Day 35 – Baltica Festival

We woke up early on Saturday morning and headed out to the bakery. It was closed – set to open at 9. We walked around the town looking for any place that is open and eventually settled for the good old Double Coffee on Pilies. It is open non-stop.

Then Georgia and I went to the youth park, and Dan went home to work. We were the only ones on the playground at 9:30. By 11 people started to fill in and we headed out. In the main part of the park lots of booths and several stages were being set up for the Baltica festival. The man at one of the booths said they are to open at 4pm.

In the afternoon Alicia came with her guest from Poland Basya. Dan got some cake from the bakery. She brought some sheep cheese and huntsman sausages and we had a quick snack together. Basya took a lot of pictures. She understands English and Russian. She has not spoken English for a long time so it was difficult for her to talk to us – especially that we speak to each other in Russian.

Dan's mom called to tell us the happy news. Congratulations to Dan & Diana R. on their brand new baby A.D.R!!!

We walked together back to the park. As we walked we heard the rumblings of thunder and it was overcast but not rainy.

We got some very nice honey and a wooden carving of Baba-Yaga similar to the one Dan’s dad has. Georgia had mixed feelings about the purchase. Another nice booth was where they cut pictures from paper (by folding it and cutting in special ways). Then we walked into a booth where there were really weird pottery animals, some pretty nasty and realistic. The artist Clyaunas looked pretty weird too – with a very big head, hat, and big blue eyes, dressed for the role like a farmer.

We liked the blue crow. Dan went to the bank machine and we waited nearby. Then it got pretty dark and all of the sudden it was like someone pushed the flush button in the toilet – it started raining. Clyaunas let us into his booth while we waited. Dan got some cover under the some building arch. It was really intense. At some moments it was like complete sheet of water. Pretty much everyone around got cover in the booths. We kept pushing up the roof to empty out the water. Georgia took the custody of the camera and sat very quietly in the stroller. It was over in about 10 minutes.

Dan came back, we got the crow, and did a quick walk through. People were coming out of the booths, merchants rolled back the plastic, and most people got straight back to the business of celebrating. It was really great to see how well adapted everyone is to the weather.

We did not see Alicia – turns out they did not stay long at the festival. The rain got them at the cathedral square and they ran inside to get the cover. Alicia got all wet.

We went home to drop off our acquisitions and Dan changed. We went back out to the city to grab some coffee from the Coffee Inn. We also made a quick run into the bathroom desolation café on the way. It was actually very clean and we will probably eat there in the future.

On the way home we got a call from the car rental company that they are in our backyard. Don’t know why they don’t give us more head time – that would save them time. When we got there, the guy said that we got a better car for 120LT (even though they know the deal is the basic car for 100LT and confirmed that on the phone today).

Finished the day at Gusto crepery.