More Great Beer
One thing that we quickly learned in the Baltic States is that they love their beer and they do it well.
Valmiermuiža alus tirgotava
This is a fairly fancy affair as far as beer bars go but there was no pretence. Just good beer and good beer snacks. And a freebie mousse with pickled beetroot and pistachio that the kitchen sent out after I ordered the porter. They've definitely got our vote.
ALEhouse
From the outside the ALEhouse looks like a standard, fairly run of the mill bar but they've a no-filler tap list and an extensive, internationally driven bottle list. Not bad for a bit of SexyStyle with some bread chips and Mikkeller Milk Stout (which is an incredibly good beer).
Folkklub Ala Pagrabs
For a couple of days I continued to insist that we needed to go here. For some reason Nix wasn't keen on going to a place that bills itself as a folk club. Finally I convinced her and, as per usual, I was on the money.
We were there at lunchtime so Nix didn't have to worry about being dragged up onto the stage to do a jig with the band but we did have the pleasure of sitting through a couple of hours of Latvian folk music playing through the speakers. What this place essentially is is a one stop shop for all things Latvian. Twenty all Latvian beer taps, traditional Latvian food and the Latvian folk music.
We put ourselves in the hands of the waitress and worked our way though various decent Latvian beers and went for a hunter's salad with fried livers and a halloumi-like cheese and Latvia's national dish - grey peas with bacon. We finished off with a shot of the potent, herbal Rigan spirit.
We rolled out quite merry, rather full and did a wobbly little jig.
More Good Coffee
This time at MIIT and Zanna.
MIIT - A cool coffeeshop-bike shop that pulls a nice espresso using Lithuanian roasted beans.
Zanna - Another cool coffeeshop in a fairly random residential area of the CBD that pulls an equally good espresso and uses beans roasted in Estonia.
Sigulda and the Ligatne Nature Trail
To escape the city for a while we headed to a sleepy little Latvian town known as Sigulda. Upon stepping out of the train station we thought we'd arrived to the arse end of the world but its beauty soon revealed itself.
The smell of burning wood fires fill the cold, crisp air, locals give you quizzical looks that say what are you doing here and massive mountain dog like pooches sit proudly atop their kennels. And the warm welcome we received from the owner of our guesthouse really got us over the line. She was clearly very excited to be having us as she walked around saying "Australie! Australie!".
The next morning we set off in the direction of the Ligatne Nature Trail. I'd worked out that four buses and about four kilometres of walking should get us there and back. One bus, 15 kilometres of walking and a hitched ride back to Sigulda got us home.
Seeing brown bears, lynx, wild boars and more in semi-natural habitats meant it was worth the effort.
The animal highlight? This massive woolly bastard hopping straight onto both of our laps within a second of squatting down. He's found a highly sought after place on our 'Top 5 Cats of the Trip' list. All of the cats in the region are these big woolly-small dog beasts too. Nice.
