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Published: August 30th 2007
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After being woken by the southern lads coming home rather drunk at four in the morning, we next awoke to some repair men coming in to fix the shower.
Fully dressed and eager to go, we set off in the general direction of the museum of occupation. We stumbled across the tourist information and enquired about buses to Siguilda for tomorrow. Right next door was the museum, so in we went.
The museum was like Latvia's history, long and very heavy. We thought that Estonia was a country that had a troubled history; well it appears that Latvia's was worse. We did spend a serious amount of time in there, and definitely left a lot wiser to Soviet and eastern European history.
Having had nothing for breakfast we were rather hungry, so after a quick detour to some shops, we went to the central market. This place was gigantic. There were four or five buildings on a par with plane hangars full of food stalls. There was a full market of just meat stalls, cheese stalls were everywhere and then there were loads of places selling beautiful looking cakes at ridiculously low prices. We bought some and stood
and ate them there.
After eating, we decided to do some sightseeing. We were slightly sidetracked by a shopping center where I purchased a nice top. After that we walked to the freedom monument and I was so impressed by it. It was guarded by soldiers and wreaths had been laid at its base. Maybe it was particularly impressive because we'd spent the morning reading about how important Latvian freedom was. During Soviet occupation, people were arrested and deported to the Arctic Circle for ten years, just for laying flowers at the monument.
From the monument, we found the old town and had a good walk around there. It is a lot different from Tallinn in that it is used by locals and not just a tourist area. Visually it isn't as pleasing as Tallinn, but it's livelier and more real and lived in.
After viewing the main river and its many bridges, the weather started to worsen, so we donned our kags and ran for the relative comfort of the hostel.
We showered, changed and put on a wash and then headed out for what was left of the evening.
We saw the film
1408 at the forum cinema over the road from the hostel. It was in English with Latvian and Russian subtitles, quite confusing. The actual film was rather good but very tense which didn't seem to work very well for the people reading the subtitles.
The film finished around eleven, so we intended to head to John lemon bar to get some food. On the way we saw a pub called The Backpackers Pub, a very cute place styled like a traditional English pub. The entrance to the Old Riga hostel was hidden behind a door disguised as a book case inside the pub.
As the name suggests it was full of backpackers, mostly speaking English. The pints were only £1 and shots were less than that. It was a very friendly place and we got talking to the barmaid and a couple of people also sitting at the bar. They were brother and sister also backpacking and were off to Moscow the next day.
After finishing our drinks the four of us set off for the john lemon. The route wasn't exactly direct but we managed to get there all the same; thanks to expert map reading.
Museum of ocupation with a statue
We can't work out what the statue is for They, unfortunately, had stopped serving food as it was after 12. We stayed for a drink anyway and chatted to Alex and Kimberly.
Once goodbyes were said Steph and I went in search of a place described in the guidebook by; "see where bikers go to play... open until 7am for food, drinks and lots of heavy rock". The only problem was that we had a pre-drawn point on the map and a building number but no street name or even the name of the bar!
Once I thought we were roughly in the correct place we looked around and couldn't find anything remotely rock-like. We settled for a bar on the corner as I really needed the loo and it turned out to be what we were looking for, although no rock in sight. We ordered some food; veggie omelette and chicken wings. Both were delicious for 2am!
After eating it was back to the hostel and the shared dorms. This evening we were the dirty stop-outs. Night. Stob x
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