Kategorie: Poland-Baltics bike ride 2016

Today was our day of regeneration with sightseeing in Riga. After a good night in a warm bed at the Gogol Park Hostel in Riga we washed our clothes. At this day we saw the Riga Old Town with the Central Markt, Riga Castle, Riga Dom and much more. Riga is the biggest city in the Baltics and also a hansa city located at the Daugava river. Because Lukas doesn’t bother so much with sightseeing, Jonas went up on the 17th floor of the Latvian Academy of Sciences alone and watched the panorama of Riga. In the evening we planed the tour to Warszawa.
Jonas and Lukas

In the morning we lit up the fire again and warmed us after the rainy night. After warming up we were ready to start and rode some kilometers on the main road A1, then we decided to go back to the coast on smaller roads. But it was the right decision. We found some sandstone outcrops and a beautiful beach. This wasn’t the fastest way, because we had to carry our bicycles down some stairs to the beach and the road turned into a path sometimes. Today our batteries went low and our phones shout off. So we faced some difficulties to find the way. But in the end we got to Riga in the afternoon. But to find the hostel, we booked earlier we needed some electricity for our smartphone. After looking around in Riga for some time we were lucky and found a charger for electric cars in a multi-storey car park. Astonishingly it also charged smartpones. So in the end we found our hostel and it was perfect to have a shower and a bed after a long time on the bike.
Jonas and Lukas

In the night it was raining so the morning was cold and wet. Therefore we decided to get on our bikes quickly. In Häädemeeste, a village at the coast of the Baltic Sea we stoped to buy some things. Unfortunately it started raining again. We made a break in a bus stop and waited. Next was our first bordercrossing by bike, the Estonian-Latvian border between Ikla and Ainazi. In the next town of Salacgriva, with a port, we bought our dinner. Like the days before we had chose out of a variety of local soups we hadn’t really heard of. Luckily we found a nice camping spot near a river after that. Here we lit fire and had our soup. The camping spot was vast compared to the previous ones, but on this day we were alone there.
Jonas and Lukas

The first highlight of the day was the Soomaa National Park. It consits of 4 mires, rivers and woods. As we rode through it, the rivers had high water partly submerging our track. The floods are special for this national park and was spectacular to watch. The next stop was Tori, a village with a nice church and a shop to buy water, desperatly needed by us. After the next 20 km we reached Pärnu, one of the bigger cities in Estonia. It’s located next to the Baltic Sea. We explored the city center with some churches, the central street and the Pärnu river, which released its black waters into the Baltic Sea. We left Pärnu by the road to Latvia. Unfortunately there was no seperate bike lane by the road, which is also a frequently used European Cycle Way. We set up camp right next to to the Baltic Sea, on a dune. We watched the fantastic sunset and swam in the Baltic Sea for the first time on this trip.
Jonas and Lukas

The first half of the day we visited old town of Tallinn. We saw many churches, the wall around the Old Town with some towers and the central square. It was like a throwback to the Middle Ages. In this time Tallinn was a major hansa city. The Old Town was a tourist magnet for people from all nations. At 13pm we left the Old Town and on our way out of Tallinn we saw the „normal“ town with the university and shopping centers. In Kuusalu we bougth our dinner and filled up our water. The reason why we drove to the east was to enjoy the estonian wilderness and the woods. We visited the National Park Lahemaa with its peatlands. Around 18pm we reached Järvi Pärnjärve telkimisala, a small camping spot next to a lake in the middle of the forrest. At this place we weren’t alone but with a group of other tenters. They were doing some kind of asian „sport“ we didn’t know. Fortunately they didn’t attack us and we had a good night.

Distance: 80 km

Jonas and Lukas

At 9am our ferry arrived near Helsinki. After leaving the ship we went by bike to the City Center of Helsinki. Here we parked our bike near Helsinki main station. So we were free to discover the city. First we went to the parliament and the national museum, but without entering the exhabitions. Helsinki’s main square is the Senate Square. Here the Cathedral, the Goverment Place and the House of Estates are located. In the middle of the square is a statue of Alexander II. We also saw the Market Square, the port of Helsinki and St. Jonn’s Church. At 18:00pm we went by Linda Line Express ferry to Tallinn. Unfortunatly in Tallinn it started raining. So we rushed to our campingspot for the night near the beach in the northwest of Tallinn. 
Jonas and Lukas

We woke up around 11am and enjoyed the branch. The ferry has a restaurant, a shop and a bar. We had a 3 bed cabin with a TV and a bathroom. We stayed 29 hours on the ship. Most of the time we spent in our cabin watching SitComs and Olympia or writing this blog. Thanks to our dad we had 3 meals on the ship. 

Jonas and Lukas

After the breakfast we started our adventure by cycling to the closest train station from our home in saxony. We used 5 different trains with 4 changes to get to our destination. Maybe because of the nice weather there were many cyclist out there in the trains and in some trains there was very little room for our bikes. But in the end we arrived in time in the Hansestadt Lübeck. Here we got support by a friend from my university showing us around in the city centre. We started at the „Holstentor“, one of the two remaining gates of Lübeck, built in the 15 th century. The old town of Lübeck is UNESCO world cultural heritage. Exspacaly because of the 7 church towers. We went up on the Jakobi church plattform to look over the city und the region. In the evening we biked to Travemünde, a small town direcly at the Baltic Sea. At 10pm we checked in the the ferry to Helsinki. We were the only pessangers with bicycles on the Finnstar, a ship of the Finnlines company. Around 1am we’re going to bed in our cabins and by 2am we were finally lying down after setting our watches on Helsiki time.

Jonas and Lukas