On the Road to...Arkansas!

In my quest to see something in each of the fifty states, a while back I convinced a friend (who happens to be an artist, as well as Latvian) that we needed to visit Bentonville, Arkansas. Fortunately she agreed, and we quickly planned our trip for the beginning of June. Why did I pick the small city of Bentonville as our destination? Because it is home of the less-than-five-year-old art museum Crystal Bridges, which boasts an impressive collection of American art housed in an interesting new building located on beautiful wooded grounds featuring trails and sculptures. The museum was founded by Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. The Walton Family Foundation has provided a great deal of funding for the museum, which is an independent non-profit organization, while Walmart itself sponsors general public admission -- meaning the museum is free to visit.

My friend L lives in Houston, Texas, and our plans entailed me flying into Dallas while she drove there from Houston. Incredibly fortunately, my flight was on time, my suitcase also arrived, and we were on our way! When I'd left the DC area, the weather had been overcast and gray, but in Dallas I was greeted by blue skies and dense white clouds. There's a saying that everything's bigger in Texas -- and even these clouds looked big!

From the airport we drove north through the eastern side of Oklahoma. The drive lasted approximately 5 1/2 hours, and our way we stopped for a roadside picnic that L had lovingly prepared. 

A well-rounded meal: sandwich, potato salad, mango, tomatoes.

Oklahoma was not the most exciting state to drive through, though the eastern side was not that terrible either (I have heard from people who have driven through the state from West to East or vice versa that such a route is quite dull). The vista was enhanced by a very large man-made body of water called Lake Eufaula, though the terrain was generally quite flat. Thus, arriving into Arkansas was a welcome surprise -- it was hilly and incredibly green.

After checking into our hotel near Bentonville, we drove to the museum with the intention of eating dinner at its restaurant and getting our first glimpse of the collection. Our meal took so long that it was closing time when we were done eating, but we were glad to have visited in the evening, as not only was our dinner memorable, but the museum looked stunning at night.

Photo credit: L.

More posts to follow about our fun trip!

Christmas in Michigan

Maybe I should write about Christmas before another big holiday is upon us! This year my trip to the Midwest was quite short - only three days. I was blessed with good flying weather (left Grand Rapids a few hours before they were hit with some sleet and ice!), and with on-time flights. Flying is a true blessing when it functions smoothly.

As opposed to last year's huge family gathering, this Christmas was smaller and quieter, but also very enjoyable. 

One of the cats keeping watch over the tree.

When my sister and I were young, our most important job to help prepare for Christmas dinner was to make name cards for all of the guests. This year my six-year old nephew, with help from Oma, continued this tradition - with a tasty twist, as each name card was in a plastic baggie with piparkukas!

In addition to celebrating Christmas, we did have time for a few outings, a couple of which I will write about separately. A couple of us even found time to see a movie; if you've not caught "Brooklyn" yet, all three of us highly recommend it! The film has been Oscar-nominated for Best Picture, as well as Best Actress -- Saoirse Ronan did an incredible job acting the part of an Irish immigrant in New York City in 1952.

We also had plenty of time for reading and for playing. My niece loved the floor puzzle I gave her as a gift, but I found it surprisingly difficult to assemble--too many pastelly colors and too many curvy lines.

Although my nephew was excited about his Kristaps Porzinigis jersey he received from Santa (judging from post-Christmas photos chatter, the Porzingis jersey and shirt were the most popular Christmas gifts among Latvian-Americans), when I asked what his favorite gift was, he answered, "The fact that you are here!"

Space Shuttles, Famous Actresses & Bubble Tea: DC Weekends

Some dear Latvian friends were in the DC area on a recent weekend. While Roberts had "Latvian business" to take care of, Liene invited me to play tour guide to her and their three children. Given that the kids are quite young and the forecast called for rain, I chose the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia as our destination. The Center, opened in 2003, is a part of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, and - in my opinion - is more impressive than the museum on the Mall with which most people are familiar. The Udvar-Hazy Center is an enormous building comprised of two hangars which contain an incredible amount of flight-related artifacts, most notably many airplanes, including a Concorde, and the space shuttle Discovery.

Photo credit: Liene

It so happened that the Saturday on which we visited was Family Day, and a variety of tables throughout the center offered activities and information geared towards young visitors. Our visit lasted longer than I had anticipated because the oldest two children had enough to keep them interested for quite a while. Given the weather and time of year, the Center was full of people, but the size of the building makes it seem less crowded than many of the popular museums on the Mall. That being said, as the afternoon progressed at times it did become more difficult to navigate with a baby stroller and keep an eye on the older two boys, although they behaved very well!

Credit: Liene

Other than its location far from the city and the toll road which leads one there, two other slight drawbacks to the Center are paid parking and the on-site restaurant. As at all Smithsonian museums, entrance to the Center is free of charge, but there is a $15 fee for parking in the large lot adjacent to the museum, which - honestly - does not bother me because few other museums in the world are free, and typically one's car contains more than just one person. The only dining option at the Udvar-Hazy Center is a McDonald's, which - other than being horrible fast food - becomes very crowded on weekends. However, due to its wealth of exhibits, the Udvar-Hazy Center is certainly worth a visit! I do think the visitors enjoyed it, as did I, particularly seeing that this was only my second visit.

Credit: Liene

Because I managed to forget my camera at home, liels paldies to Liene for the photographs!

On another Saturday, after sitting behind a Tibetan monk (in his long saffron robe and interestingly wearing a fluorescent orange knit hat on his head) on the Metro and running into a Latvian friend and his mother in the theater's lobby, I met friends at the National Theatre for a performance of Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit." The star, playing the medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati, was Angela Lansbury. She originally starred in the role on Broadway in 2009, and won a Tony for it. Seeing her perform, one would never guess that Lansbury is 89 years old! The entire cast was wonderful, and the play itself entertaining and amusing. 

(From thenationaldc.org)

Afterwards my friends and I ate dinner and drank tea (bubble tea for me, thanks!) at Teasim, which is a DC institution, with three locations in the city, and one in Alexandria, Virginia. If you are playing tourist in Washington, I highly recommend it: the Penn Quarter restaurant on 8th Street NW is conveniently close to the Mall, while the Lafayette Park locations is practically next to the White House. Not only does the restaurant serve all manners of tea, but it has a full menu and their Salty Oat Cookies are legendary.

 

Long Weekend in Charleston, South Carolina

A federal holiday, and a $112 round-trip fare. A city I've never visited, and a travel buddy able to come along. These four factors combined to create a fun and necessary winter excursion to Charleston, South Carolina. It is a beautiful historic city, and fortunately also offered a brief respite from winter weather.

When I told people that I was going to Charleston due to a $112 flight, every single person's reaction was, "Round trip?!" Yes, thanks to the lull in travel in January and February, a number of airlines were having tempting sales, and this fare was found on JetBlue, one of the better (read: more comfortable and customer service oriented) airlines. Travel itself was smooth and without incident, and I wish JetBlue flew to more destinations, as their planes are quite comfortable for us tall folk.

On our first afternoon we wandered the gardens and mini zoo at Magnolia Plantation...

 

I can recommend all of the restaurants at which we ate, which were: Old Village Post House for Sunday brunch; Home Team and Swig & Swine (get the beans and brisket side dish!) for barbeque; Hom for burgers. Sweet treats included Jeni's Ice Cream (amazing - worth price and the wait in line!) and a pecan praline from a shop whose name escapes me.

More photos and info to follow in the next post!

Unexpected Riga Mall Outing & a Night in Kandava, Latvia

In recent years I have said a little prayer to whichever gods are responsible for aviation whenever I head out on a vacation which involves flying. My requests are the following:

1. that my flight be reasonably on time - at least so that I don't miss a connecting flight;
2. that the flight be reasonably smooth, as I greatly dislike turbulence;
3. that there be no crazy people on my flight (ask me about the time my flight to Rejkavik returned to North America so that a man who was either seriously mentally ill or high on drugs could be forcibly removed from the airplane!);
4. that my luggage arrive at the same time I do (ask me about the time I traveled to Peru, and my suitcase went missing for days!).

Nowadays I realize that a plea for decent legroom is ludicrous, so I don't bother with that. However, if at least three of the above requests are granted (okay, okay, two is fine as well, considering it's rather rare to have a crazy person on your plane!), then I consider it to be a smooth and successful flight.

SAS Airbus A-340 (Source: Airlinesanddestinations.com)

We flew SAS, aka Scandinavian Airlines, from Washington Dulles to Copenhagen, with a connecting AirBaltic flight to Riga. Our flight from Dulles left and arrived on time, and our layover in Copenhagen was brief. When we arrived in Riga at 11am, we watched as other passengers picked up their suitcases at the baggage carousel...and then the carousel stopped turning. Upon inquiring at the baggage office, we learned that our suitcases were still in Denmark, and were told that they would most likely be on the afternoon flight and to call around 4pm to find out.

Thus, instead of picking up our rental car and immediately hitting the road as we had planned, we found ourselves hitting the mall after renting the car. Luckily, I had already investigated that Spice would be the perfect place to pick up some groceries and a mobile phone SIM card upon arriving, and in this case it was a rather convenient place to kill several hours. We ate lunch at the LIDO restaurant, providing a good intro to Latvia for B, and re-introduction for me. LIDO is a chain of Latvian restaurants which offer a large selection of decent (although slightly greasy) food, served cafeteria style: you walk around to different stations (meat, fish, salad bar, potatoes, pancakes, juices, desserts), choose whatever you like, then pay at the register and find a table for yourself and your relatively expensive but reasonably tasty Latvian food. If you are ever in Riga, you must eat at a LIDO restaurant at least once!

LIDO restaurant, Spice Mall, Riga. (Source: Travelnews.lv)

A pleasant surprise came as we were investigating SIM card options. B had a simple smart phone he'd purchased before his European vacation last year, and all we needed was a local Latvian SIM card plus a short-term plant that would allow us to text and call. I found the explanations and options confusing at the first store, so we went next door into another one, the nicely named Zelta Zivtina (Little Goldfish), which I recall using when in Latvia for the summer in 2005. There we eventually understood that for only 3,99 Euro we could get a SIM card and unlimited texting and calling within Latvia for one month. Perfect! B couldn't believe how inexpensive it was - the phone plan was one of the few things for which we would pay so little money.

After taking care of that business we drank coffee and tea at Double Coffee, which is another Latvian chain worth investigating. Their cafes offer a full menu of drinks, as well as meals that I enjoyed on at least two occasions. Then we continued our errands by grocery shopping at Rimi.

At 3.30pm I called the airport baggage office and learned that - hallelujah! - our suitcases had arrived from Copenhagen. We drove to the airport to retrieve them, and were finally on our way - and began our Baltic roadtrip by driving to Kandava.

I had chosen this small town as our first stopping point, as it is only an hour+ drive from the airport, and the reviews for the guest house on Booking.com were outstanding. The reviews were right - if you ever need a place to crash in Kurzeme, but not far from Riga, I can highly recommend guesthouse "Pils." The small hotel is located on the main road, but Kandava is a tiny town, so it is quiet. The employees were quite friendly and helpful, the hotel itself clean and comfortable, and the restaurant served delicious food. We greatly enjoyed our dinner there - B had a fish dish, while I loved the shrimp avocado salad and homemade "frikadelu zupa" (a traditional Latvian soup with small pork meatballs and vegetables). The following morning our breakfast (included in the cost of the room) was also delicious: an enormous ham and cheese omelette, with a small side of cucumbers and tomatoes. We would see many more cukes and tomatoes over the next two weeks...

Guesthouse Pils, with old castle powder tower on left, & our rental VW Golf

Content Latvian snails in the garden. We'd spot quite a few more on our trip.

Before dinner we walked around Kandava for a while to investigate our surroundings and try to stave off jetlag. With the seven hour time difference between Washington and Latvia, 6pm in Kandava = 1am in Washington.

These paintings are by students from Kandava's art school.

The town had a lovely park!

A view of town.

A scene you wouldn't see in the States. Not the swing, not the building!

The town's church

Built in 1706.

The castle's old powder tower - missing a few roof tiles.

A mini replica of the castle. Sign in front said not to be played on, though!