Soaking up the sights in Jūrmala, Latvia

Zagan has managed to squeeze himself into a corner of a free car park right next to the beach in the posh resort of Jūrmala (N56.97127, E23.77167), because, being a sunny Saturday, the place is a little bit busy.

Zagan on the right, beach access on the left – sweet!

Last night at our parking place by the beach in Klapkalnciems I made a discovery. We were perplexed as to how a car park could charge €14 for a motorhome to stop overnight, sure there was a nice beach and when they are charging no doubt the toilets and showers would be open too, but still it was a lot to ask for a car park. Walking back from the beach with Charlie I spotted grey boxes on the other side of the toilet block, familiar grey boxes, the sort that have electric hook-up in them. We had been so excited to reach the sea and play in the sand that we hadn’t even noticed the small campsite next to us. There were several marked out pitches each with its own bench and fire pit, we didn’t need an excuse and within five minutes Jay had collected enough firewood off the beach to get a decent blaze going.

How did we not spot that?

Man and fire!!

This morning Zagan smelt smoky, it was mainly our clothes but a fantastic smell to wake up to nevertheless. We decided it was time to move on, so after breakfast we headed down the beach for a final farewell walk. It was gone 10am by the time we got back to the car park, a significant time as 10am on a Saturday morning is when the barrier comes down and you have to start paying. So when the guy at the booth asked if we had stopped the night we couldn’t lie (they had CCTV cameras) and coughed up for a day of €10 (the going rate since no hook-up etc was available). We can’t complain, we had two cracking nights there, a fire and managed to empty our loo after we spotted the access point for the cesspit behind the toilet block.

We set course for Jūrmala, via a supermarket as the fridge was looking sadly empty. The first Maxima we were directed to only had one X after its name (these denote how big the store is), and a market going on outside, so parking anywhere near was out of the question. A couple of miles further down the road we found an XX-sized Maxima, and headed in for a shopping spree. Lithuania and Lidl in Poland weren’t great for stocking up on tinned meat ahead of our Scandinavian run – we hear it’s expensive there. Luckily for us, Maxima rose to the challenge albeit with tins showing the animal on them. Handy as we don’t speak the language, but a tad off putting for when it comes to eating it. Zagan’s under-bench storage is now bursting full, so Jay has offered to drink some of the beers to lighten the load – he’s a martyr!

Spot the odd one out!

These three haven’t even made it into the storage bench!

Jūrmala is a posh resort, made up of several small resorts that have one main road running through them all. At either end of this road is a ticket booth where you have to pay €2 for the privilege of entering the town. We have no idea how this is checked, and we drove straight past it by mistake first time around, but Zagan is the proud owner of a pass blu-tacked to his windscreen should anyone wants to check. Parking up we had a spot of lunch before setting off to explore the town.

These guys are parked close by, so I suspect Zagan will be perfectly safe – looking forward to Estonia now!

The main centre is a couple of kilometres away, but we were kept entertained along the route gawping at the fantastic-looking wooden houses. Painted in pastel hues, some are totally run down, some have concrete extensions at the back and some are simply massive, surrounded by security camera adorned high fences and with guard posts at the entrance. Welcome to the playground of the rich, but probably not so famous.

Not all wooden, but this church has joined in the colour theme

When we finally reached the centre of the town it was one long shopping street lined with a mish mash of international brands (Superdry, Baskin Robbins, Vision Express), local stores and little tourist huts selling amber and woolly socks. Signs were in Latvian, Russian and English so at least we had a vague clue where to go.

Loads of doo-er up-ers here right next to expensive houses – might need to brush up on your Russian first though

We wandered along the street watching the people more than anything, we’re pretty sure we spotted some rich Russian oil tycoons and the odd bit of Russian Mafia out shopping with their families. Of course, we had to avoid pointing the camera at them, so I’ll paint a picture for you – stocky middle-aged men with middle-aged spread in tight designer t-shirts and too much gold with a twenty-something orange-coloured wife in tow.

You don’t use a pushchair here, just drive your child around in a remote control BMW

Surely the biggest candyfloss I’ve ever seen

The street ended at the beach but sadly they are all blue flag around here, so Charlie isn’t allowed on. He’s OK though, as he is still recovering from, and dreaming about, the past two days of a million stick throws.

It was breezy on the beach, but no a windbreaker in sight

Humpf – I promise not to mess it up if you let me on

Tomorrow it looks like we’ll be hitting Riga and facing up to the garlic beer and ice cream challenge set down by Adam from Europe by Camper.

Ju x

Bonus Pic –

No, no, no I said OurTour 1