Bus ride to Riga

On the walk to the Tallinn Bus Station from my Airbnb, I saw a sign that had a double meaning in Japanese. I wonder if the proprietors know about it. I also passed through Keskturg (Tallinn’s Central Market) and admired their fresh fruits and chanterelles.

Moe moe I'm not sure why these watermelons surprised me. Chanterelles, €6/kg

The bus station itself looked nice and had an old Soviet era bus parked outside.

You've arrived! Timeless bus

When you walk in and pass the stairs going down to your left, you see a self-service ticket-printing area with four kiosks. As long as you have your ticket number from when you purchased your ticket ahead of time, you can look it up that way and print it out for the bus driver.

"Pilet" sounds close to "billete" in Spanish. Success!

If you go down the steps that you initially passed to get to the ticket kiosks, you’ll see that the WCs cost €0.30 to use, and the lockers are available for €1, €2, or €6 depending on size.

Pay the machine Varying sizes

The bus driver didn’t actually scan the QR code on my ticket: he just checked my passport and the key information printed on the ticket and found my name on a list, which also shows how much you paid for the ticket. I looked over his shoulder and saw that while I paid €3 for my ticket, people who waited till later paid up to €14!

On the bus, you had access to free wifi, an in-seat entertainment system that ran on Android OS, and a power socket per pair of seats. I didn’t question the validity of the licensing of the films since they looked like they might not be originals.

Android-based entertainment system

I didn’t spend much time admiring the view outside the window, which seems like a bit of a shame, but I did catch this field of yellow flowers below a cloudy sky.

Picturesque

I’m glad I took the 4.5-hour bus ride from Tallinn to Riga: what a smooth and pleasant experience for hardly any euros!

Written on July 24, 2016