After my excursions on my nature and birding tour with Marko Poolamets and my trip to the Applied Arts Fair in Riga, I stayed in Pärnu for the next couple of weeks. While that meant a lot of studio time, it also meant a lot of long walks exploring everything Pärnu has to offer - which is a lot!
On the touristic side, Pärnu’s city symbol is the elephant, and there are concrete elephants strewn throughout the parks and roundabouts, and a large elephant slide is in the sea. There is a quaint Old Town, filled with souvenir stores, fashion shops, and restaurants. My favorite restaurant is a little vegan cafe called Liana Kohvik, but there are a lot of other nice options! There are also multiple malls, where you can get groceries, high end clothing, restaurant meals, and so forth. There are quite a few retailers outside of Old Town, including fabric stores, outlets, and secondhand and vintage shops.
There’s also a lot of beautiful nature! My most scenic walk is is an approximately 5 mile loop through parks and residential neighborhoods down to the protected meadow, out to the beach, along the beach until it ends at the jetty, and then back up and through a park with a sculpture walk. There is always some wildlife to enjoy on that walk, including frogs, birds, and insects. I also really like walking along and across the river.
After almost three weeks and while doing a deep dive online, I discovered an artists’ guild that I hadn’t yet found in Old Town, and I was so confused - but when I went to it, I discovered why: they’ve closed off the whole street for construction for the whole month! With determination, I found an alternate route through back alleys and was pleased I did - it’s got a lot of great artists. There are other arts organizations here as well including the City Gallery and Artists’ House, and the Museum of New Art.
You can click into any of these cropped thumbnails to see the whole, larger images! They’re a mishmash of everything I mentioned above and some extras, like my favorite tree and the cat who demanded a lot of pets while I was eating vegan sushi.
