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GoZa Mite

Tag: latvia

  • Advestonia Day 2

    gozamite


    This day I started very early because weather forecast promised some rain. I was already 06.30 on the southside of Pärnu doing some hard tracks of the TET!

    I had to make one major U-turn while trying to find the way out of this area. Such a perfect place to spend a day but I was more about getting forward… wanted to see some other places too!

    I finally made it to the beach and I was riding south on The Old Pärnu road. I stopped to check the Baltic Sea from the Viewing Tower on Kabli Beach.
    Right after I was in Latvia I chose the road that goes straight to the east. And after Korģene village I was riding quite a long time on the paved road to reach the town of Limbaži where I had my first longer break. I tasted some Latvian rhubarb pie (Yammy!) I was also checkin the map more carefully and it looked like there was a nice small road going out of town exactly to the correct direction… And that was a rough one!! Many kilometers riding on the soft and muddy road was a real challenge! This picture I took right after I managed to ride through…

    Soon after this I was in a small village of Straupe where they have a very nice castle! (Originally built in 1263)

    Soon after this I reached the TET Latvia the first time and I followed it to the “Līgatnes pārceltuve pār Gauju” (The manual ferry over the Gauja river). This is one of the places from my Bucketlist and now I’ve done it!

    This second photo is from “centrum of the Ligatnes village” which seemed like a very nice area for hiking, bicycling and spending some chillout time!
    My route for the day was like this:


    And of course I made a video of this extremely nice day:

  • Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Last day

    gozamite

    Because we didn’t ride far enough on previous day I made the reservation for the ferry From Tallinn to Helsinki for the next day. I was thinking to ride to Pärnu today and spend nice evening there and then ride to Tallinn next morning. The ferry was about to start 1PM.
    After 60 km’s of riding west from Jēkabpils the rain had stopped and the road was dry enough to take of rainsuits.

    Short stop here https://goo.gl/maps/CqbmZ7Ff2NikyL787

    The riding was doing well! The road was in very good condition and there wasn’t too much traffic. Maybe about 100km’s later we’re already on the north side of Riga and I asked my wife that maybe we should ride all the way to Tallinn?? Se said “lets do it!” And it was only about to change the ferry tickets to this evening… and it was ok! So we had ferry already today from Tallinn to Helsinki!
    I was filling the tank somewhere before Pärnu and it started raining there! But luckily it was just a short shower and we got even another somewhere in the middle between Pärnu-Tallinn. But when it wasn’t raining it was nice weather and the clothes were drying fast!
    We took a little bit of shopping in Tallinn and we even had time to enjoy dinner at our favorite restaurant Sevan before getting to the ferry.

    Waiting to get to the ferry.

    And we got very nice sunset on the way to Helsinki!

    We were home a little bit after 10PM… Quite late, quite tired and exhausted! The whole trip was very successful and full of nice moments and incredible places! I really can’t say what was the best place or moment… There was so many of them! I’m remembering very well the Hungarian roads -they were very nice! Slovenia -I really need to go again!! And Cesky Krumlov was very special also…
    My wife is answering: Krk island in Croatia and Grossglockner were the best places/ moments.
    The total route was about 5900 kilometers. We visited 12 countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic and Germany). In 2 of these we didn’t spend night (Slovenia and Germany). The best accommodation was in Croatia and the worst was in Hotel Luiize/ Latvia (last night).
    The 520km’s route for the last day was like this:

  • Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 18

    gozamite

    The idea was to ride from the south parts of Lithuania to Riga, Jurmala or Sigulda. But the weather forecast didn’t agree with my idea! There was crazy thuderstorm in that area and it wasn’t moving anywhere!!
    So I choose the route more east.. and the whole day was about trying to avoid the rain! So almost all day we had dark clouds on our left side…

    Dark clouds on the west!

    It seemed that we would finally enter the Daugavpils (again) and I wasn’t too excited about this! -I didn’t wanna spend the afternoon and night in a same town where we were before! Just before we crossed the Latvian border we at least saw something nice! But this windmill was pretty much ruined already -what a pitty.

    Obeliai windmill

    There was a chance to choose the road straight north… And we were also talking that maybe we could ride in the rain also to get further… And when we arrived to Jēkabpils I had to stop and fill the tank. This was perfect timing!! While I was in the gas-station it started raining (like crazy)!

    So me and my wife decided to stay here if there was a hotel or a nice guesthouse. And there was! Unfortunately this place was the worst in our trip!! It was very old house where they had made somekind of renovation but it wasn’t very good quality! The door was hanging about 1cm and it was difficult to close it. The worst part was the bed… It didn’t have any mattress pad… And in the morning when we wake up we both had some pain in the back!
    Luckily there was at least something to see in this town and the restaurant was very nice!

    The 330km’s route fot this day was like this:

    Few more photos here!

  • 4 days motocaching in Baltic countries

    gozamite

    Day 3
    We started the day by going to visit the 2 nice castles of Sigulda.
    (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/viewb/id6980)
    DSC_1633And also the cave down beside the river, this cave has walls of sandstone with many signatures from long time ago. (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/viewb/id6955)
    DSC_1637
    Then we started riding the route for saturday. First we took nice road from Turaida to Saulkrasti. This would be very nice… but the pavement is so bad condition that you have to concentrate to keep the bike in balance and you can’t really enjoy the long sweeping bends. (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6830). From Saulkrasti you can find a monument of finnish bomber Junkers JK-274 crash in 1943. It is quite interesting to find finnish language in the middle of Latvia! (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6124)
    DSC_1639
    Then after many kilometers of boring Via Baltica we took the old road of Pärnu. It is more pleasant ride because of the many small villages, old wooden houses and small shops. This 35 kilometer long road gives you some alternative route to Via Baltica. (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id4794)
    In Pärnu we took a short lunch-break in Aleksandri Pub (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6338)
    DSC_1642
    And in the north side of Pärnu we took a short visit in Villa Andropoff, this has quite interesting history but it didn’t give me any shivers. Looked like old Spa or something…
    DSC_1644
    The Beach in this Villa was fantastic! Many kilometers of white sand everywhere.
    DSC_1645
    Finally after a long and quite hot riding-day we arrived to Haapsalu. We visited the Haapsalu Episcopal Castle. Last time I was here (20 years ago?) it was only the ruins of the castle but now there was a museum and many different parts of the castle where you can enter. The bell tower, the hospital, the cathedral, the dungeons… we’re almost running everyhting through and still it took more than 1 hour! The entrance fee to the museum is 5€ and I really recommend to visit there!
    DSC_1651
    DSC_1653
    DSC_1654
    (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6310)
    For saturday evening we choose to eat Pizza. There is 1 very nice pizzeria in Haapsalu, Pizza Grande!
    Our hotel was the Spa by the ocean so we also enjoyed some jacuzzi and sauna (in Spa Laine)

  • East European Tour 1st day

    gozamite

    Start of the tour was supposed to be from Sigulda this morning. And it was… but there was 3 bikers still missing from the group.
    7 others started tour with a quite long day (almost 500km’s) and route was full with only straight road (and more of straight road!) We started from Latvia, rode throught Lithuania and finally we arrived to Poland.
    We had nice 26 degrees (Celsius) weather.
    The route of the day was like this.
    And accommodation is here. The restaurant with this guesthouse is one of the best in this small city.