Rīga - Chapter 2

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Our last day in Riga! We decided to take it easy -- both of us had sore feet, and my headaches and sore throat suggested that I might be getting a cold. Our friend Laurie, who’s done long trips like this before, once mentioned that it’s important to take a low-key day every now and then. So we didn’t set the alarm and didn’t make big plans.

Mid-morning we headed to the Central Market to grab breakfast. This is the largest indoor market that either of us have ever seen -- it was built in a hangar that used to house zeppelins. The first hall is a giant butcher shop, with cuts of meat at stages of preparation that I’d wager most of you don’t see too often -- sides of beef, pig snouts and pig feet, tall stacks of tongues. (Ethical vegetarians, should you find yourselves in Riga, stay away from this hall. I eat meat and I was still kinda grossed out.) The rest of the halls are connected, and the stalls sell all manner of other things -- we saw cases full of pastries, pyramid stacks of chicken eggs, counters with candies and nuts and more kinds of dried fruit than I’ve ever seen (dried kiwi!). We each selected two pastries and ate them. We determined that Graham is much better at selecting tasty pastries. We did what we could in broken Latvian, but most of the women behind the stands were gruff and unsmiling -- a far cry from the Madison market with its apple nerd lady and its guy in the bee hat and its young loud people hawking “HOT! SPICY! CHEESE BREAD!”

Next we wandered back toward Old Town, where we hoped to buy some souvenirs and, when the mood struck us, find pancakes for lunch. We stopped in St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the taller towers in Old Town, and paid a few Lats to climb the spire. Turns out the only way up is in a totally terrifying elevator, but we lived to tell the tale. The view was nice and reminded me why it’s so easy to get lost in Old Town -- the streets are narrow and short, and none of the squares are square. Hungry again, we did our random walk until we found the pancake place I remembered from my previous visit. Let me just say that these blinis did not live up to my memory. We window-shopped a bit more and left Old Town to wander in the shopping district next door. Unfortunately, a surprising number of stores in Riga are closed Sundays, but we did find an amazing chocolateria. Remembering the morning’s pastries, I let Graham select some truffles, and he chose well: grapefruit, Black Balzams (a Latvian liqueur), wild berry, caramel, and sesame. I ordered a small cup of hot chocolate, which was fantastic, and entirely unlike American cocoa. Imagine American fondue, only less wet. Yeah. We sat at a small table near the window, sipping and savoring. Graham turned to me and said, “Erin? I think we found vacation.”

We spent the afternoon writing postcards (parents, if you don’t get them in a week, let us know) and making dinner, with a main course of pelmeni, prepared deliciously by my amazing husband. At the store Graham had also picked up a bottle of kvass, this special Latvian drink that is both delicious and impossible to drink in quantity. It tastes exactly like distilled sweet black bread. It’s nonalcoholic, but it still made me woozy. “You MUST be getting a cold,” Graham told me. Huh. I guess taking it easy was a good idea.

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Comments

[Laurie]

WOO SHOUT-OUT And kombucha does that to me! It makes me feel tipsy every single time, though it's non-alcoholic. I hope you're feeling better, Erin!