From Valmiera to Narva we traveled largely by train. The only bicycling was two days from Tartu to Viljandi and a little bit in the cities of Valga, Tallinn, and Narva. It was a good call as we would have really been pushing the fall weather this far north (60°) by the end of our trip (beginning of October).
The train from Valmiera in Latvia actually crossed the border to Valga in Estonia, and we had a little time to look around Valga/Valka (Estonia/Latvia) before catching another train to Tartu. Interestingly here on the border with Latvia we saw a red brick Catholic church:
A week later in Narva on the border with Russia it was a red brick Orthodox church:
Valga had some buildings to see,
but my favorite thing in Valga (called Valka on the Latvian side of the border) was seeing the no-longer-in-use border post.
We really enjoyed our time in Latvia so we were sad to be leaving.
We took one train in Belarus and one train in Latvia, and for each of those we had to lift the bicycles up from the platform to the train. In Estonia, on the other hand, it was super easy. We just wheeled the bicycles straight onto the trains (for the three trips we took). You should, however, hang your bicycles (which requires removing all the bags) onto one of the provided slots. We’re not doing it here, but it becomes important when the train gets crowded.
Ferda actually continued on that train all the way to Tallinn. I got off in Tartu (aka Dorpat) because I didn’t want to miss the museum at the Old Observatory. Before it opened, I had time to camp and poke around town.
I was most excited about the historic Struve Geodetic Arc, a set of ~250 triangles, used to measure the Tartu meridian from northern Norway to the Black Sea. The museum, however, highlights another of Struve’s accomplishments. He commissioned the world’s best telescope, made by Joseph v. Fraunhofer in Munich. Then, along with an excellent micrometer (also among the best in the world), Struve used the stellar parallax method to get the first accurate measurement of the distance to a star (from earth), in this case Vega. Here’s the telescope he used,
and here’s the tower that used to house the telescope.
How exciting is that?!
It was a windy ride via Nõo to my camp at Oiu, my first solo bicycle touring since the mountains of Luzon. There were too many mosquitoes, but it was cool enough that I bundled up. What? How can there be both wind and mosquitoes? That’s not the first time I noticed this oddity in my notes. I also mention needing to resupply both my insect repellent and my post insect bite itch relief cream (diphenhydraminihydrochloridan?). Mosquitoes were my biggest complaint of this Baltic tour.
The next day was a cool day of riding — perhaps the coolest of the trip? — to get to Viljandi. I had time to look around town before getting on another train.
These water towers (?) were a common sight in Estonia:
I met up with Ferda in Tallinn, and we spent a few days exploring another Baltic capital. It was the most touristy city we visited on this trip, but if you’re only going to visit one city in the Baltics, make it Rīga.
You don’t, however, see medieval walls in Rīga.
I do have lots of photos. It’s easy to see why tourists like Tallinn.
After stalking Magellan I was excited to see Adam Johann von Krusenstern’s tomb in Toomkirik (a church) in Tallinn. He was the leader of the first Russian circumnavigation of the earth.
The only museum I visited in Tallinn was Kadriorg Palace, another Russian (Romanov) late-Baroque summer palace.
That might look familiar, but, no, it’s not Rastrelli. It’s Nicola Michetti, another architect we haven’t seen the last of! You can also be forgiven for thinking Rastrelli when you see the opulence of the Main Hall, sometimes referred to as the “Baroque Pearl of the North”.
The museum’s collection included a lot of Russian and German portraits. For me the most exciting item was the porcelain Tlingit man from the 1880s series “Peoples of Russia”. We learned about the Tlingit in Ketchikan and Juneau, and here we are seeing them again in Tallinn!
Our last train ride took us to Narva where we found another mosquito-infested camp.
As in Tallinn I thought Narva’s Town Hall building was a church when I first saw it.
The main attraction in Narva are the forts on either side of the eponymous river, also called Нарва in Russia even though the town on the other side is Ivangorod (Ивангород).
More adventures await.