Blogs from Riga, Riga Region, Latvia, Europe - page 20

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Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga January 19th 2008

hello there, return of all this i suppose. i will start by a little spiel about east midlands airport. what can i say about that place? i'll put it joint top with rome ciampano in my list of lamest airports. now, i havent been to skopje yet and from what perry mccoy tells me it sounds lacsidasical, but for now, the triad of notts, derby and leicester join rome at the top of that unfortunate pile. hah, pile, how appropriate. despite that, absolutely beautiful flight. that one definitely tops that particular list anyway. i've always said that flying at night was my favourite thing, but i can probably now change that for flying in the early hours of the morning, sunrise included. just absolutely charming in every way, i wanted to sleep but didnt want to ... read more

Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga December 12th 2007

Flew Ryanair from Bristol to Riga on 12th December 2007, returned on the 17th. Stayed at Hotel Tia; a little out of town, but otherwise decent hotel for the money.... read more
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Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga November 27th 2007

Well, here I am again, my first post on the blog at the age of 24. What happened since my last post…many things, I had a trip to Siauliai, 200 Km West from Vilnius, I went to Riga to Chair and facilitate the CPS there and I had a party weekend in Vilnius. Let’s take them one by one and in order. First of all I had a pretty wild weekend for my b-day combined with the “boys and girls party” of AIESEC Vilnius and the goodbye party for Munkeet, one of AIESEC Vilnius trainee. On Friday night we had a small drinking party at my place with Jonas, Mantas, Andrius and Rytis, after that we went out in one of my favorite pubs “Prie Universiteto” and we had some drinks and danced. Later on ... read more
Boys and girls party
hill of crosses
Siauliai

Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga November 9th 2007

Well, its been a crazy last few days. Not only has the temperature gone down by 2 degrees each time as we move east, the landscape, the people and the language changes dramatically too. After Norway, we flew to Finland, from Bergen through the very efficient Oslo airport and onto Helsinki. Me being quite naïve and expecting pretty much all Scandinavian countries to be the same got a wee bit of a shock in Helsinki. Helsinki is a mixture of the Viennas and Pragues of this world, with a bit of Scandinavian thrown in for good measure. This is my conclusion after spending a sum total of one full day wandering around the city centre. We did the cheap and condensed 3T tram tour of the city which was nice to be able to see a ... read more

Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga October 27th 2007

February 2005 It might seem a very obvious statement, but Riga in February is cold! As a couple who hail from the North East, cold never really featured in the list of things to be worried about….but this was COLD! John sometimes gets carried away with the photo taking opportunities, but this was instant frost bite just taking the hand out of the gloves to snap. Welcome to the Russian front. The hat might look over the top in the pictures, but believe us it wasn’t for decoration. This was our first visit to the Baltics and as you might have read, the other countries have now been visited or at least the capital cities and surrounds. The first impression (other than the Cold), would be that Riga is not as picture book pretty as Tallinn ... read more
House of the Blackheads
Russian Orthodox Cathedral & Reval Hotel Latvija
Daugava River

Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga October 4th 2007

Our whirlwind trip to Riga has come and gone. We arrived in Riga mid-afternoon on Monday, settled into the Grand Palace Hotel and then cruised the cobbled streets of the Old Town and a little beyond the remains of the medieval walls to get our bearings. Riga is a much larger, more cosmopolitan city than Tallinn. Once described as 'the Paris of the East' it is filled with ornate, decorative Art Nouveau architecture, classy boutiques, modern glass shopping centres and poker machines. The latter didn't do much to add to the sophistication of the city but they did remind us of home. The boys were wistful for the quaint, cobblestoned confines of Tallinn's walled town (or maybe for the beer and rugby they enjoyed there) but I liked the bustle of a bigger city. I'm obviously ... read more
Art Nouveau in Riga
The team on tour

Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga October 1st 2007

Hello, hello! Latvia was incredible - though I think I would have to say, more for the quirkiness and the people than anything else. I jumped on a ferry to Latvia from Stockholm and was a bit lost and nervous as I had missed the connection with John (having missed the ferry and having his wallet stolen, his schedule was pushed back a bit) so I was to head on to Latvia (bearing in mind that I had no tour guide or information of any sort) and we would figure out how to meet up there. I had managed to email a few people about couches to stay on, but had only done it a day before leaving, and had no chance to check my email, so was resigned to embarking on another scavenger hunt to ... read more
The cowgirl comes out...
Flying!
Gotta love children stories...

Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga September 16th 2007

Well, let us see.....Riga is very different from Tallin. Not quite as Disneyland pretty, plenty of beautiful art nouveau buildings (lots of them by the famous Russian Mikhail Eisenstein) and its fair share of cobbled windy streets....streets you have to watch where you walk.. They are so pot-holed that you are highly likely to twist your ankle or just plain fall over while you have your eyes and neck stretched to the skies looking at the beautiful buildings!! Although nice things to look at...we did see some seriously dodgy looking people and far more than a few hobos and drunkards.... ..........seriously scarey rough looking Latvians/Russians! At one point we saw a good four or five of the starting to fight, we assumed swearing and cursing (our Latvian and Russian obviously is zero , but they were ... read more
The wedding lock
Jack Daniels Bar
Bar/restaurant called John Lemons

Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga September 16th 2007

Baltische trip, Episode 2. Wel, een beetje laat en misschien wat stom om er nu nog een verslag van uit te brengen. Maar zoals beloofd doe ik het toch. Moge het trouwens niet te veel verwarring brengen, mijn niet-chronologische manier van verhalen vertellen. In Riga checkten Jasmijn en ik in in The Old Town Hostel, op een boogscheut van het oude centrum. De namiddag hebben we het the easy way gedaan en volgden een plannetje met alle toeristische hoogtepunten van de stad. Natuurlijk is dit best in orde want je krijgt ook wel degelijk op een efficiënte manier alles te zien. We kuierden wat rond en zodra we van het pad afweken stuitten we op Bars I Love You (in het Lets krijgen mannelijke woorden een s achteraan). Daar nam Jasmijn een verrukkelijke chocoladetaart (ze wilde ... read more
Art Nouveau
Tram
Zoen!

Europe » Latvia » Riga Region » Riga September 7th 2007

Geo: 56.9465, 24.1048I woke up with a headache - actually, it never stopped after having tea yesterday afternoon. It feels almost like a sinus thing - not good! I can't afford to get sick while I'm traveling!!!!! The plan this morning was to check out Riga's market for breakfast options. If there wasn't anything good, we would return to the hostel and have theirs. Though we did a bit of souvenir shopping, there was nothing overly appealing for breakfast so back to the hostel. The breakfast wasn't too great - but at least they had Nutella! It was time to do some laundry. We knew exactly where we had to go, but then ... Mary Moment #30: Mary thought she had found a closer laundromat. Turns out it was an appliance store - I don't think ... read more
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