Riga - by Alice

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And so after a very long and interrupted nights train journey (border control at 3am where we had to take all our bags through individually) we arrived in Latvia at 11. We had met a group of students studying at an international school in St Petersburg on the coach who were going for a short trip to Latvia for a couple of days - we overheard that they were staying in a youth hostel and then realised that they were probably going to the same one (about a 2minute walk from the bus station and really near the happenings of the city centre). As there were about 10 of them we thought that if they got to the youth hostel first there really wasn't much hope for us to get beds there so when we got off the bus we marched off in the hope that we could get there before them (assuming they hadn't already booked!). Half an hour later we were still wandering around before realising that we had gone in the completely wrong direction - obviously our many Duke of Edinburgh expeditions had taught us absolutely nothing about map reading! Eventually we found the hostel and managed to get 4 beds (Mim in a 6-bed dorm on the top floor, Me in a 12-bed dorm and Lilly and James managed to get a private apartment with washing machine, kitchen and toilet for the practically the same price! :O) and we think that the students must have been turned down as we didn't see them again.

As soon as we arrived we decided to have a nap but James, who was feeling very restless, managed to eventually persuade lilly to go for a walk with him so they went off while Mim and I slept. After wandering around for a bit they found a souvenir shop and spent a long time talking to the Australian owner about the best things to do and where to go and he also let them try the national drink, Balsam, which Mim and I didn't try but apparantly was very bitter and a bit like Marmite..? That evening we went to the bar at the youth hostel for a good old game of cards and a game of chess (which i lost miserably at against lilly but what do you expect? She is, after all, a genius! haha!) and later, on the advice of the shop keeper, to a bar called the cuba cafe. We were there for about an hour before deciding that we could probably find something a bit more lively somewhere else and so spent the next hour wandering around the town going into one empty bar after the other (and spending a lot of time on the floor - neither time my fault I might add! :D) before calling it a night deciding that MacDonalds was a much safer bet.

That day we had met a guy called James and he runs a kind of programme I guess where he offers free city tours to tourists in order to make sure that they see the city from a locals perspective (he was English but had lived in Latvia a long time and spoke Polish). He took us around the city showing us the sights that we would otherwise have missed such as a memorial put up for all the Latvians who helped the Jews run away when the Nazis invaded situated on the site of a synogogue that was burnt to the ground with 300 Jews trapped inside. We also went to a flea market selling absolutely every useless item you could think of (including odd shoes, unexploded grenades and apparantly you could even buy the tables/planks of wood that the items were being sold on if you felt like it) where Mim bought a bracelet. Riga has a group of buildings next to the train station - massive buildings and they are built out of old Zepplin parts and house the biggest covered market in the Baltics (i think) and we were taken inside and given some garlic cheese to try. It was so big inside - they have a whole building just for vegetables another for meat etc. Half-way through the tour James (our tour guide) took us to a chocolate shop/cafe and we indulged ourselves in a truffle and a cup of hot melted chocolate each! Twas so yummy! :D:D:D

After the tour we went to the ballet to book some tickets but realised that we didn't have enough money. We went to the ATM machine and my card was swallowed by the machine which was interesting... luckily we have many a back up so all is well but was a bit scary at the time. And for all the worrying parents out there don't fret - a new card has already been sent to my house and is at this moment in time (hopefully) on the way to Germany where we will once again be reunited! Anyway...while I was panicking and trying to sort out this card business Lilly Mim and James were having very in depth and detailed discussions with James the tour guide who is, it must be mentioned, slightly hippyish in his views which gave Mim a lot to debate about with him. That evening we had been told (by James the tour guide) that a good place to go was a club called the Space Garage which is on the top floor of an old Soviet building and in our booklet thingys on Riga it said not to get there too much before 12. At 11:15 after Lilly and Mim had very long naps and felt slightly out of it still we left on a hunt for the club. When we arrived we went up to the top floor and at first thought that it was closed still before eventually venturing up and discovering that some sort of low budget film was being shown. However, the film was really quite odd and featured ventriloquist dummies and mannequins and therefore I had a mild fit and had to wait outside (ok well it was a pretty major fit if im honest which is slightly embarrassing given my age!) while the others watched as much of it as they could stand before coming outside again. After discovering that the club was in fact an over 21's club we decided to walk to the other end of the city where there was another club which had been recommended to us (some sort of artsy alternative thing) but that failed too as you had to pay for entry which we weren't willing to do on our minimal budget. In the end we decided to go back to the Cuba Cafe and spent the rest of the night dancing and studying everyone else's dancing before getting our faces groped on the way out by a drunk Latvian!

We didn't get up particularly early the next day (James especially) as everyone was slightly knackered from the previous nights antics but when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed we decided to go and do the normal tour around the city ourselves and see the bits which James hadn't shown us. This included the Laima clock (please note, my dear friend of this name, the epic picture which we took in front of it especially for you! Be proud! :D), the Museum of Occupation, and the cats on the building. The story behind these cats is that there was a Guild made up of Germans and a very rich Latvian man wanted to join but he was not allowed to and therefore he built a massive building of his own right in front of the Germans building destroying their view. He also put 2 cats on the top of the towers on his mansion house thing with their bums sticking up in the air by way of offending them. After this they then let him into the Guild so he turned the cats around so that they were facing the building. Very waffly and slightly incomprehensible writing im afraid but you get the gist...

The 8th March (yes sorry we are very behind on our blogging!) is a day celebrated in Russia and the Baltic's as Womens Day and all the men are supposed to buy flowers for all the women that they know and so naturally we had warned James that if he didn't get us flowers there would be serious consequences... Even so, when he turned up for breakfast with a flower and a bar of chocolate for us we were pleasantly surprised and very impressed that he remembered. One flaw with the gift was that it sparked a very heated discussion between Lilly and Mim about whether the flower was made of real feathers or synthetic feathers which I found very entertaining! Haha! Anyway...that afternoon we went to the ballet at Riga's Opera House as we had managed to blag standing spots for 2.5GBP each! :D We saw Swan Lake and, although we had really wanted to see a Russian ballet originally it was definitely worth it (even though we did have to stand for an hour and a half). Not much happened the rest of the day except for packing, eating and an early night and the next morning, at 10:40, we got the coach from Riga to Warsaw.

Oooo be impressed - my first full entry! haha! xxx

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Photos

failing at staying upright...
the sad thing is they were completely sober at the time!

science academy
a soviet building known as stalin's birthday cake

a wooden church
it was burnt down and rebuilt 3 times!

the old kgb headquarters
apparently the basements were converted into torture chambers during the soviet rule. under the nazis it was used by the ss.

our homemade cocktails
l-r gin with lemon and lime, whisky and coke and whisky and apple. grand cost of 1L bottles of all 3? 5 pounds :)

eating yummy dinner
lilly looking out of it...

Comments

[Caroline]

Impressed
I AM impressed! Was wondering when Alice might get around to writing something..... All the I's and me's seemed to be in the right places AND you have not only heard of crenallations but could spell them. Do I sound patronising? :-) xxxx

[Laima]

YAY
Reading your blog has never been so much fun! haha. I absolutely LOVE the pic by my clock!!! tis awesome thankyou =) =) =) and i'm glad you found that padlocked bridge too. I need to have a tourist trip to Latvia....half the monuments are new to me! Sounds like you had a brill time there, I feel very proud :D Plus the kitchen where you stayed looked uncannily like my relatives flat in Riga! Anywho, must be off. Lots of love x x x x