Blogs from Latvia, Europe - page 23

Riga lunchtime - 1.30pm (but I don't eat lunch, so I do not turn into a blimp as Melita suggested) The bus to here left Tartu (Estonia) at 6.45am and the hotel gave me a little lunch/breakfast polystyrene box of sandwiches and a bottle of orange juice - wasn't that nice, as leaving too early for breakfast. There was seriously hardly anyone staying there - and I had both the one breakfast and dinner I had there alone. Anyway having left Estonia some alleged facts about it - Estonia has the worst traffic accident fatality rate in Europe - and the way they hoon around the streets of Parnu I can believe it. Although I do not think I was the subject of a "crime" re loss of money some Brit posted a piece here (now ... read more

We came to Riga after 4-5 hours bus trip and immidiately followed to our hostel. Luckily for us that one was located in city centre and we shouldn't had to carry our luggages so far. I must to write the issue whose I forgot to type - in all Baltic states tourist can pay by card. Terminals are widely spreaded especially in Finland and Estonia, but in Latvia we haven't met any significant troubles with payments by card. Some problems we met afterwards in Lithuania and Poland. Riga as like Tallinn, Gdańsk and Turku had belonged to Hansetaic League. Characteristic feature of old town are merchants tenements. These are carefully trimmed and outer facades are various (reconstitud as they had looked in XVI century - Hansa time), at some of these buildings were set sculptures or ... read more

My Summer School included cultural program, to be accurate - trip to Latvia and Lithuania. My road was extremely complicated and stupid!! We moved from Tallinn to Riga and then to Vilnuis. And after Vilnius I needed to come back to Tallinn again, coz' I had my flight to Kyiv from there, but the most interesting thing is that I had to change the flight in Riga!! So I tested the road 3 times: by car, by bus and by plane :) Based on this experiance, my conclusion is that car is the best choise!! Riga considered to be the third biggest city in the former Soviet Union, after Moskow and Kyiv. And now it is also quite spectacular, monumental and trilling. However, it's not alive. There were not my words, but one of my travel ... read more

Greetings! Since last writing, we've returned home to reality, but we are determined to finish our blog entries ... so here we go. From Chisinau, we caught a cheap flight to the northern Baltic outpost of Riga, Latvia. Riga's reputation as a destination for British stag parties precedes it, so we weren't alarmed when we arrived in Old Town to the sounds of drunken raucousness. Indeed, the mayor has recently threatened to kick stag parties out of town after a string of “urinating on the Riga Freedom Monument” incidents, which, given the history of the country is completely understandable. And, it seems, the local mob has taken advantage of the boisterous drunks so many times that even the US Department of State warns against frequenting certain bars and clubs, which have been reported to coax men ... read more

We flew to Riga from Moscow with Air Baltic on the 8th of June, and once again our hostel mucked up our transfer! Couldn't believe our bad luck that it happened twice! Again tiredness made us jump in a taxi and hoped it was a legitimate company! We got to our hostel about half 11 at night and were soooo hungry. We couldn't find a 24 hour supermarket nearby but walked in the pouring rain to good old Mcdonalds :) Riga is a really small city (especially after we had just arrived from Moscow) and it had a completely different feel from Russia. You can still see some communist influences though. The old town has loads of cute narrow side streets and beautiful buildings :) I found Riga a little expensive for a eastern european country! ... read more