Latvia - Riga

Lunch is quite late-ish and in the restaurant of the Palace - so a very nice setting. The dessert included a flaming marshmallow with strawberry something. The main course was fish.

The tour round the palace starts about twenty minutes before it closes (at 6.00) - so we have a quick whizz around a jewel of the Baltic. The rooms are very nice, some attractive decoration and plenty of tiled stoves tucked away in the corner of each room. The staff follows the group round closing the rooms as we go.

Departure from Pilsrundale is about 6.45 and its only an hour to the hotel in Riga - a sensible time for once.

An evening stroll round Riga

After settling in we decide to have a pre-city-tour tour, departing at about 9.00pm as it is still quite bright, but before going out we visit the top floor of the hotel for panoramic views of the city, then decide to leave the cameras behind and just appreciate the city in the evening light.

Panorama of Riga

We start by walking into town and past Livu Laukums, pausing briefly to watch some of the activity at the three or four beer tents that are scattered around the square. Later on this will become particularly active as the entertainment starts up and the youth come out to play.

We decide to follow the "Old Town Walk" that was in a map leaflet that was picked up at the hotel, starting at "Streinieku Laukums" (City Council Square), having made a short diversion to the river and part way across the bridge, hoping for an interesting city view - but not getting one, despite what the Lonely Planet Guidebook says.

The tour takes us past:

The House of the Blackheads - reconstructed following destruction during WWII.
St Peters Church - Dominant landmark of Riga with tower that you can go up during the day (a job for tomorrow!).
The convent - we didn't find the alleged shopping complex here.
Great guild and small guild - a couple of buildings.
Dome Cathedral - a cathedral, with a dome.
Off the walk now as we pass the three brothers - Three medieval dwellings.
Riga castle - didn't really see this, we think.
Jacob's barracks - the longest running building in Riga, restored to their original glory.

I remark to Val, tactfully as usual, that the vast majority of the girls in this city are remarkably attractive, fashionably dressed and extremely shapely whereas the lads seem to be scruffy, loud-mouthed yobs. The reason is revealed tomorrow by the guide when she says that, in Riga, for every 160 girls there are 100 men - no wonder the women compete by looking their best and the men don't.

Back to the hotel for about 10.45pm, have a beer and wish we'd taken the cameras out with us. By the time we'd had a drink and caught up with the day's activities in the diary we get to bed about 1.00am

The real city tour

A little overcast as the alarm goes off at 7.15am, but by the time we've got up, showered and had breakfast it has brightened up a bit.

The tour begins with a session on the bus around the outer parts of the town focussing where possible on the Art Nouveau buildings:

Alberta Iela: A street with lots of building designed by Mikhael Eisenstein with grand art nouveau facades.
Around the streets of the Northern part of the town
Elizabetes Ieja: Especially number 10a for another building by Eisenstein. ("On your right, at number 10a is..." - it was bad enough swinging round without trying to look for house numbers, too)
Past a fountain that cost enormous sums of money (they were robbed!)
Past the Opera House to ...
...Freedom Monument: Inscription reads "To the fatherland and freedom"

From here we are now on foot and about 300m from the hotel.

The sun is blazing down from a clear blue sky as we retrace some of the steps we made last night through the old town. The first stop is the Convent where we do find the alleged shopping complex - and its quite nice, too, with a couple of narrow street and arty (souvenir) shops plus a couple of coffee shops - it's tea break time, but we don't indulge at the expense of looking around.

Tea break over and we pass St Peters Church, House of Blackheads, Dome Cathedral (no time to go in), three brothers (isn't all this a bit familiar) up to the barracks via the Swedish gate where there is a girl playing the native instrument - a Kokle.

I should point out that between all of these sights are some wonderful little streets with very attractive buildings - either with architecturally attractive facades or facades that have been colourfully painted (sometimes with a mural) - like this picture.

The trail takes us passed the House of the Black Cats - a merchant, not admitted to the guild erected two cats on his roof, tails erect and rears pointing towards the guilds in defiance. Eventually they admitted him after he agreed to turn the cats around.

We return to our starting point for the end of the tour and lunchtime - possibly no coincidence that there is a MacDonalds nearby. Some use it, some don't, some go back to the hotel (like us!).

Our room is quite a few floors up (14th floor) and we have a sandwich looking out over Riga (a room with a view for a change). The view gradually changes from blue sky see for miles, to grey sky see lightning, to black sky see for less than a mile, to torrential rain. It rained A LOT.

At about 2.15 the rain had abated a little so we venture out to complete our tour of Riga.

It's time to write postcards so the post office seems like a good idea, and we know of a good map shop nearby and on the route so we'll go there, too. The map shop was easy, the post office less so mainly due to a misunderstanding of a non-English speaking local who gave us directions. By now the rain had started again, but we persevered as we found our way from the PO to St Peters to go up the tower.

Windy and rainy so we didn't spend as much time up there as we'd hoped, but the views over the town were very nice. On coming down we were not hounded by the postcard sellers who followed us about this morning, which was a pity because we wanted to buy some cheap postcards to send.

View from the tower

Number 10b Elizabetes Ieja

Other places we went to this time not previously covered was the English Church, a better look at the expensive fountain, and a closer look at 10b Elizabetes Ieja. We were too wet to carry on so went back to the hotel to dry out.

Later, we chose MacDonalds for tea, then on to a department store, passing a shop that sold cheap cards - perfect. The rain continues - not so perfect.

Back to the hotel, it is 11.30pm, STILL RAINING, and we're writing postcards to post tomorrow.

Riga to Tallin via some Castles

7.00am call for 8.30 departure.

My intention was to capture a couple more photos that I missed yesterday in the rain, but today's rain thwarts me, too.

The first stop on the trip is in the Livonian Switzerland where, for those members of the tour who were listening, there is an optional excursion to the Castles of Sigulda and Turaida. Most people heard that, but those who then switched off missed the bit about that if you didn't go on it you were deposited in this village for two hours. So some of the party were a bit miffed (to say the least) at being asked to get off the bus, to wander round this village (possibly a town) for two hours - especially as it was still raining.

The two castles were quite charming, both were ruins but the walk around the grounds and into the little museums was very nice. There were also some good views up and down the valley particularly from the top of the tower in Turaida.

Group photo at Turaida

We heard the tale, here, of a Romeo and Juliet pair of lovers and how she died to protect her honour. We were shown her grave in the picturesque surroundings and also the cave where they met - sigh!

On the way out we took the opportunity to visit the toilet, which of course we had to pay for but this time we got a receipt! If you've read Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy you'll know why this was quite amusing:

The fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory it is vitally important to get a receipt.

I don't think this quite applies to Latvia.

Lunch was in a little village, in a little restaurant, clearly primed for the arrival of 36 tourists. Nearby was a supermarket where all spare Lats (the local currency) could be exchanged for beer and chocolate.

The border happened next and it and must have been fairly smooth because I made no record of it.

On then into Estonia.