Wednesday, June 26, 2013

On the road again.

You guys caught up now? I took a day or two off writing posts just so you wouldn't get too behind... (Not because I was lazy or anything.)

A few days of new places for us before we can hang out in one spot for a longer period of time.

After touring Tallinn for the day yesterday, we trained back to Pärnu on the slowest train ever (really, cars were passing us) and left this morning with some very sad goodbyes...Sandra's grandmother was pretty much crying as we left. Really, it was awesome staying there. Now we will miss our five traditional meals a day from our legit Estonian grandmother. 

Our bus arrived at the Riga airport (bad memories.....) and we took a city bus to the hostel. Which kinda sucks considering we have to bus right back to the airport in the morning to Chisinau, Moldova.

 On the corner near our hostel was a grocery store so we bought a jar of tomato sauce and a head of broccoli to go with our pasta we have been carrying around since Paris. We miss Estonia already. Have you gotten that impression yet? 

Now after cooking in an actual kitchen, not a hallway, we turned down an offer to explore downtown Riga with some very nice Spanish people. It's almost 9pm, and they seemed like genuinely nice people, but Riga is kind of known to be Amsterdam's younger sibling. We could tell they were as poor as us and wouldn't go all partying or anything but we really have no interest in Riga. It needs to make it up to us somehow. Maybe next time.

At this point, after watching them walk down to the bus stop together and out of sight, Tessa and I kinda looked at each other and thought, wow, we are really antisocial people right now. We've realized since we are traveling together, it's a level of comfort and "well I'm not by myself" so why would we need to interact with other people? 

This is a very bad state of mind to be in while backpacking Europe, obviously.

So we decided the next opportunity that comes across looking benign and interesting, we will probably take it. In the Crap Hostel of London, we did chat in the Hallway while making dinner, with an older Italian guy who was pretty funny, but other than small conversations with a few people, we haven't gotten to really connect with any other backpackers/travelers yet. We haven't needed to. So now it's time we two introverts start branching out.

From this point on, as far as we know, it'll all be hostels and maybe some couchsurfing. No more staying with friends. This will help, I think. Community kitchens and hang out areas of hostels are perfect for that kind of thing, right?
We'll work on it.

Ciao


Some pics from the last few days:


We took a side trip to hell; here's the devil himself.


We took a hike in the woods outside of Pärnu and it was very beautiful. The woods turned into bogs at the end of the trail, before looping back. Lots of people swam, but since the bottom is unknown, we decided not to.

(Top of a random watchtower from ages ago. See where it gets light green? That's the bogs/marshy/swamp area.)

In Tallinn I had an orange cinnamon coffee at a small cafe, or Kohvik as it is in Estonian. There were actual slices of oranges in it. (In the background is Sandra's banana coffee)

This is some more of the food we miss:

Some chocolate cake thing, baked aubergine, and a radish sandwich. Their radishes are very sweet, like a dessert, and they don't find this out of the ordinary at all. YUM.

Egg and till (dill) on toast, which is what they call a sandwich, always open faced. And then a creamy oh-so-tasty soup that touched my soul almost as much as the  porridge.

(Mini strawberries, porridge one last time, yogurt to drink, and a carrot pastry) (and a walnut pastry in the middle, but we were too full to try by then....)

Ah, I will miss this toit. So much. So, so much.

Oh and this is from the website of the hostel we are at right now. Read: "squee!" .....mhm. Well they are nice.


1 comment:

  1. Wow, this is such a great trip. I wish I had done this, but I guess we did have our adventures as kids traveling across the country. If you slow down enough in the US, there is almost as much diversity here, but we are so used to the airplanes and interstate highways, that we move so fast past it, we do not see it.

    I am enjoying your blog very much, and I cam caught up now, so keep it coming.

    For my trip with Ben next year and the trip with Joe the year after, I have a lot to live up to, you have set a tough standard to follow.

    We will miss you on the paddling trip this year.

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