That’s really all I can say about it – I wasn’t quite recovered from my food poisoning, but I was stable at least. I was able to take some Dramamine ahead of time, and made sure to spend what little time I was awake with a ginger candy in my mouth to help double-protect against any possible nausea. I mainly drifted in and out of sleep, thankfully, with quick bouts of staring out the windows at the passing fields.
The bus was comfortable, thankfully – I can’t recall if I mentioned that about the bus from Tallinn to Riga, but they’re from the same company and were quite nice. Lux Comfort, specifically, and I definitely recommend them quite heartily.
Simple and easy – I made it to the bus station, took the bus, slept, got off the bus, and took a cab to my hotel in Vilnius. Left my jacket on the bus, but… c’est la vie. It was an older jacket anyways, that I’d been planning on replacing once I got to Dublin, so… guess I get to keep an eye out for jackets on my adventures, now!
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 13-June-2024 to 15-June-2024
After my adventures on Thursday, I picked up some takeout dinner to eat in the hotel, while packing for my bus ride to Vilnius on Friday.
That, in hindsight, was a mistake.
The chicken wings were okay, the chicken tenders were meh, and the fried cheese balls tasted strangely sweet. I didn’t think much of it, ate my dinner, and finished packing up, and even went for a nice little walk (where I tried out that archery spot!) before heading to bed.
Typing this out, two weeks later, still sends my stomach into knots.
That evening, I didn’t feel so great. I tried to sleep through it, but at some point in the evening I passed the event horizon, and my body started the purge.
I won’t bore you with the details, but I didn’t sleep that night. My body made it clear, on no uncertain terms, that what I’d eaten wasn’t acceptable… and that we were throwing everything out and starting over from scratch.
Around 8am, I called the front desk to request an extension on my room. They couldn’t, since someone was booked for that evening, but they did set me up with a room across the hall instead. They even offered to come and help me carry my bags over! I didn’t take them up on the offer… instead preferring to simply exist in my own aura of devastation, but I did appreciate it none the less.
I updated my bus tickets, and called the hotel I’d be staying at in Vilnius to tell them that I’d be checking in a day later than anticipated. I went back to sleep.
Around 11:00, I was able to mobilize and head downstairs to get some apple juice, coffee, cucumber slices, and a mini croissant. I sipped, and immediately went back to sleep.
My sleep tracker says that I slept 15 hours on Friday. I don’t doubt it.
I went down to the front desk at least once more to get some more juice… this time, they simply gave me the entire carton… along with some crackers and tea to help with the headache. Then I went back to sleep.
Saturday I was… almost feeling better. Not nearly full power, but enough that I was able to get myself to the bus station, onto the bus, and to Vilnius without too much hassle. I realized, a few days later, that I’d left my jacket on the bus… I’d used it as a pillow during the drive, and hadn’t remembered to grab it while disembarking in my fuge state. Thankfully, it didn’t have anything important… but still, a good lesson to be extra careful when travelling under the weather.
In the end, I wouldn’t feel fully normal for another five days, after I’d left Vilnius and arrived in Warsaw. My abs were sore for two or three days, and I had trouble eating much of anything heavy for a fair while.
I survived, though… chalk this one up there with catching COVID in Greenland as some of the dangers of travel.
When I first caught sight of Riga from the bus, I saw the TV tower.
A massive three-legged down, stretching up into the sky from a wooded island in the river, it was a beacon for the city – I don’t know if it’s the tallest building in Riga, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was. The tower’s huge, solid, and visible from pretty much anywhere on the river.
Which clearly meant that I had to go stand near it. I mean… obviously. I’m only human.
On Thursday, I headed out.
I grabbed an electric scooter, pulled up a map on my phone, and made my way to the lovely wooded island where I planned on taking a nice day out of the city. Spend some time in nature, appreciate some trees, touch grass, and get different views of a huge TV tower… you know, the usual adventures.
As I got closer to the tower, though, my intuition started giving me some feedback about that plan.
Specifically, that this area wasn’t a nature preserve… and this was a bit closer to those parks in Portland where people connected to the grid probably shouldn’t go. It wasn’t any one specific thing that was tipping off my subconscious (and conscious) alarms, but the whole general feeling of the place. I pressed on a bit, but after maybe 15min on the island my mind hit a saturation point.
Discretion is the better part of valor, and caution never goes out of style. I turned around, and headed back to the safety of the city.
My scooter died on me a bit of the way into Riga proper. Not quite the old town, but a far bit closer into the city than I was before… and an area that wasn’t triggering any alarm bells in my mind. It was actually a quite interesting portion of the city – only two miles from my hotel, but much more residential of a feel, with small bodega-style shops and quite a few commuters going to and fro.
It was… a little sad, in some spots, seeing all the older buildings and boarded up windows. It seems like I’d found myself in a portion of Riga that wasn’t thriving as well as the city center was, with quite a few pensioners and grandparents shuffling along the sidewalks with their grocery carts. It didn’t feel bad, though, and I appreciated the opportunity to see this side of the city.
As part of seeing that side of the city, I was fortunate enough to witness something I’d really only ever read about, or seen in old TV shows – Babushka’s gossiping from their balconies!
Literally – As I was walking by, I heard the sound of quiet-yelling voices coming from one of the buildings… looked over, and saw a whole gaggle of people (all in their own apartments, of course) leaning out of windows and over balconies, talking what I assumed to be neighborhood gossip. Maybe a dozen over all, ranging from younger ladies with babies to full-on Latvian grandmas. It was fun to see a scene so straight out of a book… and I continued on with a slightly bigger smile on my face than before.
