That was the slogan I saw today on a T-shirt bearing the acronym W.I.F.E. Another sign, if any were needed, that we’re in a beach town. Still, I haven’t yet seen a T-shirt glorifying the pastime of excessive drinking, so the area must be better than most.
And it is. I’ve changed my mind about Pärnu. I like it. It’s Saturday today and the town felt as if it had ratcheted down a gear or two. The oppressive humidity broke and the mercury in the thermometer sank a few degrees, resulting in nigh on perfect circumstances for a visit to the beach.
And a fabulous beach it is, too, living up to and surpassing our highest hopes: not too crowded; clean; a gently-receding and therefore shallow shoreline; good toilet facilities; powdery, golden sand; water a comfortable temperature. Who’d have thought a beach this good was lurking along an inlet from the Baltic Sea?
Of course, as I wrote yesterday, to the Estonians, Finns and Swedes, it’s anything but a secret. Outside of those ethnic groups, however, it seems much less well known. I still haven’t heard any other languages here, although many menus are also written in Russian and English, so there’s a clue.
We spent the entire morning on the beach. The children enjoyed themselves no end, both in the water and on the sand. Surprisingly, we eventually left at Eloïse’s behest, as she was getting very tired. Lucas was already fast asleep in the buggy by that point.
After lunch, we walked around town again, this time encountering wide, leafy green boulevards, quietly charming parks and the occasional prestigious mansion.
Café Picadilly provided a terrific cup of coffee and a reasonably good slice of cake, which was just what was needed to plug the post-lunch, pre-dinner gap.
After playing with the children in a nearby park, we went to pick up our laundry, now fresh and clean again. It’s often tricky finding somewhere practical to do laundry when you’re on the road. Hotels offer the service, of course, but you might as well buy new clothes for the prices most of those liberty-taking bastards charge.
Lucas is very close to walking now. He climbs to his feet, unassisted by us or any nearby objects. He then stands for a good twenty seconds or so, teeters on his toes, legs too far apart, before either flopping back onto his bum or diving forward, onto his hands, and crawling away. One day soon, he’s going to put one foot in front of the other and his days of crawling will be behind him.
He’s also developing a better understanding of language and an even more congenial sense of humour. If we ask him for kisses, he now purses his lips and cranes his head in our direction. When we lean forward to kiss him, he responds in kind, kisses in the manner of a goldfish and then giggles with glee.
In the last few days, he’s also taken to babbling in a very consistent-sounding gobbledygook. It’s an incredibly endearing sound when he does it and we’re trying to capture its sound in a short video clip.
Dinner this evening was, as predicted, of very high quality, although not the best meal of the trip so far for me. Dinner in Nida the second evening and in Sigulda the first are still my favourite meals so far.
Breakfast, too, at this hotel, is delicious. I thought the pancakes, in particular, were perfectly cooked, with delicious apricot and bilberry jams to spread on them.
We leave Pärnu tomorrow and head west to Estonia’s largest island, Saaremaa. We’ll be staying in the town of Kuressaare for a couple of nights.
Saaremaa is about the size of Luxembourg, so we’ll see only a small amount of it, but it’s always nice to get out onto an island, as, so often, they’re palpably different to the mainland, not just in terms of the geography, but also socially, giving a distinctly different impression of the country within whose political borders they lie.
To get to Saaremaa, we have to take a ferry from Virtsu on the mainland to the island of Muhu. Muhu is connected, in turn, to Saaremaa by a causeway, so we need only one ferry tomorrow.
We’ve now got the next ten or so nights firmly planned with accommodation already booked. Plotting out the days and weeks ahead, it appears that we will have time to make the anticipated excursion across the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki. I booked our round-trip ferry crossing this evening, plus the last available room in our hotel of choice, so I’m pleased to have secured that leg of the trip.
I hope the weather stays good tomorrow.
.