We flew down to Queenstown on Halloween. Choosing to fly down rather than drove down meant we saved time travelling and when you only have 2 weeks in New Zealand it’s helpful to have all the time you can to fit everything in!

The first thing we found was that getting from the airport into Queenstown is very expensive! We didn’t hire a car for a couple of days as we weren’t moving on, however if we did it again we would just start the car hire. It cost $50 set fare from the airport which is around £25, and it’s a 10 minute drive. They’ve recently got Uber which was a bit cheaper but they’re blocked from airport pickup so we needed to walk a couple of roads away. We stayed in the Heritage hotel, which is a bit further out of the town but only 25 min walk to all the central things. Or 20 on the way in, 30 on the way back as it’s up a steep hill! The room was huge and we had 4 beds to choose from, and they gave us a card and some fudge for our honeymoon. There was a big heated pool we could see from our window but we didn’t try it. We were there 2 nights so actually had time to settle in a bit.

The next morning we were booked onto the first Zipline tour so we walked in to the main office. Whilst there we decided to buy a jetboat trip for that afternoon. The gondola (cable car) up the hill didn’t open until 9am so we grabbed a flat white (originally from NZ) and bagel from a nearby cafe. To get up the hill you can either walk the 1 hour Tiki trail up, or get the gondola. If we hadn’t booked the boat trip, we would have bought gondola and luge combo tickets as that works out better value. It was a warm sunny day already so we had amazing views of the mountains surrounding the lake. There’s an observation deck so we looked around, before walking down to the Zipline start. We were doing the 6 line course and the first ziplines started off quite mild in steepness and length. The guides, Laura and Georgia, set us challenges each time such as going upside down, or backwards with our eyes closed. Then we walked down the trail for about 20minutes for the last ziplines. These were much longer and steeper and really fun! During the tour they also talk about sustainability of the forest, and how our money had gone towards conservation activities.

Once we were at the bottom, we went for lunch and a couple of drinks at the pub until it was time for our boat trip. We were trying to learn not to just go in the first place we found, as there’s usually a happy hour or special offer around the corner! The jetboat trip included a shuttle bus service, which took about 15 minutes. We went with the Shotover Jet company, who use high speed jet boats to take you up and down the river, getting a couple of inches away from the canyon walls and doing 360 spins. It was really good fun and the water splashes were refreshing in the heat. There’s a micro brewery next door, with bean bags in the garden and we’d recommend a stop in there for a drink on a sunny day. We had a Japanese driver on the way back, so we had a lengthy chat about our holiday there last year and she gave us some restaurant recommendations for that day. We booked into an Indian on the Waterfront and had a really good meal there.

The next morning we needed to go back up the hill to do the luge; we should have done it the day before and then done the boat in the morning really. But it meant we got to go back up and see the views. We went early as it was going to be a freakish 28 degrees and was a Saturday. The luge was busy, but it moves fast. You race down the hill on a toboggan and they start you off on the slower course so you can get used to it. I’m by no means fast but there were some really slow people going down, they’d come to a stop at one point on a flat and you need gravity and speed to get down… Bobbi and I had to use our feet to get going again and overtake them. Next time we went on the faster route which was a lot more fun! You get a chairlift back to the top each time as well. We had a last go before getting an ice cream. We’d been keeping our eyes out for hokey-pokey since getting to NZ so when we saw it as an ice cream flavour we had to get it. It’s like a honeycomb, traditional in NZ. I also tried the Kiwi Pavlova flavour which was equally nice. It was then time to head back to our hotel, pick up the bags and go to the airport to collect our car.

We used Hertz this time and picked up another Yaris. The drive to Wanaka is under a couple of hours, but you go via an alpine road. Our little car did struggle a bit going up extremely steep bends but the windy way down was fun to drive. We stayed in Te Wanaka Lodge and were greeted by a really friendly young girl who showed us around the communal areas. She gave us a couple of places we could watch the rugby final that night and did make me feel old when she suggested the Lake Bar because the Water Bar had a younger crowd haha! We went straight out for a walk around the lake to Waterfall creek, and to see the ‘Wanaka tree’. Not really sure why it’s so popular as it’s just a photogenic tree growing out of the lake, but as there was a few people taking photos we felt we couldn’t miss out! We’d been so lucky with the weather and it was clear enough to see the tops of mountains. We had dinner at the Trout, with views of the lake and it was really lovely. Then it was time to head next door to the older persons bar to get ready for the rugby. Several pints were consumed, and I’m sure you know how the game went…

The next day we had breakfast in the lodge. Expecting some toast, we were pleasantly surprised to be offered fresh cooked pancakes which were incredible. We also had toast as we felt we needed to sample Vegemite, and the local honey. When we’d asked the girl about her recommendations, she said the hike up Mt Iron was her favourite, as you get 360 views of Wanaka. We walked up for about 45 minutes to the peak and the views were amazing so we took a lot of photos. We walked back down as it was time to drive to Fox glacier which is a few hours away.

There’s a few little stops on the way, such as the Blue Pools which are a 30 min loop walk. They’re really pretty although it was our first encounter with the West Coast sandflies… We were covered in insect repellent but they still loved us, particularly me, so I had to keep moving to try and avoid them. We got attacked again at a waterfall we stopped at, and again at Knights Point which overlooks the sea. I’d suggest wearing long trousers, or growing your leg hair as Bobbi got less bites on his legs than me. We arrived at Fox glacier just in time to check into our motel, and were glad we’d bought some wine and snacks earlier. There’s only a couple of restaurants, which close at 8:30 as it’s still not peak season. And they’re not great. I didn’t even know you could burn a lamb shank but mine must have been cooking for about 3 days. If we went again we would keep going the extra half hour to Franz Josef which had more choice.

Just a 5-10 minute drive from Fox is Lake Matheson, also known as the Mirror Lake. It’s recommended to be there before 9am for the best reflections and it was worth the short walk to. We would have liked to have stayed and done a longer walk, as the mountains reflecting in the lake really are stunning. However we were booked onto the earliest helicopter flight so we had to get going. The skies were cloud free thankfully so the helicopter was on! Firstly we had to jump on the scales, and I didn’t look as we had been away for over a week! It’s to balance the load in the helicopter though as there were 5 of us flying. We took off and within minutes were flying over Franz Josef. It wasn’t as scary as I expected and a really smooth take off. The view out of the window was stunning, all snow and ice and blue sky. The pilot made a landing on the snow so we could get out for photos. I made a snow angel, twice in fact as Bobbi stepped all over my first one before I took a photo. We walked around on the snow but kept getting stuck as our feet sank in it. It was very amusing and I did fall over once as well. After a few minutes we hoarded the helicopter again to fly over Fox glacier and return back.

We’d booked to stay the night in case the weather was too bad to fly, but luckily there is a wildlife centre in the town which is one of the only places you can see a Kiwi bird. We had a backstage tour, which turned out to be just the two of us and the guide who told us all about Kiwis before showing us the hatching centre. They had 2 eggs there incubating, which are taken to them by park rangers as they are a protected species. The eggs  were bigger than we expected, about the size of a coconut. Then we got to see 3 kiwi chicks in their huts. There is a red light on so we could see them, but Kiwis can’t see red so they think they’re just in the dark and they are nocturnal birds. One of them was snuffling around which was very cute to see. Then we went into the main enclosure where there are 2 adult Kiwis. It’s really dark in there so we had to listen out for where the birds were before we could see them. They were really active, walking around and digging for food with their beaks so we watched them for quite a while. In the next room there’s a family of Tuatara who are a large native lizard – well a male one and his 6 wives! The Kiwi centre was amazing and our money helps keep the conservation going so really worthwhile doing, especially the backstage tour to see the babies.

It was then time to do a tour of the Happy Hours available and get dinner! Franz Josef had more choice so it was a better place to stay.

Part 2: Franz Josef – Nelson coming soon!

Our New Zealand adventure began on Monday morning which also happened to be Labour Day. We seem to be good at booking on public holidays… Firstly Diwali and now this! We arranged car hire from Auckland airport with Snap rental which was pretty cheap, including insurance. We picked up our Yaris, although our luggage was just a tad too big so we did drive everywhere with the back seats down! We usually feel quite nervous about driving abroad, following some scary moments in the US but had heard it was a lot easier to drive around NZ.

We had a 2.5 hour drive down to our first stop: Waitomo. It was very picturesque and we stopped off at a couple of viewpoints for some photos. It’s also a dream to drive here… there’s very few cars on the highways and it’s so scenic! Driving on the left helps of course… One recommendation would be to download your Google map offline first as you will likely lose GPS. You’ll also lose radio signal so a downloaded playlist is a must!

Our hotel was quaint, and colonial looking but the owner was very friendly. We headed straight out about 500m down the road to the caves. Gloworm time! We booked a combo ticket because you’re not allowed to take photos on the boat trip, but you can in Ruakiri cave. We met our tour guide and went down into the cave with about 20 other people. The caves are beautiful limestone and the tour guide was fantastic. We learnt loads about the geography, and the gloworms and were excited when we spotted our first one! The boat ride blew us away though. The tour guide pulled us through the caves silently using a system of rope pulleys. You’re in complete darkness except the ceiling and walls are lit up with thousands of blue and green lights! The gloworms use the lights in their tails to attract food; luckily they only need to eat once a month as they’re isn’t a lot of food down there! They create vertical lines similar to webs to catch food, and these are beautiful up close! The trip was fantastic; it’s a small family business and you can see how proud they are of the caves. We headed back to the hotel and went to one of the only restaurants for some food and wine. We were pretty tired after our karaoke night, and night flight so were asleep before 10.

The next morning we headed a little further down the road to Ruakiri cave for the second part of our gloworm trip. Once again we had an enthusiastic and informative guide who took us down a 7 layer spiral to 60m below ground. You do a 1.5 hour walk down there where you see incredible rock formations, and of course more gloworms! You can take as many photos as you like down here so we’ve tried to capture some of the magic. We also got up close to some gloworms and were surprised to see they were about an inch long, much bigger than expected. It was an amazing wedding present and we were in love with NZ already!

Next stop was Lake Taupo which is only 2 hours away. I wanted to take the route past Tongariro National Park though which was 3 hours. I had wanted to do the Tongariro Crossing which is a days hike, but in October it’s still snowy and you need full on mountain gear! So instead we drove past, hoping for a glimpse of Mount Doom (Lord of the Rings reference). We drove down a lane to find it covered in snow and cloud but I was still excited to find it. Once in Taupo we checked in with an extremely friendly reception. We stayed at a Heritage, Reef Resort which had a lake view from the balcony. Fun fact: Lake Taupo is the size of Singapore so we just walked a couple of miles round the edge and then went back to the hotel for a swim in the heated pool. There was also a thermal spa pool which was lovely. We booked dinner at the Vine on our landlady’s recommendation as she said it had a good atmosphere. We were greeted with a handshake from our waitress Barbara who started us off with a glass of honeymoon bubbles whilst we browsed the wine wall for our dinner choice. Bobbi had lamb and I went for chicken on beetroot and goat cheese risotto which was delicious. Then sat by the fireplace with a Toblerone cocktail for dessert before walking home.

The next day we parked in town and walked up to Huka Falls along the river. There were natural thermal pools at the side of the river so I wished we’d taken our swim stuff as it was a lovely day. The walk to the falls was 90 minutes and they’re worth the walk. They look better from the viewpoint round the back which a lot of people missed. Then we walked on to Craters of the Moon (in hindsight we should have driven there later as it would have been on our way) which is an hours loop walk round a lot of craters with geothermal activity. Lots of eggy-smelling steam! They had a new vent which was recently opened which had an even bigger cloud of eggy steam, which was delightful when blown in our faces. It was about a 2 hour walk which I completed with no moaning whatsoever. I’m not sure how to convey sarcasm when writing, so if you didn’t get it- that was very sarcastic. We were in a bit of a rush as we needed to drive to Rotorua in time to be picked up for our Maori experience.

There wasn’t any viewpoints on the drive so we made it in good time to check into our motel. Apparently it had a spa pool so we looked around the room for it. There was a very large window in the bathroom which opened out into a courtyard which was about 3 foot square with two taps in it. Turns out the spa pool was ‘fill your own’ and I started to fill it with hot eggy water. Unfortunately (or not maybe) we didn’t have time to fill and cool it.

The Tamaki Maori experience comes with a hotel pickup so we boarded a minibus for a 5 min ride to the Gathering Place. They show a short video about the history of the Maori people and there was about 150 people there. You’re then divided into coaches, and we had an extremely enthusiastic and entertaining driver. He explained that as a coach we would need to choose a chief…. And as no-one volunteered, and we were sat at the front, Bobbi was made chief! Or Chief Robbie we should say as he misheard and being British, we couldn’t possibly have corrected him. Chief Robbie had the responsibility of leading his tribe (coach) round the village activities, but first he had to do the welcoming ceremony. A Maori tribesman would greet him with protruding eyes and tongue and we weren’t to laugh as that would be considered offensive. Bobbi then had to accept the peace offering of a fern leaf and bump noses with the Chief. As part of the experience, you visit different parts of the Maori village, where the residents spend 5 mins explaining a part of the Maori culture. Chief Robbie volunteered me at one to have a go at a traditional form of dance where the ladies swing round a ball on a rope in a rhythmic way. He then kindly filmed me perform a perfect routine. Or filmed me desecrate the Maori culture with my terribly uncoordinated movements… If you see the video I’ll let you decide. Other stalls included some traditional games, weaving and then Bobbi learnt the Haka with the other men in our tribe which was great. They then take you to see the hanghi ovens where our dinner had been cooking. They cook it in pits and they lifted up the cages of food which had been slowly cooking underground. Whilst they took it away to prepare, we were entertained with a variety of singing and dancing which was really impressive. At dinner we sat with a couple of American ladies who were very enthusiastic about being sat with Chief Robbie and his wife! The food was lamb, chicken, Kumara (NZ sweet potato) and veg and it was really good. There was kiwi pavlova for dessert as well. Fun fact: pavlova was invented in New Zealand! The coach ride home was really fun as the driver was able to greet, and do impressions in 61 different languages. We also sang national anthems for us, America, Canada and Malaysia among others. There was also a rendition of the Wheels on the Bus as we drove around one roundabout several times! It was a really great evening and Chief Robbie was reluctant to let go of his title.

The next morning we headed to the Polynesian Spa for opening at 8:30am. There’s 8 different thermal pools, all outside with views onto a nature reserve. It was another sunny day so we enjoyed trying all the pools in the sun, before going for another eggs Benedict. We then drove to the Lord of the Rings tour, and we were worried we would miss it due to roadworks but they fit us on a later tour as they run every 10 minutes. You board a coach which drives you down the farmland into Hobbiton. If you’ve seen the movies, there’s over 40 hobbit holes and it’s all set up as per the Hobbit movies. They’d taken it all down after the LotR films and had to rebuild it for the Hobbit trilogy. A tour guide takes you round and there’s lots of photo opportunities. We geeked out and took hundreds of all the little details. It was definitely made better with the glorious sunshine! You end the tour at the Green Dragon Inn where you get a cider or beer included in your ticket. There were so many details we loved and will definitely be watching all the film’s when we get home so we can say ‘Remember when we were stood right there’. It was one of the reasons we booked NZ and it exceeded our expectations! I just want to go back and stay the night there. After the tour finished, we had a 2 hour drive back to Auckland to drop the car off and then flew down to Queenstown. This was our first Air NZ flight and it was so easy. We did self bag drop, worried slightly that our bags would end up somewhere else, and boarded the plane. There was loads more leg room than Malaysian Air and it was just a 2 hour flight down to Queenstown to start the second leg of our NZ trip!

I’m hoping to do some blog posts as we travel, partly because we don’t want to forget things and partly as we’ve been asked to keep family updated 😊 I’ll keep it ‘rambling diary’ style for now and then update it with pictures when we get home. I’m writing this whilst on a flight from Auckland to Queenstown, having just spent a few days in the North Island. But before that, we started our honeymoon at Heathrow, in the airport lounge (one of our wedding presents thank you!)

We enjoyed eggs Benedict and a glass (or 5) of prosecco before boarding our Malaysian Air plane. Seemed ok, with a fairly decent in-flight entertainment system however the service and food did let it down. They were quite unfriendly whilst serving breakfast and we probably wouldn’t choose them again.

We arrived in KL International at around 6:30am and proceeded to BK for breakfast as the plane food had been lacking! It gave us time to work out how best to get to the hotel though. It’s about an hour away from the centre so we looked at the train, bus and taxi options. Instead of Uber, they have Grab so we downloaded that as it was cheaper than an airport taxi, however it didn’t allow us to order a car. We then went to the Airport Taxi desk and ordered a budget taxi to our hotel. These are better than the metered taxis available as tolls and tips are included and it’s a set price. It cost us about £20 for the hour journey

I was complaining that the toll road was quite bumpy but it was nothing compared to the roads in the centre. They are doing lots of building work, including a new monorail line next to our hotel, so a lot of the local scenery was a construction site. We stayed in the Furama Bukit Bintang, a 4 star hotel costing around £30-40pn. Our room wasn’t ready when we arrived (it was only 9am) so we dropped our bags, changed clothes and headed outside. Our first lesson was that a zebra crossing doesn’t mean that cars will stop for you. If anything, they speed up in order to get past before you try and cross! We had several near misses outside the hotel.

There was a shopping mall (one of many) 10 mins walk so we stopped in there for a look around to kill some time waiting for our room. I love to look around foreign supermarkets so we had a good browse, discovering exotic items such as curry flavour Pringles! Ok…. There were more exotic items than this. We walked back to get into our room and it was a really big suite, with bedroom, bathroom and living room. The décor was a bit 90s coffee colours but it was nice and clean. We thought we’d check our Petronas Towers tickets and were glad we did as we were booked on the 6pm tour.

We walked down to another large mall called the Pavilion which was home to a number of recognisable brands, including Marks and Spencer (fancy a transfer Mum?). From there you can walk along a massive concourse (avoiding the dodgy drivers) all the way to the Petronas Towers which are situated in another… you’ve guessed it… Mall! It’s also right by the Aquarium and park. When it was time for our tour, we headed up in the lift with our group to the skybridge, which links the two towers although it’s not actually attached to them, so that it doesn’t break off if the towers move. We then moved up to the highest observation deck for a great view of the city. We’d purposefully booked a time to coincide with sunset, although the clouds did obscure most of it we still got some great photos! Then we went outside to the park to see the fountain/light show. We’d read that it would start at 8 and 9pm but the fountains were already on with rainbow lights. At 8pm the music started and it was a really nice show, although not quite as spectacular as Dubai or the Bellagio.

On our second day it was glorious sunshine when we woke up, at around midday! I put my suncream on as it was 32 degrees and we headed out for the day with the aim of exploring some of KL outside of the malls. As we got across the road the heavens opened (glad I had that suncream on…) and we got soaked to skin! The roads turned to rivers and we ran through to the mall where we had some lunch in the hope that the rain would clear. It didn’t. We ran back through the rain to the hotel and decided to visit the pool instead. It was outside, and had a glass front. The view of the building site wasn’t the most picturesque but we enjoyed a swim until we got kicked out due to the weather. Happy hour started in the hotel bar at 5pm so we had a few cocktails and listened to a guy singing and playing guitar. We were able to successfully order a Grab car and made our way to the Pavilion where we’d seen another happy hour sign. A few cocktails later and it was suddenly 3am and we’d been in a karaoke booth for 3 hours!! We walked home and set our alarms, determined to do some exploring on our last day.

After 2.5 hours sleep we headed down to breakfast and then checked out. The bus stop at Bukit Bintang was about 10 mins away and you could catch the ‘Hop on/off’ bus, or get a bus to Batu Caves which left at 10am or 2pm. It was Diwali on Sunday so we were a bit worried that it would be absolutely packed but for £7 return trip we couldn’t pass it up. It was an open top bus so we had good views of the city and it took about 30 mins to get to Batu. There’s an 18m gold statue, and multicoloured steps all the way up to the cave entrance. It was about 33 degrees, humid but very sunny and it was quite busy with Hindu families making their prayers. We started to go up the steps but I just freaked out a bit at the height and steepness and felt dizzy all of a sudden. I had to go and sit down, and persuade Bobbi to make the trip on his own. He took some amazing photos and had I realised how big and spacious it was up there once you got up the busy steps then I would have pushed myself to do it. Thankfully Bobbi took photos and videos for me to see. The bus then took us back at 12 and that’s all the time you need there really. We’d recommend the 10am rather than the 2pm as the traffic in KL is horrendous from 4pm.

We then walked a couple of streets to see Jalan Alor which is street food market. We hadn’t realised that it was mostly closed until the evening though, so we headed to the Japanese mall: Lot 10 which has a food court and reminded us of last year’s trip. The ramen and Asahi were very good! It was about time to head to the airport for our evening flight and we ordered a Grab again, which ended up being half the price of our taxi there. We boarded our flight and it was such an old plane! We’d booked the back row, thinking it would be easier to recline but there was no leg room at all! There wasn’t any for anyone else either and I think most people were uncomfortable. The food also got worse and evening meal was just in a cardboard box with plastic cutlery! Definitely our worst long haul flight, but doesn’t matter as we ended up in Auckland ready to start our NZ adventure!

So I suppose the first blog post should be our most recent trip – our minimoon to Riga!

One of the most common questions when we told people we were going to Riga was ‘Where?’ It’s the capital city of Latvia, one of the Baltic countries, bordered by Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus and Russia. A small city, with a population of c.650,000. The next most common question was ‘Why?’. Well, we wanted somewhere neither of us had been to before, where we could spend a few nights away for a relatively low amount of money. The Baltics have always been on our list and Riga offered cheap flights with convenient dates/times.

Our first step for any of of our trips is to book flights. We found flights to Riga for less than £50 with Ryanair, although that did mean the dreaded Stansted experience – in our opinion the worst UK airport to fly from; but they do the cheapest flights to obscure destinations. When we travel we always choose flights with the earliest departure time, in this case 6:25am, and the latest return time just to optimise our time in the destination country.

As it was our minimoon we also treated ourselves to the lounge so we could escape from the crowds of hen and stag parties.

The flight was fairly uneventful… ok it wasn’t, but that’s a story for another day… and we arrived at Riga airport. A quick Google search of ‘best way from Riga airport to city centre’ revealed they use an Uber-equivalent called Bolt and that was the quickest/cheapest way. The journey was under 20 minutes and less than £10 so one of our better transfers.

On arrival at our hotel; a 5 star called the Metropole, we were met with an upgrade to an executive suite with a chilled bottle of wine! Tip – write in the hotel notes that it is your honeymoon, you never know what perks you might get. Our budget doesn’t usually stretch to 5 star accommodation but in Riga this cost us around £50pn which was great value especially when it included breakfast.

Day trip to Sigulda

I happen to work with a Latvian guy who gave us several recommendations and one of those was to get the train to Sigulda; a nearby town. It’s known for it’s national park and castles. We headed to the train station and bought return tickets quite easily; just 7 EUR for 2 return tickets for an hours train! When we arrived, it was a short walk to a park area with lots of activities. We decided to try the toboggan run, and get the chairlift back up the hill. We thought the toboggan might be good practise for the luge in NZ later this year.. turns out I’m a scaredy cat (who knew) and went so slowly I actually came to a stop on the hill at one point. Think I need to get braver next time!

We then took a gondola over the valley to start the long walk to look for a castle. The gondola goes every half hour so you just need to plan what time you want to return so you can book on it. It was very quiet though on a weekday so it was quite empty. We could have also hung on a harness above it like the 2 guys in the photo below!

We had a few hours to get to the castle and back so we chose one of the walking trails and got started. We took the trail which went via Gutman’s Cave, which is the widest/highest cave in the Baltics and formed 10,000 years ago. It’s made from sandstone so there were thousands of carvings in it. I attempted to leave our initials rather unsuccessfully with a twig.

We continued along the boardwalk for a few km until we reached the castle. We didn’t have much time to be able to spend there, and had to pay a couple of £ to get into the grounds so that we could take that all important selfie. It’s a recently reconstructed Medieval castle, originally built in 1214. There was time for a look round the grounds and garden before walking all the way back to the gondola, and back to the train station for a beer. We also hadn’t bought any lunch so bought a packet of banana biscuits from a vending machine for much needed energy.

One thing we find strange about the trains in Latvia is that you walk across the tracks to get to the other platform, rather than having a footbridge or subway.

After a quick change we went out for dinner. Our usual thing is to look up restaurants on Trip Advisor and make our decision using that. On this occasion we were just walking around and found somewhere with traditional Latvian cuisine. We tried Latvian grilled cheese, potato pancakes with bacon, and sausages with sauerkraut and potatoes.

We then took a short walk to the Radisson Blu as they had a rooftop bar. Cocktails were quite pricey but we enjoyed great views over Riga.

Riga is a very walkable city as it’s small and compact so we were only about 10-15 min walk back to our hotel.

We were very lucky with the weather as well, considering we had been warned about the amount of rain in June – we enjoyed sunshine and temperatures in the high 20s!

Day trip to Jurmala

The next day we took another train to Jurmala – a 25km stretch of sandy beach. The trainline runs parallel to the coast so we got off at the main station and walked along with the intention of getting the train back a couple of stops down. It was a lovely sunny day so we stopped for a local cider on the promenade. The tide was quite far out, and we could see people in the sea about 20m away who were still only up to their knees so it’s really shallow. We couldn’t miss an opportunity to have a paddle in the Baltic sea, and despite it’s name it was surprisingly warm. As it was 30degrees by this point, we walked in the sea about a mile down the beach before choosing a beach bar to visit. Beers were about £4 a pint, so it’s not as cheap as we expected but cheaper than the city centre. Jurmala is where the locals go in summer so we were the only English people we saw there.

We then took a walk a bit further back from the beach, through a park. There was a van selling bubble waffles, so we had to try one of those. The ice cream was Black Balsam flavour; a local blackcurrant flavoured liqueur and it was delicious. We also walked up a wooden tower, hoping for views of the beach but it was just treetops. We would definitely recommend this beach area on a sunny day; the train only takes about 30mins and was around 5 Euro between us for a return ticket

Back in Riga we decided to go for an Indian for dinner at the Raj as it had great reviews on Trip Advisor. It was really tasty and good value as well. A bottle of Prosecco was less than £10 which was a nice surprise as beers were generally £5 a pint in the city. We also found a Happy Hour at a nearby bar… finding Happy Hours is kind of our thing! They did cocktails which had Black Balsam in so we enjoyed a Black Mojito, and a Balsam spritz.

Last day; exploring Riga

On our last day we took a walk up the river to the Andrejsala area. It was only 45 minutes but it was the hottest day yet. It’s where the cruise ships dock and there was a bar which we had been recommended called Aqua Luna. It was on the riverfront and looked a bit upmarket for us but as we’d walked all that way we decided to have a drink. An Aperol spritz and a beer was definitely more than we’d usually pay so we wouldn’t recommend there ourselves; although it was nice to sit on the river and watch the boats.

We then took a walk to Big Bad Bagels, which was one of the highest rated eateries in Riga. It didn’t disappoint. We enjoyed a fresh, cheap bagel (mozzarella, pesto and roasted veg for me) with a local beer. Next on our recommended list was Black Magic; a small cafe/bar selling cocktails and chocolates made with Black Balsam. If you go downstairs, through a secret door in the bookshelf, you find yourself in a stone cellar which was lovely and cool. They make the chocolates there so you could have a selection of truffles, hot chocolate, or of course a cocktail. Again; this is probably more of a tourist trap so it wasn’t cheap but it had a good atmosphere anyway.

We finished our trip with a look around the large market which is in some old war hangars near the river, and then our last supper was at Easy Beer. Here they give you a card which you use in one of several beer taps to pour your own drinks. You just poured however much you wanted and you could see the price going down on your card. It gave Bobbi the opportunity to try some more local beers before heading to the airport whereas I stuck to my newfound favourite local cider. The food was pretty good too and they had Happy Hour as well which made it better value for money.

Overall, Riga is a lovely city to visit. Because its so small, we would recommend one or both of our day trips, as you can see the main sights in a day’s walking. It’s still relatively unspoiled by tourism, and most people we came across could speak enough English. The prices for food and drink were more than we expected, however it may be because they’re on the Euro, and it was no more expensive than home. The architecture is beautiful and we can’t wait to see more of the Baltics one day.

That’s the end of our first travel blog; if you read this far then well done! Our next trip is our honeymoon – Kuala Lumpur, a fortnight in New Zealand, Sydney and Singapore, very exciting!

Love, the Frosts