Riga, Latvia

Riga, Latvia

November 29 and 30, 2009

Day 1

We got to Riga this morning. We walked to the bus station from the hotel in Vilnius and had a quick McDonald's breakfast (but they had no breakfast items so Trevor had a cheeseburger and I had a tea) and then off we went on our 4 hour bus ride. It was amazing how uncomfortable more leg space can be when you plan to sleep on the bus. Both busses so far have been very clean, very modern busses. This one had exceptionally big spaces between seats and it felt like you were slipping all the time because there was nowhere to catch yourself. I shouldn't complain, though. How often do you get more leg room than you ask for? The bus driver on this bus was good, too, and got us into town early. From there I made sure we took a cab, but it's ridiculous how expensive the Latvian currency is. It's 2.6 times American dollars! So, things that appear to be cheap (a 0.40 Ls bottle of water) isn't really all that cheap. We got to our hotel (Dodo) after driving through a very rundown old neighborhood and went off to start our exploring. First we walked to the mall near our hotel (5 min walk) that was out of place in the rundown neighborhood. The mall was very much like any nice mall in North America. Once we got our day tram tickets, we were off to the Old Town. It was pretty incredible, but really the first day in the Old Town was spent looking at cool buildings, but not really knowing what they were. It was still fun. In the middle of the Old Town was a beautiful Christmas market and good ol' St. Nick (he's got to make it back to Rovaniemi before we get there, I hope that works for him ;) ). We wandered until we got hungry and found a really cool medieval restaurant to eat at. It was awesome. It was in a basement of a medieval shack where the chairs and tables were solid wood and the walls were cement. The lighting was low and the waitresses had on medieval dresses. The menu even had explanations of what time period the food was from and who served it! It was a really cool (but expensive) experience. The drink I had was pretty cool too. It was apple juice with honey and mint leaves. Very interesting flavor. At this point it was getting dark and after a little more walking around we decided to head back to the hotel. Great day!

Day 2

We had a slow start to our morning, but once we got up we headed back to the Old Town with more of a purpose. We had found a map with points of interest for the Old Town and we planned to see all those places now knowing what they were. So once again we wandered around the Old Town (though I could really do that all day any day) and this time learned some interesting facts. This time, to stir things up, there was a protest going on because apparently they were going to tax motorcyclists, so there were a bunch of bikers and a bunch of regular and military police all over one edge of the Old Town. It was quite intimidating! It was a rather quite protest, but there were plenty of people there. After taking some pictures we headed to a park next to the Old Town with a canal and bridge. The bridge is called the Bridge of Love because married couples come and put locks on there with their names and date of marriage. It was neat. Then it was off to eat. We were in search of a place to eat called Lido. Once we found it (in the opposite direction than I thought it was) it was really cool. It was kind of an amusement park. It was all decorated in Christmas stuff. We took pictures near the really awesome giant Christmas tree and then went to eat in this cafeteria style establishment where food was much cheaper than the night before! After our lovely meal we decided to head to the skating rink and go skating. It was so much fun! I haven't skated in years! It was a very slow start for me (and it didn't speed up much by the end) but it was a ton of fun. The crazy thing is that the rink was open air, but it was definitely not cold enough for an open air rink. There was no snow or ice (or any evidence of either)anywhere in Riga. It was awesome. The temperature was great for skating! Trevor skated like crazy, so he was pretty sore after. We decided to head back to our hotel to get ready for the bus ride the next day. It was a really good day!