24/07/08 - Red sandstone, Livonian castles and lots of sunshine.

Its not as though we slept in too badly this morning, but a mixture of
beautiful hot morning sunshine, blueberry omlette?? (Marea's
creation), and just a general relaxing morning - meant we didn't go
anywhere till about 11 o'clock.

Our first stop, came recommended by the tourist office - was the 9th
century Âraisi Lake Fortress. It is one of 10 lake fortresses that
have been discovered in Latvia and sits on a small island in Lake
Âraisi. Excavated and reconstructed from 1965 to 1979, the island
fortress was made of logs and no nails (that we could see). It was
amazing that the excavation was able to reveal so much about the
building techniques and site plan of the fortress. It was a bit tricky
to walked on the raised fort floor over the uneven logs though. We
did think that it didn't look some much like a fortress, but instead a
cute little island village. But I guess the mere fact that it is
surrounded by water was enough to make it a fortress?

With the sun getting hotter we found another dusty road and headed for
Zvãrtes rock - a large red sandstone rock jutting out over the Amata
river. Apparently, as the story goes - this was a meeting place for
Witches on important days. We walked up the river for aboit an hour,
had a sleep on a sandy beach by more dramatic red sandstone cliffs,
before returning home.

Final stop for the day, and for the Gauja National Park was the
Turaida Castle near the town of Sigulda. This Livonian castle,
founded in 1214, is made of red brick that left us a little confused
the castle ruins appeared alot more modern than something built in the
13 century. We did find out that the top half of the castle's
centre-piece - the tower, was restored in the last century. But the
bottom original 27 metres still has this modern looking red brick that
would have been sourced from the red sandstone in the area. The view
was certainly worth the walk to the top!!