Another day in Narva, perhaps the hottest day of our trip so far; a real scorcher.
We’d promised Eloïse an immediate visit to the beach today, so we had to make good on that pledge. After an altogether uninspired breakfast at our hotel, we wandered down to the beach via the town hall (virtually the only old building left standing after the town was bombarded into near-oblivion during World War II) and some of the bastions.
The sun was in just the right place for some polarised wide-angle shots of the friendship bridge, spanning the divide between Narva Castle on the Estonian side and Ivangorod Fortress.on the Russian. I then joined Sarah and the children on the beach.
Lukie soon tired and had to go in the sling for forty winks, but Eloïse played for ages in the water. It was busy at the beach, but will probably be even busier at the weekend.
We left the beach and headed for the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, a Russian Orthodox cathedral. The route to the cathedral led us through Soviet-era tenement blocks in various states of dilapidation, their main entrance doors resembling prison cell doors with keypads. Three old ladies with headscarves sat chatting on a bench outside one of these monstrosities, but declined my request for a photo. A pity.
That marked the end of the things we wanted to see in Narva, so we went back to the hotel and drove the twelve or so kilometres to Narva-Jõesuu, a beachside resort that used to be very popular during the days of the tsarist empire. It’s still pretty popular today, judging from the hundreds of blobs of sunburned cellulite stretching as far as the eye could see.
After a fairly light lunch, we made for the beach for Eloïse and Lucas’s second session of sand-frolicking today. I was gobsmacked by the quality of the beach, whose golden sand was about as fine and powdery as you could hope to see this side of a Pacific island. Estonia really does have some fantastic beaches.
Our fun on the beach over, we went back to the car and drove back along the river that separates Estonia from Russia. A Soviet tank stands at the side of the road along this route as a monument of some kind.
Back in Narva, we decided it would be fun to visit a couple of the shopping malls around here. Narva has lots of them, in contrast to other Estonian towns; it must be a Russian thing.
In fact, Narva really is like no other Estonian town we’ve been to. In the other towns we’ve visited on this trip, many, if not all, of the Soviet-era eyesores have been torn down. They hark back to a time that many would rather forget, or at least consign to the dim recesses of their mind.
Here, though, the choice seems to have been made to either keep on using them or simply let them decay. If they were ghastly when they were in active use, you can only imagine what years of neglect have done for their aesthetic value. Registering in one’s perception as strongly as they do, albeit it at the wrong end of the beatific scale, they become as worthy of photographic retention as sights that go more easily on one’s optic nerve.
The malls failed to impress, although they did contain a collection of clutter and tat quite distinct from what we normally see at home, so they were interesting for that, at least.
It was another day of спасибо and Пожалуйста, these being just about the only words of Russian I know (two more than Sarah, at least!), but it’s good fun trying to decipher the Cyrillic on signs and menus.
Dinner was at the surprisingly good Salvadore, where I topped off my delicious main course of lamb with something that called itself Tiramisu, wasn’t quite, but still tasted nice.
Sarah went back to the hotel to bath the children, while I headed out to tank up the car for tomorrow’s journey and pick up our nice, clean laundry.
We drive to Tartu tomorrow, which will be our final destination in Estonia.
This also marks the turning point in our trip. In Narva, we’re at our furthest from home. Each new destination from this point forward will bring us a little bit closer to Amsterdam.