I left Jelgava quite late and it turned out to be quite a nice town. That wasn’t my first impression by any means. I think it was just the street that I was in was a little bit dodgy on Sunday afternoon . There were people just standing around looking bored, one argument that threatened to escalate and some people rushing away from the nearby bus station.
It’s funny what gives you that first impression. In Jelgava, the paving on the bike path was dilapidated, broken and messy. That normally indicates a town without the means to maintain that infrastructure. If I’d gone a couple of blocks further, my opinion may have been different.
Today was a mixed bag : some highway riding which is ugly here, some quiet roads, some forestry roads and then some bike paths into Riga, the capital.
I met an American guy riding in the same direction. He was also sick of the highways, wheatfields and pine forests, and was taking a bus from Riga to the northern Estonian coast. A good move in hindsight.
Lunch was in a pine forest. It smelled wonderfully, it was really green and I could have been anywhere in the world until a car came screaming past leaving a cloud of dust.
Riding into Riga was uneventful thankfully. When I got the river, the whole city unfolded and it looked great. I had a feeling I’d like this place.
As usual, I was able to book an apartment, but this one had a fairly late check in time, so, I rode around a bit, walked around a bit more and had a late lunch around the corner.
