Greetings! My name is Jack Noah Rees and I’m a teacher and travel writer from a small corner of the Welsh countryside and this is my blog; yes, they do still exist. The purpose of Hit The Road Jack is to narrate my travels to places far-flung as I attempt to road trip and backpack around every sovereign state on earth. If that sounds mildly of interest to you, click here to find out why I’m undertaking this unlikely quest…
We woke up to a distinctly grimmer day in Riga, the late-Autumn weather having finally caught up with us. Our first stop was the colossal Riga Central Market, Europe’s largest and a UNESCO World Heritage site to boot.
Latvia, a country we knew about as well as we knew how to assemble IKEA furniture without instructions, was about to reveal herself in all her glory. Nestled between Estonia and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, Latvia’s landscape is a patchwork of dense forests, winding rivers, and a coastline that somehow includes both pristine sandy beaches and ominously jagged cliffs.
Leaving Narva and the Russian border far behind, we continued the journey southwest towards Tartu, Estonia’s second city. Along the way, Lake Peipus occasionally popped into view, a massive 3,500-square-kilometre expanse of water that once hosted the Battle on the Ice in 1242—a dramatic medieval clash between the Teutonic Knights and Alexander Nevsky's Russian forces.
We arrived in bustling Tallinn on an uncharacteristically sunny day following weeks of forests and frozen lakes in Scandinavia. I should mention early on that Estonia also classifies itself as Scandi, and it is clear from the shape of their Nordic pennants and generally relaxed pace of life that they fit quite nicely in the club.
