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Riga Part 2: Sports Day in Old Riga (and Museums too!)
Visiting the Old Town of Riga, I picked a spectacularly wild day. As I approached from the city centre just about everyone walking by had a marathon bib on, and steady stream of kids were adorned on medals. At the freedom monument, marking the entrance from new to old Riga, it seemed like the entire…
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Riga Part 1: Latvia and Entry Codes
The four hour bus journey to Riga, Latvia, was as smooth and uneventful as I expected it would be. The Lux Express coaches are comfy and have onboard wifi, which I kept checking on my email for any new messages from the apartment I booked. But for most of the journey, I had already downloaded…
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Valjandi: Picturesque and Teutonic Remains
The bus from Tartu to Valjandi was a little over an hour, and couldn’t purchase tickets at the times I’d planned out in my head for a day trip here. So with taking what I could book, I arrived at the ungodly hour of 9:30am, while the majority of Estonia still slept. Thankfully there was…
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Tartu: Academica on a Hill
Immediately obvious is that Tartu is a university city. The city centre is filled with millennials, 20 year old’s wearing hipster fashion to make them stand out from the other sheep, and with a music festival heating up the coming weekend, the muso’s and goths began filtering into the city by the end of the…
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Pärnu: Relaxed and Taking it Slow
The bus station was a 45min walk from the Old Town. A small station that had buses running to a variety cities, from St Petersburg to Vilnius in Lithuania. With the cold weather and the grey sky above threatening rain, it was hardly a surprise the bus was close to empty, as Pärnu was known…
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Tallinn Part 2: Rakvere Castle and a Bit of Shopping
The town of Rakvere was just over an hour train ride. And the train station was situated just outside of the Old Town I was staying in, so a brisk 20mins walk brought me to Estonia’s modern rail system. Picture if you will – buying tickets online, boarding a perfectly clean train with broad and…
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Tallinn Part 1: My Old Town
The cruise from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, took just over 2 hours, on calm waters with only the lullaby hint of being on the sea. There must have been a good 500 people, and having a walk around to check out all the bars and buffets, I was pretty sure I represented the only…
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A Wonderful Start, From Fall to Ferry
It began as a drizzle, became a shower, and ended in a down pour. The rain came down hard, forcing me to move faster than I intended, leaving my home and beelining to the taxi stand. The beating of the rain felt like being whipped by a stage coach driver, spurring me further on reckless…
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Retro Post: Turkey
Final country of Turkey on this Middle Eastern trip. I’d actually max’ed out my credit card at this point, and international ATM’s weren’t a thing 20 years ago. It was credit cards or travellers cheques. I had just setup in a VPN at my work, and remembered I had my bank login details on my…
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Retro Post: Syria
Old photos of my time in Syria 20 years ago, before the civil war ruined everything. Places visited included Damascus, Palmyra, Aleppo, and Krak des Chevaliers.
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