Riga - its Bobsleigh time...

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Having booked our flights to Riga back in November our trip East seemed to come around incredibly quickly after our last jaunt to Krakow. The usual silly o'clock start that we have become so used to saw us arriving in Riga without any problems, and a first for boys club - a taxi driver from the airport that didn't want to either rip us off massively or try and kill us with his dodgy driving. Result!

We were booked into the comically named Friendly Fun Franks hostel which proved to be an absolute winner - arranging a couple of great trips for us, having a 24 hour bar and greeting us on arrival with a free beer each! The weather was decidedly on the nippy side the first day in Riga, and this certainly wasn't helped when we decided to head up to the top of the exposed spire of St Peters - the highest church in the city - to enjoy the views. The views from the top were very pleasant, but the brutal wind chill we encountered meant that we didn't exactly enjoy them for all that long!

Our wanderings around the city found us a cocktail bar/restaurant that looked so good that not only did we decide to head back there to have dinner, we also made reservations and stuck to the time - definitely a first for one of our trips abroad! The reservations proved to be well worth sticking to as we all enjoyed a sublime steak washed down by a variety of cocktails.

We managed to squeeze four of us in the back of a taxi (no qualms here from the taxi drivers!) in order to get out to a cool jazz bar that Beige and Shaun had found. Bizarrely, the warm up act was better than the headliner, but we'd managed to get ourselves a table with a view of the stage and enjoyed the show. Squeezing ourselves into another taxi we headed back to the city but all the Indie bars that we had been recommended seemed to have turned into thumping euro-house events by the time we turned up at their doors, so we managed to find ourselves a chilled out little bar that served vanilla vodka and pear cider in order to continue the banter. Here, Shaun “pint pot” Sahdev managed to engage in his own game of watersports much to my displeasure and the general hilarity of all the other guys who were there!

We had booked ourselves onto a bobsledding trip for Sunday afternoon that had the very reasonable leaving time of 1p.m.. However as is usual on our trips this is far too early for everyone - especially Randy - to be ready for and we just about managed to get sorted and dash to a supermarket to pick up some snacks before the trip. The course we would be riding was the Latvian Olympic course and apparently our drivers would be the Latvian National Bobsleigh team, although I'm not sure how true that one is! Whether they were the National team or not they certainly seemed to know what they were doing, and after no safety briefing whatsoever and having a one size fits all helmet plonked on our heads three of us were sat behind the driver in a 4 man bob being pushed off down the track. The speeds we achieved even with the most minimal of push off's was incredible. As we picked up speed in the initial very steep part of the track we seemed to be around the corners before they had even appeared. It was an incredibly exhilarating experience - even if it lasted for just over 45 seconds!

After the incredible rush of heading down in a genuine bob-sleigh, we were offered the chance to head down again, but this time lying face first on a foam and plastic construction that looked like it had been knocked up in some local Latvian shed. We immediately nicknamed it the D&T project due to its high quality construction and Moss and I jumped in to head down the run! The idea was that there was no driver and because the front was made of clear plastic you could see the course perfectly and really experience the run. Having no driver also meant we were pretty much at the whim of the track and we certainly hit some of the corners (especially the first one) pretty hard! It was a very fun experience, noticeably slower than the actual bob-sleigh, but a feeling of extra danger seeing as we had no driver, and the brilliant views of the onrushing track made it a fantastic experience.

That evening we managed to get thrown out of every venue we entered because the staff wanted to go home! Firstly we snared a top meal at an Italian restaurant, then we headed to the Skyline bar, a superb cocktail bar on the 26th Floor of one of the hotels in Riga that has unsurprisingly superb views over the Riga night-scape from its entirely glass walls! We were working our way nicely through the cocktail menu, but once again the place closed on us and we had to be ushered out of the door.

By this time it was 3 a.m. And as usual we went looking for a club to hit on a Sunday night without too much success. After being befriended by a couple of dodgy Latvian strip-club bouncers who desperately tried to convince us that the only establishment open at this time would be theirs we managed to stumble across an open club and dive inside!

Being Sunday night it wasn't exactly the busiest club, but it was serving the drink that we knew from Krakow had to become an institution of Sunday night drinking on our trips - absinthe!! We got the round down us and the banter starting flowing. More doubles and shots followed, and we made the acquaintance of the booziest Latvian in the club, who had been laying down some of the most outrageous moves in Eastern Europe with his Superman impressions!

Once again the lights came on and we were (slightly less politely this time!) asked to leave, so we headed back to the hostel and here the benefits of a 24 hour bar in the hostel became obvious as the party was still in full swing. Shaun did his usual great work for Anglo-anywhere relations by letting the massive group of “ballsy” Irishmen that were in the bar know that they had sh*t accents, but we managed to avoid a kicking and the party rocked on until the Sun had come up, and was only ended when the Hitler-esque night desk attendant went on a massive power trip about what music could be played in the bar and ended up bringing down the curtain on the night by ripping out the ipod and cabling that was supplying the tunes.

Andy didn't think this was quite enough for the night, and for some reason set upon poor Moss, wrestling him and bizarrely claiming him ripped-to-shreds pants as some kind of trophy!

Before flying home we were on another Friendly Fun Franks trip, this time to an old Soviet Bunker that was now a gun-shop and shooting range. We were able to fire a pistol, then a rifle and finally a shotgun. It was an nerve-wracking and exhilarating experience, with none of us all that sure what to expect. We got to grips pretty easily (except Gent!) with the pistol shooting and then the rifle shooting, but firing the shotgun was something else. Shaun was first up each time, and the sound, muzzle flash and power of the first shot he reeled off with the shotgun took us all by surprise! The shotgun was incredibly powerful, with the kickback really hurting your shoulder towards the end of the 8 shots that we took. It was also feeling that really got the testosterone flowing as we squeezed off a shot pumped the shotgun and watched the cartridge fly out onto the floor!

Its fair to say that Riga really exceeded all of our expectations. The city was good fun, but the restaurants and bars that we found, the hostel that we were staying in and most importantly the trips to the Bob-sleigh track and the shooting range meant that this had been an incredible long weekend away.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6E63feNOAYQ

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Photos

Skyline Bar
The views from the 26th floor

Bobsleigh
This is the start of the Olympic track where we went bobsledding with apparently the Latvian national team!

Bobsleigh start
Another group of plucky tourists being sent off down the track!

Friendly Fun Franks
The afterparty on Sunday night back at the hostel.

Soviet Bunker
My target after the round of pistol shooting.