Riga

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We arrived in Riga in the late afternoon and it was a perfect afternoon to take a stroll through the old town down past the imposing St Peter's Cathedral through the dome square to the huge Daugava river. We sat out on the dome square and had a beer listening to a live band playing English music.

Riga is different to what I expected. It has quite a modern, western feel to it with a couple of really nice parks with a canal running through the middle of them. Our hotel is right near the pretty Latvian National Opera House and it was a very nice evening to wander around the area.

The next day was a little rainy but didn't stop us from doing a 2 hour walking tour of the old town by a very enthusiastic and talkative local old man. The tour was a remarkable look into the various architecture of Riga, which unlike Tallinn was subject to heavy amounts of destruction from wars over the past century. The House of Blackheads, Three Brothers, the Cat House and the Powder Tower were the highlights. Afterwards we wandered through the central market, a massive food market in old hangars before heading to a couple of great museums.

The Latvian war museum was a huge exhibition of old war weapons and detailed the unfortunate position of Latvia sitting between Russia and Germany and both impeding in their quest for peaceful independence. After what they have been through, you would understand Latvia not trusting anyone!

The museum of occupation of Latvia brilliantly documented the period from 1941 when Latvia had its independence taken away from it during the war, to 1991 when it won back independence. The process of Sovietization was gruesomely described and the museum was certainly not an advertisement of communism.

The next morning we took the elevator up to the top of St Peter's Cathedral to admire the views of the city. Inside the church is pictures of what it looked like after the 1941 bombing of it which made the reconstruction effort more impressive. After that we went into the Dome Cathedral to check out the largest organ in Europe which was unfortunately under restoration and out of action but the cathedral is impressive nevertheless. That was all we had time for in Riga as we set off on the bus for Vilnius.

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