Amrita Liepaja

<br><br>8:30 AM bus leaving from the station right outside the hostel. Very convenient. My back is still in pain but I manage my huge pack OK. Raining day so not a beach day when I arrive at 10:30. As the bus passes the border from Lithuania to Latvia, the roads become much rougher.<br><br>I stay at Travellers' Hostel, a 5 minute walk from the center. It is raining so I have my mini-umbrella up while carrying the ...

... bed up. Needless to say we were a little slow the next day and in fact stayed in bed until 12pm drinking cups of tea and reading books! We did pass a fleeting thought back to those at home and wondered what they were doing on this fine Tuesday morning. We dragged ourselves out of bed finally and meandered our way down to the markets where we ate anything in sight (which included 2 cakes and ...

... tomorrow we going to Lithuania for the day. I wish you all the best, sorry for the mistake on the writting I don't have time to read it again, i'm already late (what new!) Take it easy and talk to you soon. PEACE and LOVE Nico ps: I forgot to tell you about Reigo, (estonian friend I met in Portugel) I will meet him in Tallinn next week, 3 years i didn't met him. If you want to get to know him, go to www.grenius.com www.grenius.com I really recomand it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... as far off the beaten path as I have been. I could definitely see this place turning into a major tourist destination in a few years. Pat and Mary Asian Circus-Sideshow Freak in the Baltics Moment #10: Some locals stared at us as we walked by and made some kind of "freak" comment in Latvian. At least, that's what we guessed. I drank a litre of juice and took a nap. Despite telling Mary that I was ...

... line of them they turn in land, this must be the fort. With no sign or people to ask I wander around and try to fathom it for myself. The intact inland examples are open but unlit but clearly contain barracks, artillery positions, magazines and shell hoists. Having not brought my torch I explore by the eery red light of the anti red eye on my camera. Although now overgrown by the forest the interior of the fortress contains several smaller structures ...

Our short stay in Liepaja just wasn't long enough. Our hostel was about 2 blocks away from the beach and it bloody rained. That didn't stop us from going to the beach though. We went out one night with some people from the hostel, but mainly just chilled out playing air hockey, wathing DVD's and drinking.

Not yet having had enough of beaches, but not wanting to extract any more cash, I moved on from Klaipeda up to Liepaja, about 100km up the coast, in search of the Latvian equivalent and (from what I had heard) a rather fantastic hostel. I was a little disappointed. The hostel I had been intending to stay at was closed for renovation, so ended up in a nice enough, but fairly anonymous place ...

... EU funding hasn't reached these parts just yet! Only an hour later and we arrived in the Seaside Port city of Liepaja. On first view, driving through the suburbs it looked like we had arrived in a town that was similar to something you would expect in a western film. Wooden houses, saloon-esq style, etc... The place did look fairly run down when we got off the bus but that said we were a little way out of the centre. We walked in the ...

... you, for giving me a harbour where I can stay. I find, I am the luckiest person in the world, for having such true friends. We returned to the beach. Suddenly the ice cracked. My foot broke through the ice and dived into cold Baltic Sea water. Nothing else happened. We walked on carefully. For the rest of my impressions from Liepala, see the pics :-).

... time or you will become sick. At least I will. I am sick at this point. Visiting Petersburg as a tourist in summer must be an entirely different expercience. In daily life you have to fight a lot. Fight with the authorities, fight with the teachers, fight with the administration. There is always some superfluous rule that needs to be obeyed. You can ask an administrator for half an hour why something is being done a ...