Sand and Castles

We're by ourselves again.  Dan and Deb left for home this morning.  We had a great time while they were here.  We went to Tallinn, Estonia for two days, went to the beach here in Latvia, and then went to Segulda, where we were able to explore two different castles.  Dan is a real organizer, and he did a fantastic job of organizing our day trips.  He knew exactly where we needed to go to pick up the next bus or train.  All we had to do was follow him.  It was great!

I already shared with you some things about Tallinn, so I'll move on to our next destination, which was Jurmala.  Jurmala is a city on the Baltic Sea that is comprised of several different villages.  It has a 21-mile-long stretch of white-sand beach.  (Debbie has begun to collect sand from the different beaches that they visit, so she wanted to be sure and get some there.)  It is about a half hour from Riga, so we had the option of taking the bus or the train.

We opted for the train, since we hadn't ridden on it yet.  It was very inexpensive -- 2,50 Euros each way.  The train took us pretty close to the beach.  We only had to walk a few blocks to get there.  The temperature was only in the 50s and it was very windy, so we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. There was nothing extraordinary about it -- it was a typical beach.  Here are some pictures of it.

That's Don in the black jacket and me in the white one.  Dan must have taken this picture. You can see the tents that are on the beach, so I think it's a pretty busy place when the weather is nice.

Here's Deb and I, and below are Deb and Dan.

These birds were everywhere.  At first I thought they were some type of seagull, but we decided that they were something else.  Anybody got any ideas?

It seems like it rains a little bit every day in Riga.  By the afternoon or evening, though, it usually clears up.  Even though it stopped raining and the sun came out (below), you can still see some rain clouds in the distance (above).

Here's a picture of Don and I.  We're still hugging each other after four weeks of being together constantly.  I guess if we can survive this, we can survive anything.  Right?  Below we are leaving the beach and heading back to the train.

On Saturday, we took a train ride to the town of Sigulda.  It is famous for its castles and castle ruins. The train ride took about an hour this time.  If you look at the map above, you can see that Sigulda is northwest of Riga.  Once again, Dan had our trip figured out perfectly.  We had to take a cable car to get from one castle to the other.  He knew exactly where we had to go to catch the cable car and exactly what time we needed to be there.  It was great to have such a good tour guide.  Here are some pictures of the first castle that we went to see.

This is what we saw as we walked up to the castle.  I guess this is a "new castle" that was built in front of the old castle.  There's a New Castle in Latvia!

Below are just several pictures of the castle ruins.  It was really interesting to climb around in it and see everything.  It's really amazing when you think about how old these ruins are.

There was one room that had several items that I think were used for torture.  One of them was an iron mask, and the other was some sort of metal suit.  (This first one is sideways, and I couldn't get it to stay rotated.)

There was a set of stocks in the yard, and I just had to stick my head and hands through it.  Of course, Don had to take my picture.

There was a huge stage and stadium type of area in the yard of the castle.  You'll see me below on the stage horsing around.  It's the biggest stage that I'll ever get to perform on!

I know I have only shown you one of the castles, but I want to get this blog posted, because I've worked on it off and on all day.  I'll try and get the rest of it -- and hopefully more -- posted tomorrow.

Have a great day!