nobles were patrons of the church since much of the congregation were the poor serfs who farmed the land of their lords during the feudal era, which unfortunately lasted in Latvia and Estonia well into the late 19th century. Church history notes that the Baron von Wrangell family rebuilt the church many times over four calamitous centuries which saw the region engulfed in wars. The last descendant offered to repair the church in 1910 when a fire collapsed the belltower into the church. With the Lord’s good graces and the steady hand of a bomb disposal expert, an unexploded WW2 bomb, ignored by the communist regime for fifty years, was finally removed from the belltower after Latvia regained its independence in 1991. We crossed over the waters of the Pedeli River into Valga, Estonia. Interestingly Valka and Valga were one town until their separation at the end of World War I. With the collapse of Imperial Russia, Estonia and Latvia declared their independence and a new border was determined which split the town in half down the center of the river. A spirit of unity still remains between the two towns, as extended families now travel freely across the border since the countries joined the Schengen Area, and even share a professional basketball team, the BC Valga-Valka/Maks & Moorits, along with the slogan “One Town, Two Countries.”

A few minutes outside of Valga we turned and followed a secondary road to Sangaste Castle in rural Otepää Parish. More manor home than castle, the estate’s history began in 1866 when F. G. M. von Berg (1845–1938), the last Lord of Sangaste, inherited the property from his uncle Count von Berg, a decorated Russian Field Marshal, and dreaming big decided to build his family a 99-room English style mansion. Its size was only curtailed by an imperial rule that permitted no homes with over 100 rooms unless they were built for the Czar. Von Berg was a successful agriculturalist, having developed a new rye variety, along with establishing a prized dairy herd with milk “so good that it was sold in the markets of St Petersburg.”  Though located deep in the rural countryside, the manor had all the modern conveniences available at the beginning of the 20th century, with a telephone line installed in 1896 and electric lights in 1907.

With Estonia’s independence from Russia at the end of the First World War the new government started to seize the lands and manor houses of Baltic Germans. The government however acknowledged von Berg’s contributions to Estonian agriculture and allowed the aging Baron to stay in his home until his death in 1938. During the communist occupation of Estonia, the castle was used as a Young Pioneer Camp and its interior was altered to have 146 rooms. Somewhere along the line someone determined that the manor was composed of 1.45 million red bricks, or one brick for every Estonian.

In the crossroads village of Sangaste, in front of its church, a lone tree showed off its spectacular yellow leaves, signaling Autumn was finally here.

Four miles beyond Sangaste we glimpsed the onion shaped domes of (EAÕK) Ilmjärve Jumalailmumise, an Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church, amidst a clearing. The red brick and stone facade of the 1873 church was brilliant in the afternoon sun. Unfortunately, the church was closed, though we were able to peek at the interior through an old-fashioned skeleton lock, and even take a picture. A placard in front of the building noted that the church’s two large bells were donated by the Russian Czar Alexander II. The church suffered during WW2, but its spirit was wounded the most when thieves in 1979 stole the church’s silver treasures used for communion.

We hadn’t expected restaurants in the area to be so scarce and far apart. Many were already closed for the season, though the weather, now cooler in late September, was still very comfortable. Our hope rose when we approached a restaurant across from the ski lift, that was now carrying mountain bike riders to the summit for a thrilling downhill ride, at the Munamägi Ski Center, outside of Otepää, the “winter capital of Estonia.”

But as we neared an employee flipped the sign hanging in the door to CLOSED! It was only mid-afternoon, had we missed the lunch hours? With our stomachs now rumbling we breezed quickly through the town and regretfully bypassed the opportunity to visit the ruins of Otepää’s ancient hill fort from the Viking era, and the remains of a Bishop’s castle where the oldest known firearm in Europe was discovered. We also missed Otepää kirik, the town’s historic church, which in modern times is historically connected to the country’s flag, when in 1884 the blue, black and white flag of the Estonian Student Union was consecrated there during “Estonia’s Awakening.” The Student Union’s design became the flag of Estonia in 1991.

We eventually had a very nice late lunch at Pangodi kalarestoran, a fish restaurant, before  our last excursion to Luke Mõis, an ancient feudal estate that dates from the 13th century. The manor house is an unassuming building that now hosts events and weddings. But the real interests here were the cascading ponds and the Gardener’s Cottage. The estate’s head horticulturalist must have been highly regarded judging by the beauty of his ornately trimmed petite home, in a lovely bucolic setting along one of the ponds. If we had planned better this would have been the perfect spot for an afternoon picnic. It’s a very pretty spot that’s worth detouring to if you are driving from Riga to Tartu.

Tartu was only 30 minutes from Luke Mõis and we arrived to find Estonia’s 2024 Capital of Culture alive with activity as we checked into the Art Hotel Pallas, a creatively decorated boutique hotel, ideally located on a pedestrian mall that led into the town’s historic center.

After dinner we enjoyed a leisurely stroll over the Kaarsild, an arched bridge that spans the Emajõgi River, an important trade route since the Viking era that connects Lake Võrtsjärv to Lake Peipus and is still navigable all the way to the Baltic Sea. We wondered if a Viking ever imagined the bright lights of the bridge and Tartu’s growing skyline reflecting upon the river’s water.  

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Road Tripping Through the Baltics: Part 7 – Riga to Šiauliai, Lithuania or Crosses, Churches and Towns Filled with Art

| 2suitcasesfor2years

There are always several dilemmas with a road trip: how far to drive, do we drive straight through or look for interesting stops along our route? We tend to make stops, multiple stops to the point of my trusted co-pilot advising that, “we’ll never make it there at this rate,” but there’s a fear of possibly missing something. Fortunately, our “walk a little, then café,” philosophy easily converts to “drive a little, then café,” and in pursuit of those cups of coffee we’ve happened upon some laid back, interesting places.

The Hill of Crosses in northern Lithuania was our destination as we headed south on the A8/12 from Riga. Only two hours (78 miles/126 km) from Riga, many folks choose to do it as a day trip out of the Latvian capital. Which would have worked for us, but we have this quirky rule that we don’t put a pin in our wall map unless we’ve actually stayed overnight in the country. So, with that in mind, we booked two nights’ accommodation in Šiauliai, the town just beyond the Hill of Crosses.

Craving a cappuccino, we detoured into Jelgava for what we thought would be a short stop to satisfy our caffeine addiction. As we crossed over the Lielupe River we spotted the Jelgava Palace on a large island. It called for a stop. A wooden fortress was first erected here in the 13th century as part of the Livonian Order’s conquest of the pagan Zemgalian tribe that inhabited the region. Today’s beautiful 18th century Baroque style palace with 669 rooms is touted as being the largest in the Baltic states. It is actually a reconstruction of the palace which was burned down during WW2. During its apex it was the seat of the Duchy of Courland and Zemgale, and an important diplomatic post between Russia and Poland. Famously, the exiled French King Louis XVIII, to save his head from the guillotine, inhabited the palace from 1798 – 1807. Part of the palace houses a small museum with the Family Vault of the Dukes of Courland and Semigalla being the main attraction. The rest of the building is occupied by the Latvia University of Agriculture and Latvia’s University of Life Sciences and Technologies.

Across from the palace was Pasta Sala, a smaller island with an interesting art park that hosts the annual Jelgava International Sand Sculpture Festival every June and an International Ice Sculpture Festival every February. Unfortunately, traveling in the late September shoulder season we missed it. But we did enjoy wandering along a walking path through an installation of Chamotte fired-clay sculptures.

Between the palace and the park, we were now smitten with the impromptu stop and were enticed to follow a graceful modern footbridge, the Mītavas Gājēju, that tilts over the river into the town center, which was surprisingly quiet for a Tuesday in late September, considering that the university town is Latvia’s fourth largest city, with a population of roughly 60,000.

It’s unusual for only half a church to be left standing, but Jelgava’s Holy Trinity Church (1574) is a stark reminder of the devastation the city suffered during Soviet Union and Nazi Germany sieges and occupations of the city during WW2, which left ninety percent of Jelgava in ruins and all its Jewish citizens lost to the Holocaust. Its belltower above the town’s tourist information office was opened in 2010 as an observation deck after extensive reconstruction.

That promise of a morning coffee wasn’t forgotten as we walked along a pedestrian mall past a small daily street market to Konditoreja Silva, a bistro and patisserie where the coffees were very good and the selection of tasty pastries was mouthwatering.

Back on the road, we continued our drive south and crossed the border into Lithuania. We zoomed by a small roadside marker that pointed to the Jakiškiai Chapel, one of the last wooden churches from the 17th century remaining in Lithuania. We u-turned in order to find it. Passing through a small hamlet, we located the church situated on a low knoll, surrounded by fields and pasturelands.

It’s also known as the St Ignatius of Loyola Cemetery Chapel, named for the founder of the Jesuits, who were active in the region at the time. It’s a fine example of rustic folk sacral architecture.

The graveyard surrounding the chapel was full of interesting old headstones. Some were carved from logs and were well weathered and split from age and the elements, while the more recent graves were marked with stone or marble memorials with the deceased’s portrait etched into the surface. There was a caretaker working on the grounds who wouldn’t acknowledge our presence, so we contented ourselves with peering through the dusty windows into the sanctuary the best we could.

The Hill of Crosses was only 20 minutes farther south, just off the A12. The precise history of the hill is not known, but it is believed to have started as a way to commemorate Lithuanian rebels who never returned after uprisings against Imperial Russia’s rule in 1831 and 1836.  From a distance the hill is only speck on the horizon. It wasn’t until we were walking the long approach path that the hill slowly grew, and its monumental scale became apparent.

Not really in height, it’s a modest hill with stairs to its apex, but in girth and the sheer number of crosses, from tiny store-bought ones to large crosses handcrafted I imagine with sweat and tears. It’s estimated that there are now 200,000 crosses and crucifixes spread across the half hectare (1 acre) site. All are mingled together haphazardly and are treated equally in their importance, and they stand as testimony to the character and faith of the Lithuanian people who created this spectacular monument. The crosses were bulldozed and razed repeatedly during the Soviet era but were always rebuilt by the people. The hill stands as a sign of quiet resistance to the Soviet Union’s atheist communist occupation.

The fifty years of oppression which started with the Soviet Union’s annexation of Lithuania in 1940 ended in 1990 with the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. A dream realized after the Baltic Way, a human chain of approximately two million peaceful protesters joining hands along a route that stretched from Vilnius, Lithuania through Riga, Latvia to Tallinn, Estonia in August 1989. Lithuanian was the first of fifteen Soviet republics to declare independence, which forced the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Hill of Crosses in 1993 it has become a popular pilgrimage site.

During the 13th-century Christianity was not enthusiastically embraced by the pagan Lithuanian tribes of the region who rallied to decisively defeat the onslaught of the crusader Knights of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in the1236 Battle of the Sun/Saulė, the victory from which Šiauliai takes its name and the year of its founding. It would be another two centuries before the first wooden church in the town was built on a small rise overlooking Lake Talkša.

The graceful Church of Saints Peter and Paul with its soaring belltower and brilliant white façade replaced the earlier 1445 church in 1617. It was our first stop. The church became Šiauliai Cathedral when Pope John Paul II elevated its status when the Diocese of Siauliai was created in 1997.

After checking into the hotel Turnė (free parking) for two nights, we walked a short distance into the center of Šiauliai to stroll along its nearly mile long pedestrian mall, Vilniaus g. One of the first things we noticed about the town was the amount of public art displayed along this street.

It’s an interesting variety of wall murals, and contemporary sculptures that enhance the walkway. As it was getting late we only walked the southern end of the mall to have dinner at Žemaitis Restoranas, located in the Hotel Šiauliai. The Lithuanian specialties – cepelini, homemade dumplings, Kedainiai potato pancakes, Karka with stewed cabbage – were so good and reasonably priced that we dined there twice.  

By the time we had finished dinner it was dark outside and upon leaving the restaurant we spotted the spectacularly lit dancing water fountain “Trys paukščiai,” Three Birds, designed by the Lithuanian artist Kestutis Kasparavicius. Its ballet of synchronized water jets and colored lights totally mesmerized us as we watched its performance several times. The quality of the installation was amazing and equal to the best fountains you’d find in NYC, Paris or Madrid.

The next morning, in pursuit of breakfast, we walked the northern part of Vilniaus Street, which we discovered was the first pedestrianized boulevard in Lithuania when it prohibited cars in 1975, and is the third oldest pedestrian street in Europe. A nice feather in the town’s cap for an off-the-radar-destination.

As we worked our way towards the Prezo Kepyklėlė café, the street was full of university students walking to morning classes in the buildings of Vilnius University and Šiauliai State University of Applied Sciences scattered across town.

Much of the contemporary public art at this end of the mall is sponsored by the Šiauliai Art Gallery with a mission statement to encourage within the community the free expression of art.

A narrow alley next to the gallery led to an almost hidden away St. Ignatius Loyola Church. It’s not very old as churches go, but its uniqueness stems from its roots as an ordinary home before the Jesuits bought it in 1930 and converted it to a church. At the end of WW2 communist authorities imprisoned two of its priests and sent a third to exile in Siberia. The sanctuary was closed and used as a warehouse, then a gym. In 1986 the local government deceptively requested funds from Soviet authorities to renovate the building into a concert hall but instead restored the church. After Lithuania declared its independence in March of 1990 the church was reconsecrated in December, just in time to celebrate Christmas Mass. A statue of Pope John Paul II in the church’s courtyard commemorates his stay in the small rectory when he visited the Hill of Crosses in 1993.

In the parking lot of an apartment building next to the church we noticed a defiant wall mural depicting a young woman in traditional dress lighting a Molotov cocktail held by a partisan resistance fighter. It testifies to the resilient character of Lithuanians. Lithuania did not submit easily to communist rule after WW2 and had an organized resistance movement into the early 1950s, with some individual partisans fighting on in the 1960s. Unfortunately, a car was parked too close to the wall for me to get a clear photo of the mural.

We found Šiauliai to be wonderfully walkable as we made our way across town to Lake Talkša, first stopping at Saulės Laikrodžio Aikštė, Sundial Square, where a brilliant golden archer stands atop an 18m (59ft) tall gnomon which casts its shadow across the numbers 1-2-3-6, the year of the town’s founding, in the plaza at its base.

Two paths from the sundial led to the lake. One was a direct shorter route, but we chose the longer way through the neighboring cemetery to the lakeshore. It was a perfect fall afternoon with puffy white clouds sailing across the bluest sky. On the far shore only a subtle hint of yellow suggested autumn colors would soon appear.

A path along the shore led to a children’s playground and outdoor fitness area before reaching a large stone labyrinth where a lone woman seemed to be deep in a meditative walk.

Beyond the labyrinth stood a large metal sculpture called Geležinė Lapė, the Iron Fox. In 2009 the local artist Vilius Puronas crafted 7 tons of steel into this whimsical monument that’s 15m (49ft) long and 6.6m (22ft) tall to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the earliest mention of Lithuania as a country. In a 1009 chronicle called Annals of Quedlinburg, a writer described in Latin, “in confinio Rusciæ et Lituæ a paganis capite plexus,” which translates as, on the border of Rus’ and Lithuania, the pagans have their heads covered with plexuses. It’s not the most notable introduction to the world at large, but I will say during our short time in Lithuanian the country made a great first impression upon us! One day we hope to return and make it to Vilnius.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Road Tripping Through the Baltics: Part 6 – Riga, Latvia, or Where Old World Charm Meets Art Nouveau

| 2suitcasesfor2years

We didn’t know what to expect when we first drove into Riga after following the E67 south from Pärnu, Estonia. It was a beautiful drive through evergreen forests that paralleled the Baltic Sea. But as we neared Latvia’s capital and largest city, with a population nearing 600,000, scattered nondescript low-rise apartment buildings sprouted from the landscape. The density of the housing and buildings grew along our route, which was now a six-lane tree-lined boulevard with a tramline. Closer to the city center the road narrowed at Brīvības iela (Freedom Street), and its older character began to shine through with many 19th and early 20th century buildings embracing Neoclassical elements.

Painted bright yellow, the Russian Orthodox St. Alexander Nevsky Church was eye-catching. The Palladian style building with columned facade and domed sanctuary looked solidly constructed of stone, but it is actually a wooden structure erected in the 1820s. An unusual feature was its freestanding belltower that was added in 1863. A building farther down the block was our first introduction to Riga’s early 1900s Art Nouveau architecture.

Continuing into the city center on Brīvības iela we parked along a side street next to the Esplanade Park and walked back through its well-manicured grounds, past statues and a delightfully whimsical birdhouse tree to Riga’s Nativity of Christ Orthodox Cathedral. It’s a beautiful stately building capped with a golden dome. Constructed in a Neo-Byzantine style during the late 19th-century, while Latvia was still part of the Russian Empire ruled by Russian Tsar Alexander II, it is the largest Orthodox church in the Baltic countries. When Riga was under the Soviet Union’s communist control the cathedral was used as a planetarium.

A short distance from the cathedral was the Latvian capital’s Freedom Monument. It’s a 42m (138 ft) tall obelisk that commemorates the soldiers killed during its War of Independence, which raged for two years between 1918-1920, when Latvia declared its sovereignty from a collapsing Russian Empire, but then had to fight off the newly formed communist Red Army of the Soviet Union, which didn’t want Latvia to secede. It was symbolically erected in the same spot that a statue of Russian Czar Peter the Great once stood. Latvia’s hard-fought liberty lasted only twenty years before the Soviet Union’s re- invasion and annexation in 1940. During the Soviet era, communist authorities considered demolishing the female figure of Liberty lifting three gilded stars, that represent the three original cultural regions of Latvia: Kurzeme, Vidzeme and Latgale, but dismissed the idea because they feared it would have pushed the citizenry of Riga to fill the streets in protest.

We secured overnight parking at Autostāvvieta and dragged ourbags noisily behind us, down cobbled lanes for several blocks to the Hotel Monte Kristo, which was located on the edge of the historic district, and had very budget friendly room rates.

We found the pedestrian-only Old Town the next morning a delight to wander through as we worked our way to Livu Square, which many consider the heart of the Riga’s Historic District with its numerous restaurants and umbrellaed cafes surrounding a picturesque square. Feeder streets were speckled with the facades of many Hanseatic League merchant houses from 13th to the 15th centuries that survived the destruction of the Second World War. It felt as if we were in a small village instead of metropolitan Riga.

Just off the square is one of Riga’s famous landmarks, the Cat House. It was built in 1909 and combines Art Nouveau decorations with medieval turrets and two angry cats. Local folklore tells of a wealthy merchant who, when snubbed by members of Riga’s Great Guild and denied inclusion, in response commissioned two cat sculptures. The felines were sculpted with arched backs and raised tails, and positioned on the top of the turrets with their butts insultingly facing the guild. When the merchant eventually received membership into the guild, the offending sculptures remained but were turned to show the guild their better side.

While some folks can persuasively argue that the larger more cosmopolitan Dome Square with the Cathedral of Riga, and its cloister, plus magnificent Baroque pipe organ – one of the largest in the world – and ornately carved 17th-century pulpit, anchoring the plaza, is ground zero for activities in Riga.

Dating from the early 1200s, the cathedral has undergone many alterations over the centuries that include a mishmash of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque architectural styles that miraculously blend together beautifully. During the communist era the church was closed as a place of worship and used as a concert hall. It reopened for religious services in 1991, after Latvia regained its independence.

The plaza hosts a variety of events throughout the year, including an annual Christmas market, a Midsummer Fair in celebration of the Summer Solstice on June 23rd and 24th every year, and the Miķeļdiena Fair, a harvest festival held at the end of September. There is also a constant rotation of art installations on the plaza. When we visited an inviting open sided room called the Dome Next Door intrigued passersbys to investigate it further.

Then there is Rīgas Rātslaukums, the city’s spacious old 13th-century town hall/market square containing the House of the Black Heads, an extraordinary Gothic-style building originally built in 1334 by the Brotherhood of the Black Heads, a guild for unmarried merchants, shipowners and foreigners, that was for many decades the largest public building in the city. The Brotherhood takes its name from its patron saint, Saint Maurice, a Christian martyr traditionally depicted as a black man. Sadly, the iconic structure was destroyed in 1941 by Nazi bombing during World War II.

Only the building’s original foundation remained and the guild hall’s reconstruction, based on old drawings and early 20th-century photographs was, unfortunately not started until 1996, but then joyfully completed in time to be part of Riga’s 800th year anniversary celebration in 2001.

The plaza in front of the guild hall has excellent acoustics and is a popular spot for folks to gather and listen to classical music buskers. It also hosts a large RIGA sculpture in 6ft tall letters that’s a favorite spot for visitors to take Instagram-worthy selfies.

Across the square is the controversial Latvian Red Riflemen statue, a colossal red stone monument erected in 1971 by the Soviets commemorating a Latvian military unit that was formed as part of Russia’s Imperial army during World War I to defend the country from German invasion. It switched its allegiance to the communist cause after the Bolshevik revolution, with some units fighting against Latvia during its War of Independence. Many think that keeping the statue is an affront to Latvia’s history and want it removed, while others say it should stay to acknowledge a complicated past that the country is still coming to terms with.

Others still will point to the observation deck in the towering 123m (404ft) steeple of the 15th-century St. Peter’s Church that offers an unobstructed 360-degree panoramic view of the historic district and the metropolis that has spiderwebbed out from the center of Riga.

From this vantage point it was easy to understand why Albert of Buxhoevden chose this spot in 1199 to land 23 ships of Crusaders, the Brothers of the Sword, determined to convert the pagan tribes of Livonia to Christianity at the beginning of the Northern Crusade.

While the church is attractive, the streets around it are tight and there’s barely enough room to compose a photograph of the whole church. The church lost it spire and roof during the German Army’s shelling of the city in 1941. (But it was the Soviet Union’s scorched earth advance across Latvia in 1944 that left nearly fifty percent of Riga in rubble.) The resulting fire gutted the building, and it was left in ruins until a 20-year long renovation started in 1954. Fortunately, there were funds in the budget for an elevator, which now makes journeying to the viewing gallery quick and painless. The views out over the city were amazing. And from the tower’s vantage point it was easy to see how the Daugava River was so important to Riga’s prosperity as a naturally protected inland port city, in the early 1900s when Riga was the Russian Empire’s third largest city. We saw the city’s new prosperity emerging in a towering modern skyline across the river. Other points of interest around the church include the Chimney Sweep House and the whimsical Town Musicians of Bremen sculpture that’s based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

We enjoyed all four of these destinations as they were each unique in their own way, but we also loved wandering down the smaller lanes between these sights to savor the ambiance of the Old Town.

Riga’s massive Central Market occupies three cavernous former Zeppelin hangars only a 10 minute walk from the old district. There must have been over 100 food stalls selling fruits, vegetables, cheese, honey, meats & tons of smoked fish. A foodie’s heaven, it was one of the best mind-boggling food markets we have ever been to. Embrace the smoked fish, it’s delicous! There was a remarkable selection available with a variety of flavor nuances depending on the type of fish and the wood or pinecones used to provide the smoke cure.

During its prosperous heydays in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city’s merchants and industrialists reinvested their wealth into a building boom that embraced the highly decorative frontispieces of Art Nouveau architecture.

Many fine examples of these buildings are scattered all across Riga, but there is a concentration of them designed by the architect Mikhail Eisenstein on Alberta, Strēlnieku, and Elizabetes Streets in “the Quiet Center,” a treelined residential neighborhood near the Latvian National Museum of Art, that has contributed to Riga being regarded as the “Baltic Pearl,” and the “Paris of the North.” 

To reach the neighborhood we crossed a footbridge over the Pilsetas canal in Bastejkalna, a sculpture filled park. The canal was once part of the defensive moat that encircled medieval Riga, but it was reworked into a scenic park when most of the town’s ancient ramparts were demolished in the 1860s to facilitate the expansion of a growing city. Small tour boats now offer rides along the tranquil scenic waterway. 

Our walk returning to the historic center passed a variety of buildings and protest murals before reaching the Latvian National Theatre, an eclectically designed cultural arts center where Latvia’s independence was declared from its stage on November 18, 1918.

Strolling along Krišjāņa Valdemāra iela in front of the theatre towards the Daugava River offered a nice view of the modern Vansu Tilts bridge and the skyscrapers of Riga’s new commerce center across the river.

The last remaining section of Riga’s ancient defensive wall stands along Torna iela and we re-entered the old town through its Swedish Gate, that dates to the 1600s.

It was an interesting neighborhood with charming narrow cobbled lanes that led to the Saint Mary Magdalene Church (13th-century), St. Jacob’s Catholic Cathedral which was built in 1225 and passed back and forth between Catholic and Lutheran denominations several times over the centuries, and the petite Blessed Sacrament Chapel, all located within a block of each other.

We had many pleasant meals all across Riga during our three days’ stay, as the local restauranters produce delicious, culinary experiences, for tourists and neighbors alike. Our dinner at Ala Pagrabs, an atmospheric subterranean speakeasy that serves classic Latvian fare, great beer, and offers live music, was outstanding. Riga is a lovely city that we thought we could enjoy living in, though the winters might be too cold for us.

Till next time,

 Craig & Donna

An Estonian Road Trip: Part 5 – Pärnu to Riga or A Hidden Gem and Rocky Beaches

| 2suitcasesfor2years

Decisions, decisions, decisions: where to go, what to see, which hotel to choose, how far to drive? An hour earlier we had driven from the ferry port in Virtsu, after spending three days on Saaremaa Island, and arrived in Pärnu.

A long 4-hour drive to Riga, Latvia, at the end of the day, which would have had us navigating the city after dark, did not appeal to us. Instead, we opted for a one-night stay in Pärnu, a popular summer resort town, with a long, wide, sandy beach. The northern end of the beach has low dunes and the Muuli boardwalk that parallels the Pärnu River and leads to a breakwater that extends far out into the waters of Pärnu Bay and the Gulf of Riga. In the wide middle section of the beach there is the Purskkaev, an illuminated, dancing fountain at the beginning of a long walkway that follows the edge of the sand farther south. While the beach that September afternoon was a little too chilly for us to enjoy, we did find the historic center of Pärnu to be a wonderful, sleepy gem of a destination, with intriguing architecture. A pleasant surprise that fully exceeded our expectations, instead of the boring overnight stay that we had anticipated.

Valli Park with the last section of moat that once encircled a Hanseactic League fortress, and the 17th-century old Tallinn Gate, the only surviving monumental rampart gate in the Baltics, was our first stop. Its ancient drawbridge once connected the citadel to the old Postal Road that ran from Riga to Tallinn. Originally the town was founded on the right bank of Pärnu River in the early 13th-century, during the Northern Crusades, by the bishop of Ösel-Wiek, as a base to Christianize the indigenous pagans of ancient Estonia. After local tribes raided and destroyed much of old Pärnu, the decision was made to establish new Pärnu as a citadel across the river. New Pärnu prospered under the Hanseactic League, the powerful Germanic merchant guild that influenced the growth of many of the port cities along the Baltic Sea. A succession of rulers – the Teutonic Knights, Lithuania, and Poland – have left their marks on the city. But most notable was the Swedish Empire’s construction of the moat and earthen ramparts in the 1670s to defend the city from being engulfed by the Russian Empire’s desire to expand west into the Baltic.

A walk across town to Punane Torn, Red Tower, revealed a cornucopia of wonderful 17th, 18th, and 19th century architectural styles that included painted doors, timbered buildings, stucco facades, orthodox church domes, and protestant steeples.

The tower, once part of the city’s defensive wall, was constructed in the 15th century, during the tenure of the Teutonic Knights, as a prison with a 6-meter-deep prisoner pit. It is the oldest preserved structure in Pärnu and houses a branch of the city’s museum. A block from the tower is the Seegi Maja Almshouse, first built in the13th-century to help Parnu’s destitute and disabled; it was rebuilt in 1658 and is now used as the restaurant for the St. Peterburg Hotel.

Rüütli Tänav, a pedestrian mall with several side alleys, runs for several blocks through the old town and is the center of activity. It boasts an array of coffee houses, shops, and restaurants featuring international menus. Later that evening we had a great dinner at Kolhethi, a Georgian restaurant, which we highly recommend.

On the edge of Old Town, the streets around the Hotel Victoria still hosted interesting architecture and a variety of street murals and graffiti.

The hotel, with its distinctive mansard roof, was built in 1926 and opened as the Grand Hotel with a café in 1931, “where the great soloists from Tallinn performed.” During the Soviet era it was known as the Hotel Voit and it was the only sanctioned hotel in Pärnu that westerners were allowed to stay in when visiting the city. But the café’s music tradition continued with a small orchestra that performed twice a day. The building was renovated after Estonia’s independence in 1991 and reopened as the Hotel Victoria with the Grand Café.

As we were checking in a celloist, an older gentleman, was playing in the lobby. We commented on how splendid his playing was, and the receptionist responded, “he practices in the lobby every time he stays with us, and he’s been coming here for many years.” Unaware of the hotel’s history then, we now wonder, was he old enough to have been an echo of the Soviet era orchestra?

The next morning, we continued to Riga. After entering Latvia, our search for a place to stop for a morning coffee break (there were few opportunities) took us to Saulkrasti, a small seaport along the rugged Baltic, where we found the Ostmala Café, in the lower level of the Saulkrasti Cultural Center. The café is a wonderful little hidden gem and the perfect spot to relax for a while on the way from Pärnu to Riga. It’s nicely decorated with paintings by local artists and seemed to have only two employees – our friendly and helpful waitress/cashier, and the talented chef in the kitchen. The restaurant had a simple menu with some tasty Latvian dishes and was very budget friendly. Afterwards we followed the walkway from the cafe along the harbor for a short way, and watched logging trucks bring their cut trees to the port for export. Afterwards we headed to nearby Saulkrasti beach for a walk along a dramatic stretch of boulders and sand.

Closer to Riga we stopped at Carnikavas Pludmale, a picturesque and inviting wild beach that stretched for miles along the Baltic coast, north and south, as far as our eyes could see. A strong breeze off the water lifted the soft golden sand into the wind and tingled our skin. Latvia’s pristine coastline is the unintended result of Joseph Stalin’s paranoia that the western alliance was going to stage an amphibious landing along the coast. Do defend the USSR against this threat, the communists razed all the homes along the seacoast for 300km (186mi) and heavily guarded it against attack and preventing escape from behind the Iron Curtain.

Riga’s Brīvības Piemineklis, Freedom Monument, greeted us later that day as we arrived in the city.

Till next time, Craig & Donna

An Estonian Road Trip: Part 4 – Three Autumn Days on Saaremaa Island or A Castle, Conflicts, & Churches

| 2suitcasesfor2years

A row of windmills silhouetted against the early autumn twilight lined the road as we sped toward Kuressaare, the largest town on Saaremaa Island. A heavy plumbeous cloud cover was darkening the sky earlier than usual, but we hoped to reach our lodging, Vinoteegi Residents, before nightfall.

From past experiences of driving in Europe, parking our rental car was always an issue, and sometimes very costly. We were pleasantly relieved during our three-week road trip through Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania that we only had to pay for parking once when staying in Riga, Latvia. The rest of the time, convenient and safe parking was available on the street. After settling into the charming boutique hotel, we walked several blocks through a residential area and the historic town center to dinner.

On the town square the lively activity at Söstar köök & baar caught our attention, and we enjoyed several tasty selections from their eclectic menu.

The next morning, we were up early to take advantage of the photographer’s “golden hour,” at Kuressaare Castle, a twenty-minute walk from our hotel. Our stroll down the quiet neighborhood lanes was a nice introduction to the town’s charming diverse architecture.

In the dawn light the bastion fortress, Saaremaa Island’s most iconic landmark, looked particularly beautiful and intriguing. So much so that we found ourselves returning to the citadel several times during our stay to snap photos of it in different light.   

Construction of the fortress’s earthen ramparts started after the Teutonic Order defeated the pagan Saaremaa islanders during the Great Northern Crusade in the early 1200s. A century later the fortress was transferred to the Bishopric of Ösel–Wiek, based on the mainland in Haapsalu, and the building of the three story, stone Bishop’s castle began. Interestingly, the first written record of the castle appears in 1380 concerning the murder of Bishop Heinrich III Biscop. Elected by church officials in 1374, Heinrich III turned out to be very corrupt and was, among other abuses, accused of selling church land and assets to support his mistress’s lavish lifestyle. Ignoring the charges, he left Haapsalu and fled to Kuressaare Fortress’s newly finished Bishop’s castle, with only the loyal members of his staff. A while later the bishop was reported missing. After an exhaustive search of the castle Bishop Heinrich III was found dead in the fortress sewage system, with the garrote still around his neck.

During the 16th century the Bishopric sold the castle to the Danish Empire, which promptly began to improve the castle’s fortifications with the addition of the encircling moat, which established the citadel that exists today.  

Early in the 17th century the Danes ceded Saaremaa Island to Sweden. Lutheran preaching which began during the Reformation was now the formal religion of the land and the Swedish government exercised strict control over religious life with regular inspections by church officials to all the congregations across the island called “visitations.” These visits were to “inspect the religious beliefs of peasants and to root out the remnants of paganism and Catholicism.”

With the signing of the Treaty of Nystad at the end of the Great Northern War (1700 – 1721), Sweden ceded all of mainland Estonia and its islands to Russia. Estonia attained a brief independence at the end of WW1 which lasted for 22 years before Russia, as the Soviet Union, returned.

One of the towers of Kuressaare Castle had been used for centuries as a prison. But with the communist Red Army occupying the island in 1940, unheard-of horrors befell the castle, and its courtyard was used as the execution ground for ninety islanders. During WWII, Estonians were forcibly conscripted to fight in both the Russian and German armies. The Nazi Army occupied Estonia from 1941 to 1944. But with the Soviet Red Army advancing again, roughly 27,000 Estonians started a journey to freedom in Sweden from the islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa in the fall of 1944, an exodus from their homeland that would become known as “The Great Flight.”

After the Soviet Union annexed Estonia at the end of WWII, the communist regime forcibly deported 30,000 Estonians from every region of the country to Siberia. Few returned. Estonians caught trying to escape Saaremaa Island now were considered “enemies of the state,” and shot by the communist border guards who patrolled the island’s beaches.

In 1994, the fiftieth anniversary of the event, a monument called The Freedom Gate, acknowledging Sweden’s help and Estonia’s gratitude, was erected in Stockholm.  The inscription on it reads, “We came in small boats over the sea to escape from terror and dictatorship. Thousands of men, women and children reached the shore, among them workers, fishermen, farmers, intellectuals. We received a warm welcome, we were able to find work and to safely establish homes and families. We did never forget the country from which we were forced to leave and we strove for its freedom. Let the Freedom Gate testify to the humanity and tolerance of the Swedish people towards those who were looking for shelter in evil times and let it commemorate a tiny nation who found here a new home for itself.”  By Estonians and Estonian Swedes in Sweden – 1944-1994

The castle’s palace now hosts an interesting museum with exhibits dedicated to explaining the island’s complex history over the centuries. One of the exhibits honors the “Forest Brothers,” a loosely knit group of resistance fighters who opposed the Russian occupation and its security forces. They used their knowledge of the island’s forests and bogs to evade capture by hiding supplies underground in sealed milk cans. They disrupted the Soviet Union’s occupation efforts until most of them were hunted down and killed in the early 1950s. The most famous Forest Brother, August Sabbe, continued the fight, well into his seventies, until he died in a gun battle with KGB agents in 1978.

There is also an intriguing ethnological wing with a large collection of centuries-old island artifacts.

The next day we headed to the lighthouse at the tip of the Sõrve peninsula, only a 45-minute drive from Kuressaare. It was a beautiful drive and along the way we noticed the island’s eclectic bus stops. Some were quite ordinary, while one was lined with bookshelves, and served as a lending library. Another was enclosed with windows and filled with hanging plants. Many were colorfully painted.

We detoured to the ruins of the Church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Tiirimetsa, population 50. (A small aside here: a village in Estonia doesn’t necessarily refer to a central collection of buildings. It is often just an area.)  It was the first of several historic churches on Saaremaa we planned to see over the next couple of days, but we nearly drove past it, as the ruin was nearly hidden in the shade of a tree line. Built in the 1870s, the once grand Russian Orthodox church was looted and vandalized by soldiers in the Soviet Red Army during WWII. Afterwards during the occupation, the church was used as a barn until the roof collapsed. Tall trees now reach for the sky from its sanctuary.

On the peninsula now, we drove down a serene country lane to the Jämaja kirik, and interrupted a husband and wife team mowing the grounds and vacuuming the sanctuary. Although not expecting visitors, they graciously let us enter. Something led me to believe the woman was the pastor of the church, but there was a language barrier. Donna, herself a pastor, thought I was mistaken. Her reasoning was that no congregation would ask their preacher to also clean. But I couldn’t imagine the congregation of the church being that large anymore, and multitasking might be needed. Built in the mid-1800s over the ruins of an early 13th century church, the historicist style building was very pretty in its pastoral surroundings.

Inside, the church was very bright and since the windows were open you could hear the sound of the sea rolling onto the beach, not far away. The blue tones of the sea are reflected in the church’s altar painting. The church’s cemetery is farther down the lane, on the water edge. 

A short distance away we hoped to have our ritual “drive a little then café,” morning coffee at the Family Café at Ohesaare bank, a rocky beach area reached by descending a shallow embankment.  It’s a popular spot where folks come to build small cairns, and there are literally thousands of these wobbly stone towers along the water’s edge. There is also a nice example of an Estonian windmill near the café. To our disappointment the restaurant was not open mid-week during the September shoulder season, even though checking its hours on Google Maps indicated otherwise.  In the larger towns this wasn’t an issue, but restaurants and cafes reducing their mid-week hours was something we had not anticipated.

When we reached the tip of the peninsula the Sõrve lighthouse towered over us. We didn’t climb it, but instead walked the meditative stone circle near its base.  At the water’s edge the sea was perfectly flat with the ebbing of the tide, and the view across the Baltic was endless.

Heading back to Kuressaare we stopped at a park in the village of Salme to investigate some wooden sculptures of people that we had noticed earlier as we drove by. Our closer inspection revealed they were depictions of Vikings. The sculptures link to the accidental discovery, during road construction in 2008 and 2010, of two large Viking burial ships, one 38ft long and the other 56ft in length and dating back to 700 AD. They contained the skeletal remains of 42 warriors plus artifacts, that included swords, spears, arrowheads, and dice in the grave sites. Historians speculate that the Vikings were defeated by the Saaremaa islanders, and that the survivors were allowed to pull the longships ashore to ritually bury their brethren.

Back in Kuressaare we strolled along the harbor’s promenade to the large whimsical sculpture of Suur Tõll ja Piret, a mythic Estonian couple, happily dancing in their birthday suits. The Folkloric heroes are especially beloved on Saaremaa, where legends portray the helpful giant as defenders of the islanders.

The castle was across the harbor, and we couldn’t resist taking some more photos of it in the late afternoon light.

Centuries of religious turmoil have embroiled Saaremaa, starting with the Northern Crusade’s imposition of Catholic Christianity on the islanders in the 13th century and ending with Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. But it’s left an enduring mark on the island with seven historic medieval churches that still stand, amazingly enough, and are actively used, albeit by a smaller number of worshippers than during their heyday.

We didn’t visit all of them, but we did use them as destinations to work our way across the island to explore other areas. After a tasty breakfast the next morning at Pagariäri | Vanalinna kohvik, a bakery and café in old town Kuressaare, we headed to Kaarma Church. Originally dedicated as The Peter and Paul Church, it dates to the late 1200s, making it one of the oldest churches on the island. The church was originally built without a steeple, as was the style at the time. But any structure this old was bound to have withstood numerous alterations and additions over the centuries. The church underwent its first major alteration in the 15th century, when the bell tower – the first on the island – was added to its façade. Later heavy buttresses were added on either side of the church entrance to prevent the front wall from collapsing. The inside was quite intriguing with a pulpit from 1645 and wonderful carved wood sculpture of St. Simon of Cyrene, along with other interesting pieces and primitive stone carvings.

Afterwards we headed to see the windmills we had zoomed past the day we arrived on the island. In use on Saaremaa since the 14th century, there were nearly 900 of the iconic windmills, or one for every two farms on the island by the early 1900s. In 1925 Angla was a prosperous village with 9 privately owned windmills built across its highest point to catch the wind for the mills to grind the grains harvested from the hamlet’s 13 farms. Most of the windmills across the island did not survive WWII, and many of the ones that did were left abandoned after “The Great Flight,” which saw the depopulation of the island. After Estonia’s 1991 independence, Alver Sagur acquired the property with the village’s remaining 5 windmills, and spent years restoring them with parts salvaged from other ruined mills from across the island. They are now the centerpiece of the Angla Windmill Hill and Heritage Cultural Center which Sagur envisioned to preserve Saaremaa’s unique agrarian culture. 

Four of them, the oldest dating to the early 1880s, are post mills typical to Saaremaa, where the whole windmill turns around a central post to bring the sails into the wind by physically moving the long arm projecting from its side. While the other one, built in 1927, is a Dutch mill, where only the top which houses the sail’s gear shaft rotates around the stationary base.

Only one windmill has been totally restored to working order and still is used occasionally to grind grain, and you are allowed to climb the ladders between floors to examine its inner workings. The museum also had an interesting collection of historic agricultural equipment. The center’s restaurant was also good, and we really enjoyed their coffee.

We did a quick detour to the old Russian Orthodox Church in Leisi, which was built in 1873, and has those distinctive orthodox crosses atop its domes, before backtracking to the medieval Karja church, only minutes away from the windmills.

Noticeably the church, from 1254, was built without a steeple, which was a common style for fortress sanctuaries in the 13th century. There was another car in the driveway, though we didn’t see anyone, and the church was locked. Next to the door was a wonderful carved stone relief sculpture with rustic figures. Posted on the door was the caretaker’s phone number, but no one answered when we called. But luck was with us, and as we were just turning to leave two people appeared walking down the driveway. One was waving a set of keys.

Inside, more relief carvings decorated some of the interior’s architectural elements.

Along with an elegant altar there were some partial remnants of medieval era decorative paintings, faded but still visible on the walls.

On the way back to Kuressaare we turned off the main road to visit the church in Valjala, the oldest preserved stone sanctuary in Estonia.  Construction of the church started in 1227 after the Livonia Crusades of the 13th century, which forced Christianity on the pagan indigenous populations of Saaremaa Island and the northern Estonian mainland. The islanders didn’t convert willingly and their resistance was fierce, requiring the church to be expanded and fortified by the end of the century.

The entrance to the church looked more like a door to a medieval castle, ready to repel any attempted siege, and of course it was locked, a dilemma that was fortuitously resolved with the arrival of a middle-aged woman coasting to a stop on her bicycle. With a friendly greeting, she unlocked the door and vanished as quickly as she had arrived. The sanctuary was dimly lit with ambient light from its tall narrow windows, which dramatically highlighted the sculptural wall decorations. There was also a highly carved Romanesque baptismal font that is believed to be original to the church and is thought to be one of the oldest pieces of carved stonework in Estonia. In the 17th century the church’s tower was added. Three centuries later lightning struck the tower and destroyed its steeple.

We locked the door behind us when we left and when we reached our car, parked across the street, turned to look back at the church. Our mysterious bike rider had returned to check the lock, “Thank you,” she called. We waved.

That evening, our last night in the village, we wandered about with no particular restaurant in mind, simply enjoying the town’s warm ambience on a nice fall day. We checked Saaremaa Veski, a restaurant located in a beautiful historic 1899 Dutch-style stone windmill. However, it was only open on the weekends during the shoulder season. Further on we came across the sculpture of a giant hand called “Suure Tõllu käsi,” the Hand of Suur Tõll, which playfully references the beloved folkloric hero always giving the islanders a helping hand. The artistic work with its abstract background subtly reminded us, after several days of exploring medieval churches and a castle, that we were still in the 21st century.

“Oysters,” prominently displayed on the placard in front of Vinoteek Prelude drew us inside. Rustically finished with stone walls and roughhewn ceiling beams, the restaurant had a wonderful warmth enhanced by candles lit on the tables. The menu featured locally sourced produce, fish and game meats, along with an extensive wine list. The oysters were fantastic, though they were imported from Brittany, as the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea stay too warm and are not salty enough to grow them.

The next morning, we were up early to explore the eastern part of the island before catching a late afternoon ferry back to the Estonian mainland and continuing on to Pärnu for the night.

Miraculously, the door to the Pöide church was open! Some renovation work on the tower end of the church was underway, and workers were erecting scaffolding. The early history of the first churches on Saaremaa tends to be quite confusing with overlapping dates. But it seems the ancient church in Pöide vies with the Valjala Church as the oldest Christian place of worship on the island, each being quickly built shortly after the conclusion of the Livonian Crusade, in 1227. The original Pöide chapel was the only surviving part of a Livonian castle destroyed during the St. George’s Night Uprising of 1343, which saw the indigenous islanders kill their German and Danish overlords, and “drown the priests in the sea.” The folks seeking refuge at the Pöide castle withstood a siege for eight days before surrendering their weapons, with the assurance they would not be used against them. They were lied to and when they exited the castle the islanders stoned them to death. By the end of the 13th century the Livonian Order had reconquered Saaremaa and the small original chapel was expanded to the east and west. At this time the roof was raised and vaulted. When the fortified tower was added it became the largest medieval church on the island.

The inside is cavernous and at one time had enough pews to seat 320 parishioners.

In 1940, on the day that Estonia was forced to become a member state of the Soviet Union, lightning struck the church’s tall spire that was erected in 1734. Some considered it an omen of future difficulties. The church did not fare well during WWII with Soviet troops looting anything of value, and burning the pews for firewood, before it was used for decades as a hay barn. Only some sections of early painted wall ornamentation and the heaviest stone architectural artifacts were left untouched. One of the pieces to survive is the ledger stone of a local Saaremaa knight entombed by the altar, its carving now partially worn away by centuries of footsteps over it. Today the church holds services twice a month and hosts religious music concerts.

There was no missing the onion top domes of the Russian Orthodox Neitsi Maarja Kaitsmise in the small crossroads village of Tornimäe. The 1873 church’s setting on a small rise above the village wonderfully highlights its beauty. With the signing of the Treaty of Nystad to end the Great Northern War in 1721, Sweden surrendered Estonia to Peter the Great’s Russian Empire. Originally the Orthodox church had an insignificant footprint on Saaremaa, but that changed in the mid-1800s with the unfounded rumors that the church would give land to the islanders, mostly Protestant serfs, if they converted to the Orthodox church. Consequently, nearly 65 percent of the island’s Protestant rural peasantry fell victim to this deception, and converted to the orthodox religion, in the false hope of attaining their own land.

Down the hill from the church, we parked at Meierei Kohvik, a small café, one of the only two businesses in the village, for lunch. I was driving and had just turned off the ignition when Donna asked if I heard the car horn blaring. I’ll admit that I am slowly going deaf, and even with the help of hearing aids still have difficulty. “No. It must be from that truck over there.” “It’s from our car and it’s very loud,” she responded. By this point on our trip we had been driving the car, without any trouble, for over a week, so this was new issue. It turns out that that I inadvertently pressed something on the key fob, but no combination of pressing buttons would undo it. Unfortunately, to our dismay, the car’s manual was totally in Estonian too. So, there we were sitting in the car in the middle of Saaremaa island with the horn blasting away. I was totally useless in this situation. Fortunately, Donna resolved the problem by doing a quick internet search. Peace and quiet reigned once again. The café was simply furnished, but the food, pastries and coffees were very good. They also had a nice selection of apple juice and cider produced on Saaremaa available for purchase.

We arrived to Illiku Laid, a small thumb of land protruding into the Vaike Strait which separates Saaremaa from its smaller eastern neighbor, Muhu Island, with hopes of seeing From the Sea, an environmentally conscious sculpture, depicting human-like creatures emerging from the water. It was created by the Estonian artist Ines Villido using lost fishermen’s nets and other garbage retrieved from the sea. It was created several years earlier for the annual 4 day I Land Sound festival that’s held on Illiku Laid every July. The festival is the event that turns this sleepy backwater into Estonia’s version of Burning Man and “brings together artists, musicians, and creatives from around the world, fostering cultural exchange and collaboration, with a strong emphasis on environmental sustainability and community engagement.” Disappointingly, the sculpture was not there, but on tour as part of an environmental awareness campaign. Though we did realize we had seen one of Villido’s other works, Trust the Whale during our wanderings in Kuressaare. Her Cigarette Butt – Stand Up Board, made with 29,000 butts collected during the 2019 festival, was on display along the waterfront.

Saaremaa Island receded in the rear-view mirror as we followed the road across the Väinatamm, a long narrow causeway and bridge that connects Saaremaa to Muhu, before ending at the Praamid ferry terminal in Kuivastu. The day had passed quickly, and we arrived in time to take an earlier ferry to Virtsu, on the Estonian mainland. We had purchased our tickets for a later crossing, but there were enough open cars spaces that we were allowed to drive aboard. There was barely enough time to climb to the observation deck before the ferry’s 30-minute crossing concluded. We headed to the coastal city of Pärnu for an overnight stay before continuing our travels to Riga, Latvia.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

An Estonian Road Trip: Part 3 – Hiiumaa Island: Ghost Ships, Churches and Fog

| 2suitcasesfor2years

Only the red hull of a fishing trawler tied against the breakwater was visible through the fog that cloaked the coast in its grey mist. We had just set sail from the port of Rohuküla, on the Estonian Mainland. Our destination, the village of Heltermaa on Hiiumaa Island, a short one hour crossing on the Praamid Car Ferry. We had spent the previous day exploring the charming town of Haapsalu. Fortunately, it was only a 15-minute drive to the ferry terminal, which left us with plenty of time to watch the fog-veiled activities of the port before our 8:30am sailing. Our ultimate destination at the end of the day would be a hotel in Kuressaare on the island of Saaremaa. We had debated going directly there, but thought three full days on Saarema would be too long, so we opted instead to spend a day investigating the southern part of its smaller neighbor, the island of Hiiumaa, before catching a late ferry from there to Saarema.

The fog seemed thicker as we disembarked and headed to the Pühalepa kirik, the oldest stone church on the island. We used to be fair weather photographers but have come to embrace the moody light that inclement days offer. The fog that morning provided us with numerous opportunities to hone our skills. Some fall colors were just beginning to show.

Archeological evidence found on the island’s Kõpu Peninsula date the first traces of habitation on Hiiumaa to nomadic seal hunters over 7000 years ago. Its early history is vastly unknown, but it is believed folks lived on the island seasonally, but there might have been small hamlets, as the island was near a Viking trading route. But curiously enough, the first written mention of Hiiumaa in a 1228 document by the Archbishop of Riga, creating the island as a Bishopric to Bishop Gottfried, refers to it as ‘Some empty island named Dageida.”

This might help explain why the island’s new Germanic settlers felt the need to build Pühalepa kirik, surprisingly without a steeple, as a safe haven fortress church in the early 1200s, since the indigenous pagan tribes across ancient Estonia were resisting foreign rule and the imposition of Christianity upon them. The early German influence on Hiiumaa faded after the island was conquered by the Swedish Empire in the late 1500s.

The small red roofed building next to the church is the 16th century crypt of the von Stenbocks, a noble Swedish family that had extensive land holdings on the island and played a significant role in the island’s economy at the time. The current shape of the church dates from an extensive 18th century renovation which added the steeple.

Suuremõisa Manor on the von Stenbock’s largest estate was nearby. The imposing Baroque-Rococo style country home featured a large central building with a wing on either side of a formal courtyard, where guests would arrive by carriage. Years later the property was acquired by Baron Otto Reinhold Ludwig von Ungern-Sternberg, a shipping magnate. Things didn’t go well for the Baron, and in 1803 he was accused of murdering one of his ship’s captains, racketeering, piracy, and multiple kidnappings. He was convicted of murder and sent to prison in Siberia.

Miraculously the building survived both world wars and the Soviet occupation of Estonia. Today the preserved manor house is used by two schools, one a technical college, the other a local primary school. The site maintains a very low-key approach toward visitors. After a receptionist signed us in we were able to visit several rooms where there were some amazing pieces of antique furniture featuring finely carved religious motifs. Even though the building has a contemporary use, we thought it still retained a grand understated elegance.

It was still foggy as we drove to our next destination: Kassari Chapel, nine miles away, along the island’s southern coast. After driving through a lushly forested landscape, we chuckled when turning onto a side road we saw a barn painted with palm trees. We speculated about how harsh the winters on the island might be and what tropical islands the painter dreamed of.

Much smaller than the Pühalepa kirik, the Kassari Chapel sits on the edge of a forest that backs to the waters of Õunaku Bay. A wooden church built in the 16th century stood on this site until it was replaced with this unique stone church, still covered with a thatch roof, in the early 1800s. All the worship services in the church take place by candlelight as the sanctuary has never had electricity. The quaint graveyard is almost lost in the woods, with headstones covered in moss and leaves. Many of the island’s notable poets, artists, teachers, and other island characters (a manor’s swineherd), along with several wealthy landholders are buried in the graveyard. Noticeably the wealthier folks had headstones made from imported marble, while the less well-off had iron crosses crafted by the local blacksmith.

At the crossroads nearby in the hamlet of Kassari stood a tall statue of the giant Leiger, carrying a large boulder on his shoulder, with two small islanders atop it. Leiger is an Estonian folk hero, and relative of Suur Tõll, with incredible strength, who lived on Hiiumaa. The sculpture captures the essence of one of the giant’s legendary feats when he built a bridge for the islanders across the waters of the Soela Strait that separate Hiiumaa from the island of Saaremaa, which lies to the south. According to legend, Säare Tirp, a long narrow, tail-like strip of land that protrudes from the mainland into the strait, is all that remains from his endeavor.

A place to break for coffee was difficult to find mid-week during the September shoulder season. While many eateries were noted on the map, they unfortunately were only open on the weekend. But luckily, Rannu Pubi in the village of Käina was open mid-week for lunch. Miraculously it seemed by the time we parked the car, the clouds parted, and we were able to eat outside in bright sunshine on the restaurant’s terrace. The food was delicious, and the coffee was welcomed.

The town of Käina was also an interesting stop with the ultra-modern Tuuletorn Experience Center, “a bit of a museum, a bit of a science center and a bit of a play world,” was a main attraction, along with the ruins of Martin’s Church. When it was built in the 16th century it was the largest church on the island, and could hold 600 people. Unfortunately, the church began to settle into the soil unevenly and in 1850 the corners were buttressed to prevent its collapse. During WWII the building was hit by an incendiary bomb, the resulting fire burned through the roof, and destroyed the interior.

Our stops earlier in the day were only minutes apart, so with the sun gloriously shining we returned to Pühalepa kirik and Suuremõisa Manor to take a few more outside shots on a now beautiful day before heading to catch the 4PM ferry from Sõru to Triigi, on Saaremaa.

The Rudolf Tobias House Museum, a centuries old farmstead, and the 1873 birthplace of the famous Estonian composer and organist, was on our route. The museum was closed, though we were able to walk around the grounds. Across the road we plucked some fruit from some wild apple trees.

First noted in 1254, Sõru was for centuries an important fishing harbor and its waterfront was lined with fish processing sheds. A ferry has run from the inlet since the time of Swedish rule, when two energetic young men first offered the service. The village’s ship builders used the plentiful pine and oak timber from Hiiumaa’s forests to construct vessels up until 1939, when Estonia’s last large, ocean-going wooden boat, the three-masted motor merchant ship Alar was launched, with the crack of a champaign bottle across its bow. Efforts are underway to fully restore the historic vessel after it was found in Denmark, after sailing the seas under several different flags. Today, Sõru is a small quiet harbor with a limited number of berths, a campground, and nautical heritage museum.

The ferry boat from Sõru to Triigi was much smaller than the morning ferry from the mainland, and only sails twice a day, so if you are traveling via car a reservation is highly recommended.

We boarded the 4PM ferry and struck up a conversation with a young woman who had spent several months bicycling camping her way from Paris through the Nordic countries and was now returning to Europe through the Baltic states. “It’s been a tremendous journey, but now that the weather is changing, it’s time to head south.” It was only mid-September, but there was a definite chill in the air, and we also wondered how many fair-weather days lay ahead.

Over the course of seven hours, and driving about 55 miles, we had a thoroughly delightful, leisurely day exploring the southern part of Hiiumaa Island. It was confirmation that our decision to detour through Hiiumaa, instead of heading directly to Saaremaa Island, was a good choice for us.

Till next time, Craig & Donna

An Estonian Road trip: Part 2 – Across the Pine Barrens to the Pakri Peninsula & the Gulf of Finland or Soviets, Swans, Windmills & a Polar Bear

| 2suitcasesfor2years

Dense forest lined the road, occasionally thinning to provide a glimpse of Tallinn Bay. It seemed as if we had only left Tallinn minutes earlier, quickly passing through its outer boroughs to enter a semi-wilderness beyond the city limits. To paraphrase; We weren’t in Tallinn anymore. Lively, and charming, one third (461,000) of Estonia’s 1,370,00 citizens call this “gem of the Baltic,” home.

Only 15 minutes from the center of Old Town, we were in the surprisingly different forested landscape of Eesti Vabaõhumuuseum, the Estonian Open Air Museum, an ethnological recreation of a historic fishing village on the shore of Tallinn Bay, with the wonderful mission of showcasing the country’s rural architecture and way of life during the 18–20th centuries.

A pleasant set of trails through the woodland connected 14 separate areas that featured different buildings.  Some of the buildings have docents dressed in traditional clothing to help explain how residents lived centuries ago. The wooden windmills were particularly interesting and the large sturdy log cabins surely would have made Daniel Boone envious.

Leaving Tallinn behind: this was the first stop of our 21-day road trip through Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. There was hardly any traffic on the roads through the sparsely populated countryside that traversed stretches of open fields, bogs, pine forests and swaths of beautiful birch trees. Vast tracks of forest still cover over fifty percent of Estonia’s territory. Set away from the roadway a bike path, just one of 7,230 cycling routes and bike trails in Estonia, loosely followed our route from the Open Air Museum to Keila in search of a mid-morning coffee break.

It was a surprisingly frustrating endeavor. Takeaway coffee from a gas station? No no. This was nearing a crisis situation for us. Those in the know understand that without that a coffee fix, life in the universe is imperfectly balanced. Fortunately, we found a very nice gourmet café, Cake Atelier, on the main road through Keila. Chatting with the owner about our trip through Estonia, she shared that we were in luck today, as it was one of the town’s twice-yearly craft and food festival days and pointed down the road.

We both like exploring local markets and this one in Keila, while very small, was a perfect local event to have stumbled across. Set up in the parking lot of a small strip mall, it wasn’t geared toward tourists. It was simply regional food purveyors sharing what they love to do. Samples were abundant. There were extraordinary amounts of smoked fish, pickles, sauerkraut, and baked goods, along with foraged lingonberries and wild mushrooms.

From July to October foraging for berries and other wild edibles is a popular activity in Estonia and explains why we saw so many cars parked at various spots along the road in the middle of nowhere. We ended up purchasing a bottle of artisanal Rose Hip liqueur from a middle-aged woman who had been an exchange student in Florida in the early 2000s. Her cordial, lovingly crafted from her grandmother’s ancient family recipe, was very tasty. We purchased a bottle and enjoyed it as a nightcap during the rest of our trip.

Next to the parking lot was a pretty church, Mihkli kirik, Keila’s St. Michael’s Church.  This wooden church was first erected here shortly after the Danes conquered northern Estonia in 1219. A century later a larger stone church was constructed to accommodate the worshippers living in the growing village. The present church replaced an older one destroyed during the Livonian War of the 16th century. There were some interesting stone carvings around the door to the church, and an intriguing cemetery that called for further investigation.

Across the way the Scottish House, with its majestic sculptures of highland stags in its courtyard, seemed incongruously placed. But we enjoyed resting, enveloped in its warm wood interior, and lunch was very good.

Our destination at the end of the day would be the guesthouse Pakri Baron, at the foot of the lighthouse, at the top of Pakri Peninsula. But we rarely drive the fastest and most direct route. Our road trips usually connect the dots, and resemble Ws or Zs to points of interest along the way. With that in mind we headed to the Keila Waterfall in Lõokese tee, Meremõisa – gotta love that name – 13km (8 miles) away.

Without any tall mountain ranges, Estonia really isn’t noted for its waterfalls. But the Keila Falls, the third largest in the country, were relatively close. The falls are in a pretty river park that has a trail over a wooden suspension bridge that crosses to the opposite side of the falls. There is a small renovated hydroelectric power plant at the Keila waterfall that first started to produce electricity in 1928; the river park was originally part of the extensive grounds of the Keila-Joa manor. The neo-gothic style building was built in 1833 and is one of Estonia’s best surviving examples of the popular 19th-century architectural style. Unfortunately, the grounds of the manor house/museum were closed the day we were there.

Nearby, the all-wood Kõltsu Manor built in the late 1800s was another fine example of Estonian architecture. The large home was commissioned by a baroness to be used as her summer residence. After World War II, the house and grounds were used by the communist Russians as one of their Pioneer Camps. The name sounds so benign, but in reality, while they did offer camp activities, they were Soviet re-education camps that indoctrinated Estonian youth with communist ideology. Today the manor hosts events, weddings, and outdoor concerts during the summer months.

The forests in Estonia have their own stories to tell. We did not stop at the memorial to the 2000 Jewish victims of the Nazi massacre in 1944 at the forced labor Klooga concentration camp. Closer to our destination we stopped in Paldiski to purchase the makings of a picnic dinner and breakfast the next morning at the guesthouse. Apple trees grew wild along the edge of the road. We picked a few for munching later. White with a pink center, they were probably an heirloom variety called “Eva Kuld,” similar to the Pink Pearl variety. The apples were delicious.

We had timed our arrival at Pakri Baron to coincide with the sunset in hope of getting some nice photographs of the lighthouse and the coast as the sun dropped. However, the weather was fickle. But the guesthouse was wonderfully situated next to the lighthouse, which towered over us, and was a stone’s throw from the Baltic Sea. The still active lighthouse was built in 1889, and during the summer months it’s possible to climb its 275 steps to the top. Unfortunately, it was closed during our visit in mid-September. In front of the lighthouse is a copy of sculpture called The Ship’s Last Sigh (1899) by the Estonian artist Amandus Adamson (1855–1929), who grew up near Paldiski. The sculpture was chosen by vote from 5 of Adamson’s works by the residents of the community in 2008 to commemorate their native son. The guesthouse even had a traditional Estonian sauna in a separate building, just one of the 100,000 saunas in a country of 1.3 million. It’s definitely a cultural thing.

It was still dreary the next morning as we started our drive to the resort town of Haapsalu on the west coast of Estonia. But there were places to explore along the way. We don’t recall how we actually came across the existence of the Ämari Pilots’ Cemetery, but most likely it was a result of scouring Google Maps to find points of interest along our route. More accurately it could be referred to as the Russian Pilots’ Cemetery.

What piqued our interest was the use of tail fins from crashed Soviets planes as headstones to mark the graves of the pilots that died in accidents while flying from the former Russian airbase, Suurküla Aerodrome, during the Cold War era. The cemetery’s discreet location, in a forest almost obscuring it from the road, was so that reminders of the peacetime deaths, from a high accident rate, would not affect the morale of the military base.

The cemetery appeared to be well cared for, but it’s a reminder of a painful and repressive 46 yearlong occupation by communist Russia, unlike the monumental Soviet propaganda sculptures that were in public spaces across the country, which were destroyed or sent to the Soviet Statue Graveyard in Tallinn. This reminder of a dreaded past, like an uncle no one wants to talk about, was left to rest in peace.

Nearby was another reminder of Soviet rule: Murru vangla was a Soviet forced labor camp and re-education center where prisoners were sent to work in a limestone quarry for the duration of their sentences. After Estonia’s independence the prison and quarry were closed and abandoned. Water eventually filled the quarry and partially submerged some of old mining structures and prison buildings. Set against tall, eroded dunes created from slag left over from processing the limestone, the water of the quarry shimmers like a Caribbean beach. The uniquely beautiful manmade setting has slowly become a popular destination for divers and swimming. What’s left of the prison was turned into a museum. There is an admission fee to access the quarry area, but since the day was still heavily overcast, we kept driving a short distance down the road to the Padise Monastery. Founded in the early 14th Century by monks displaced from a monastery in Latvia, it flourished until the St. George’s Night Uprising, when Estonians rebelled against Danish rule and the imposition of Christianity upon them and killed 28 monks. The building was later turned into a fortress, but by the early 1700s the stones of the deteriorating fortification were used to build an adjacent manor house. What’s left of the monastery’s ruins has been preserved and now operates as a museum, and the manor house is now a boutique hotel and spa.

One of the many things we enjoy about traveling during the shoulder season, aside from fewer tourists like us out and about, is the affordability of really nice hotel rooms. Our case in point was our midweek 2-night stay at Hermannuse Maja, which backed up to the ramparts surrounding Haapsalu Castle, cost only €97.00, and included breakfast. Parking was easily available on the street.

Around the corner from our hotel the Müüriääre café, with an attractive interior and tempting food display, was the perfect spot for lunch before exploring the unusually named Haapsalu Episcopal Castle on a cloudy afternoon.

In the late 1100s Christian missionaries followed German merchants along old Viking trade routes into the region known as Livonia, that is today Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The land was originally populated by pagan tribes, but unfortunately located between Orthodox Russia and Catholic Western Europe. Never happy with the status quo, religious zealots called for a Northern Crusade against the Baltic pagans, and with the blessing of Pope Celestine III, persecution began in 1195. The efforts to recruit an army was assisted by a papal bull which declared that “fighting against the Baltic heathens was of the same rank as participating in a crusade to the Holy Land.”  The medieval era was fierce, and bishops not only accompanied the crusaders spiritually into battle, but wielded swords alongside their troops fighting those heathen tribes. Haapsalu Episcopal Castle was built to project the power of the church during the thirty years it took to subjugate the region. In 1583 during the War of Reformation the Catholic stronghold fell to Protestant Sweden and the cathedral became a Lutheran church.

A tall defensive wall still encircles the nearly 1000-year-old castle. And the church has been nicely restored after surviving fires in 1668 and 1726 and neglect during the Soviet occupation when it was used as a granary. Though only the outer walls of the monastery, which was later converted to a palace, remain after the 1668 fire.

We enjoyed walking along the ramparts and climbing the castle’s tower. Surprisingly in mid-September we practically had the site to ourselves. Wandering through the ancient, vaulted dungeon-like rooms of the castle’s museum that showcased life in Medieval era was particularly interesting. The grounds of the castle are quite extensive, and one section in a now dry moat has a medieval themed playground with all sorts of structures for kids to climb on. During the summer the castle hosts a series of concerts, and the town welcomes tourists with a busy schedule of events.

Dinner that evening was across the street at the rustic Talumehe kõrts, which specialized in traditional Estonian dishes.

The next morning, we woke to a perfectly clear sky. The sunny weather was a welcome reprieve from several gloomy days, and we took full advantage of it to explore the picturesque town and walk along the Haapsalu’s bayside promenade. The walkway extends for quite a distance along the waterfront, and is flanked with a variety of architecturally interesting buildings along its length.

At one point we spotted a polar bear standing on an ice flow. A statue! It was one of several exotic animal sculptures, recreated from old photographs of the wooden figures made in the 1920s, for a section of the boardwalk called Africa Beach, a beloved small park from the 1800s. During the Soviet occupation the original wooden sculptures were used as firewood by Russian soldiers. With the Russians finally gone in 1991 the park was revamped as a children’s playground.

A short distance beyond the playground the walkway ends at the 5-story tall Tagalaht birdwatching tower. Climbing the tower offers views over the saltwater marshes of Haapsalu Bay, which is an important stopover for artic birds during their Spring and Fall migrations. Swans, cranes, and a variety of ducks can also be spotted.

The small town existed on the region’s fishing and agricultural base until a visiting physician observed that the local folk used sea mud to treat a number of ailments. He opened Haapsalu’s first therapeutic mud treatment resort in 1825. It soon became a popular destination for several generations of Russia’s czars and aristocracy. A bench along the path commemorates the spot from which the composer Tchaikovsky watched the sunrise when he summered there.

Walking back to town we passed the distinctive green onion shaped dome of Haapsalu’s Maria-Magdaleena kirik, a Russian Orthodox church. The church was consecrated on July 21, 1852. In the audience was the son of Czar Nikolai I, Alexander (later Czar Alexander II, Emperor of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland.)

We worked our way across town to Lake Väikese and savored a delicious lunch overlooking the water from the enclosed patio at Wiigi Kohvik, before following a walking path along the water that circled the lake. Along the pathway we noticed that nearly every home on the lake had a traditional Estonian sauna in their back yard. They were all different sizes and shapes, with some constructed with wood and others totally covered with earth. We wondered if folks jumped into the lake as part of their sauna ritual. Brrr! Just thinking of it made me shiver.

Overall, we had a very nice tme in Haapsalu. The next morning, we checked out early and drove to the harbor at Rohuküla to catch the first ferry of the day to Heltermaa on Hiiumaa Island.

Till next time, Craig & Donna