This morning we bid farewell to Riga again and caught the bus to Pärnu, Estonia. This was no ordinary bus - it was a Lux Express bus with first and second class seats. Every seat had TV monitors with movies etc plus wifi, GPS tracker, power sockets for every seat, and complimentary hot drinks etc. We treated ourselves to first class because it wasn't expensive. Second class had two seats together on either side of the aisle, and first class had one seat each side and lots more leg room. All the seats were leather and very comfortable. First class had reclining seats as well. It was a very nice trip for 2 and a half hours. On the way out of Riga we drove through an area of beautiful homes with lake views. Once we left suburbia, the countryside was very flat and we drove through lots of forests. We skirted around the Baltic coastline and past a number of lakes. When we crossed the border from Latvia to Estonia, they still had the original disused passport control points. Crossing the border here, brought feelings of entering another country, which you don't often experience in Europe these days, since the borders are pretty much much invisible now.
I decided to watch a movie during the trip and it was hard to make a choice because all you could do was to select what kind of movie you wanted to see (e.g. Comedy, drama etc). I chose comedy and there were half a dozen movie titles listed but no description of the plot or the cast. I chose one called The Big Year and it turned out to have Steve Martin in it and it was a hilarious idiotic movie about bird watchers (which they call birdies) gallivanting all over the world by various means, trying to see as many bird species as possible, and competing with each other to see the most number of birds! Enjoyable light hearted fun to watch.
We arrived in Pärnu and walked to our hotel, through some lovely streets in the old town, with shops and cafes then past beautiful homes. The hotel itself is a lovely quaint building set attractive gardens. It was built in 1905 and is reported to be one of the most impressive examples of Art Nouveau architecture in the country. Over the years it has been used as a casino, health establishment and a library, before being converted into a hotel.
We went up the steps with our cases and we thought we had come to the wrong entrance because there was a concert about to start in a lovely open foyer with stairs and balconies upstairs, which looked over the foyer. In fact, we had come to the right entrance, and the nice man checked us in within two seconds flat, and the concert started as he helped us up to our room. We heard the first 2 pieces while we were up in our room (because we left the door open and the sound wafted up) and decided to hurry downstairs to listen to the music. We stayed for the rest of the concert. It was a program of Handel, Telemann, Purcell and others, with a harpsichord, cello, viol, violin, two different flutes and recorder and a soprano singer. Different combinations of the instruments were used in the various pieces, with the harpsichord playing in all pieces.
The concert was a wonderful way to begin our time in Pärnu, and it was had a similar feel to the Bush Baroque concerts, that we have been involved with many times. Bush Baroque is the inspiration of good friends of ours in Australia, who host the concerts in their country home and are enjoyed by many people. The concert today had an audience of about 80, most of which were in the foyer and some were upstairs in the balcony. We tried three different spots during the concert and got the best of all aspects.
After the concert we ventured back into town to explore and have some dinner.
