Around the World in 8000 days: Cesis and Sigulda, Latvia

Welcome to our travel blog. We are Tabitha and Nic. In 2011 we 'retired' in our early 40s and set off to travel the world. We spent our first year in South America and have been lucky enough to make two trips to Antarctica.

Our blog is a record of our travels, thoughts and experiences. It is not a guide book, but we do include some tips and information, so we hope that you may find it useful if you are planning to visit somewhere we have been. Or you may just find it interesting as a bit of armchair travel.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Cesis and Sigulda, Latvia

St John's Church, Town Square, Cesis

Up until Riga, we'd been travelling around on the trains and buses, but now we were going to be putting my driving to the test again, and hiring a car for the rest of the trip. Not only was this the first time that I would be driving since our few months in New Zealand and Australia some eight months previously, it was also the first time I would be driving on the right.

The hire company obviously didn't know this, and presumably figured that a 45 year old woman was a safe bet with a car, as they upgraded us from the little manual that we'd booked, to a somewhat larger automatic. I knew that Latvia requires dipped headlights to be on at all times, so spent the first ten minutes trying to work out how to turn them on! Once we got going, it wasn't too bad, even with having to do a few last minute lane changes in our efforts to find our way out of the city.

Town Square, Cesis

We arrived safely at our next stop, Cesis. We were staying in a nice little place called Hotel Katrina, that had friendly staff, but lousy wifi to the room.

We strolled the few minutes to the main square and stopped for a late lunch in a place called 2 Locals that was right on the square. We ended up eating here a couple of times, as the people were friendly and the food was decent enough.

St John's Church, Cesis

After lunch, we walked all the way across the square to St John's Lutheran Church, which was built in 1284. The outside was simple, but quite attractive. Inside was OK, but we were more fascinated by the artwork than anything else.

There was an interesting dot painting, which seemed very similar in style to the aboriginal artwork we'd seen in Australia, and a rather scary looking cupid.

We really weren't to sure about this cupid - he sort of gave us the creeps! It was amusing also to see a real hallmark of a church that has a regular congregation - there were personal blankets and kneelers dotted around in what were obviously their owners' regular spots. We didn't bother to climb the tower, but you could probably get a nice view if you did.

Cesis

Our plan after this was to visit the castle, but when we tried, we discovered that more of it would be open the next day, so we postponed that and instead just took a wander around town.

There was a nice pond, which had a pair of black swans nesting there. One of them was on egg sitting duty, but the other kept us amused for a time, while it stretched out its wings and preened itself.

Cesis

The town is only small, so even with stopping to say hello to the odd friendly cat, it didn't take too long to walk around, and we soon found ourselves a nice little café to while away some of our spare time.

It was called Allas un Vinetas Kārumlāde, and had excellent little cheap meringues and other other cakes, with interesting national music playing in the background.

Old Cheka building, Cesis

It is easy, when walking around a nice peaceful little town like this, to forget what a turbulent past it may have had. Latvia is not only a country that has been repeatedly occupied by other nations, but as one of those was the Soviet Union, it also suffered some of the excessive behaviours of the communist regime.

As we walked around, we came across a building that used to house the Cheka, the communist secret police, with an inscription that reads "Here people were humiliated and tortured, and their homes, families, freedom and lives were taken away." The dates that it was in use were 1940-41 and 1945-1991. It is an important reminder that this kind of atrocity isn't just something of the distant past; it has happened recently and doubtless could happen again if we allow it to.

Cesis

In the evening, we had dinner in Izsalkusais Janis, the old fire station, which we had seen recommended. The food was excellent. We started by sharing a board of Latvian cheeses as starter, which turned out to be huge, and then had the most colourful main courses, especially Nic's guinea fowl, which came with a bright orange carrot puree, plus red, green, purple and orange veg, and green (basil) and red (berry) sauces around the outside. Importantly, all the tastes went together very well, although we left stuffed with the effects of the cheeses. I would certainly recommend it.

New castle and museum, Cesis

Cesis feels like a lot of it will be done up in due course but that it is still at quite an early stage. We were surprised to see buildings on, and just off, the square where we had lunch being boarded up and no sign existing of work planned. And this was an area very close to the castle. Although increasing the infrastructure to bring in more people may quite change the atmosphere.

New castle and museum, Cesis

The next day, we headed back to the castle. It immediately started to rain, so we dodged that by going first into the newer part, which contained a museum about the castle, its history, and some other cultural things like the origin of the Latvian flag.

Despite having been banned from use during some periods of occupation, it is said to be one of the oldest flags in the world, originating some time around 1279. There are various tales about how it came to be the thin white horizontal stripe between two thick red ones. Two of the most colourful stories are the one about a man taking off his white shirt and dipping it in the blood of a sacrificial ram before using is as a battle standard, and the one about a tribal leader being wounded and wrapped in a white sheet, staining it with his blood.

Old castle, Cesis

Another interesting - if rather sad tale, was that of the siege of the castle by thousands of Ivan the Terrible's Russian forces, in the late 16th century. With only a couple of hundred defenders, plus women and children who were taking refuge, they were clearly outnumbered. They lasted out five days of the siege, until the Russians managed to break down the walls. Rather than submit to being captured, they decided to set light to their gunpowder, and so the 300 or so people in the castle blew themselves up rather than surrender to the besieging Russian forces that had just breached the walls.

Bone carving at the Old castle, Cesis

Once the rain eased, we took a look around the old castle ruins. They look quite attractive, and doubtless make a great backdrop for the many summer events that they seem to have here. It's only €6 to get in, which is good value. We enjoyed looking around the smithy's shop, where they had displays of the jewellery smith, and we spent some time chatting with the guy who was busy at work carving jewellery and artefacts from bone.

Freedom Monument, Cesis

If the sun had been out, then I think that would have made the visit better, but it was still worthwhile. On better days, they have old style activities to try, like archery and stilt walking too.

There is also a garden plot, where they use traditional tools and grow the old forms of vegetables and herbs, which is quite interesting.

Turaida Park Museum, Sigulda

After lunch, we had intended to drive off for more sightseeing but it became clear that the rain was getting heavier, so we went back to the hotel instead. That turned out to be the right decision, as it stayed in deluge mode until well into the evening - stopping just in time for us to go out for dinner!

One of our trips out of Cesis was to the Ligatne area, which I'll post about next time; for now, I'll cover our other trip out, to the town of Sigulda. We had been to Sigulda as a day trip from Riga when we were last in Latvia, and had visited the new castle, which was built as a nineteenth manor house for the Kropotkins.

Turaida Park Museum, Sigulda

We had also been out to the bobsleigh track, which is where the Latvian Olympic team do their training. In the winter, you can go down the proper course, with all 1420m, 16 turns and reaching up to 125km per hour. We did it in May, so were on the summer bob on wheels, which has a slightly shorter course, with only 13 turns and only gets up to around 85km per hour. It was great fun though, so do check it out if you're there.

This time around, we went to the Turaida Museum Park, to see the old castle and other exhibits. The park was quite good value, and enjoyable overall but, as with many places in the Baltics, the old castle is largely rebuilt, rather than original.

Turaida Park Museum, Sigulda

They do at least seem to be using new brick to build up the ruins, which means that you can see what is old and what isn't, and in some ways it is quite nice to see what the original would have looked like, but I am never entirely sure that I like modern rebuilds. I think that I would prefer the ruins to be left as they are, and maybe build a complete replica somewhere nearby.

Turaida Park Museum, Sigulda

I had a quick go at the archery while we were there, which was quite good fun. I think the guy running it was expecting me to be terrible, as he wasn't very enthusiastic to start with, but when I hit the target on the first attempt, he took more interest. Unfortunately his efforts to help me seemed to make me worse, rather than better, and I never really improved beyond that first shot.

There are some interesting exhibits on Livonian history, including some detail in the way that people would have lived their life, and information about some of their trades and crafts. The English translations of the information were of a good standard too.

Art in Turaida Park Museum, Sigulda

The park had lots of modern art sculptures in it, which we walked around some of. Occasionally we would hear a tour guide explaining a bit about them, and it seems that they have meanings in local folklore.

There was a good café on site, and a nice selection of authentic style period jewellery in the gift shop too.

We liked Cesis. It is a nice laid back place, which clearly still has some restoration work to be done, but still has enough to be attractive. It has some decent places to eat, and lots of interesting things to do in the area. Oh, and if you want a tasty pizza, then you can get one at the bar/café in the hotel next to the park with the swans.