Riga

Day 14 – 23:49 – 08/06/2010 – Riga, Latvia

So we’ve concluded the first 2 weeks of the holiday, 13 weeks to go. It’s been an incredible journey so far, we’ve seen lots of places, even more churches, and met lots of weird and wonderful people!

So today was our first full day in Riga. The weather wasn’t great today – it didn’t rain much at all but was generally grey and quite chilly compared to how warm it was yesterday.

We lounged about a bit in the morning, the breakfast being a vast improvement on the one in Vilnius, although I didn’t appreciate the weird look I got when I asked for milk with my tea! I’m English, it’s perfectly normal!! We then headed out at about 11am to see the sights of old town.

It feels smaller than Vilnius, partly because of our location actually being in old town here – which is great. We saw lots of monuments, including the freedom monument which was nice, a fair few churches including the main Lutheran cathedral which we went up the tower of for sights of Riga and also saw lots of interesting buildings, some even from the medieval ages – impressive for a city which was destroyed in the war (sounds a bit familiar!)

In the evening we went to a particularly strange restaurant – a garlic restaurant where everything (including the beer which had a skewer in it with garlic on it) had garlic on the menu. We had practically a clove each with our tea. I didn’t appreciate it with the beer but it was nice enough with the meal.

After we ate we went to a “Rock bar” which was next to our hotel for a drink, a round being about £3, slightly more expensive than Vilnius but still cheaper than the UK. The beer was nice but the music wasn’t very rock!

Tomorrow we are hoping for better weather (it’s forecasted) as well as planning to see more of the town and maybe a museum!