This one-way bus trip was one of the key reasons for going to Riga (though the architecture would definitely be my #1 reason now I know more about Riga). It was quite a cheap tour, only costing €55, and took 12 hours.
We met early on the Saturday morning, divided into buses, then head off. It had started snowing in the areas outside of Riga, which was so exciting. It looked like Narnia! The first port of call was the Soviet bobsled track in Sigulda, about an hour away from Riga. It was a beautiful trip too, looking out at all the snow!
When we got there, we all donned coats and scarves and went for a walk down the track. I expected it to be smooth, but it was very rough concrete underfoot. The smooth part comes from water being poured down the track and then freezing, making it slippery and icy.
The next stop on the trip was the lovely little village of Cēsis. We stopped the buses and got out at the castle, which had a pretty violent past, being involved in many wars. We then walked past the medieval church, which was built at the beginning of the 13th century. The market square, as little further on, was lined with all these interesting buildings. We kept walking out to where the Russian church is on the other side of the castle park. Then wandered across the park back to the bus. It was snowing constantly while we were there, light bits of snow that looked so pretty coming down!
While we were walking, I was chatting to one of the tour guides. She had been born in the 80's when Latvia was still under Soviet control and had a birth certificate issued by the USSR. It's so curious to think the country you were born into is the same land but not the same country now.
Nest, it was onwards to the Gauja National Park and the sandstone cliffs of Sietiņiezis. You'll notice in the photos below that there are none from the sandstone cliffs and caves. It might have looked better in the sunshine, but in the overcast sky and snow, they just looked very drab. The forest though, that was amazing! It's funny how the snow was carpeting the ground but not sticking to the tree branches!
On the next bit of driving, we crossed into Estonia. We stopped for lunch at this really interesting hotel called Hotell Metsise restoran. It was covered with taxidermy statues - from hedgehogs to foxes and all these animals in between. They were everywhere watching us eat lunch.
The Helme sandstone caves and park were next. This was a fairly uninteresting stop in winter - it was drab, cold, there was not a lot of greenery around. The caves were full of flies and mosquitoes from the river outside, as they were staying warm and away from the cold air. This was fine when you were in the cave and it was dark, but people shining their phone torches around and seeing those mozzies gave me the heebie-jeebies. The best thing that happened in the park was that they had this traditional swing, where people stand on either side of the swing and go for it. Apparently it's a thing in Estonia called "kiiking", but thankfully we didn't go quite that extreme. I did take on the tour guide though and we got pretty high up!
Viljandi was the last stop of the day before getting to Tallinn. We got there around 6pm and spent about an hour walking around the little town. It started snowing quite badly while we were there, small dusty bullets that pelted you from the sky. It was a nice little place.
From there, we drove to Tallinn. We got there about 9pm, and I dropped my bags off at the hotel. There was a chain noodle place not too far away from the hotel that does good noodles, so I went there for a late dinner, then went back to the hotel and crashed into bed!
