Riga, Latvia
Monday, June 6, 2011
After knocking over quite a lot of Riga's main sights the previous day I had the luxury of taking it a little easier today. With this in mind I was slow to get out of bed this morning. Before doing anything I was lucky enough to get to have a Skype session with Mish before she begins her epic journey back to the UK where I will meet her in a couple of days. After chatting I eventually got around to eating breakfast. While I was working out how to spend my day I noticed Mum was online on Skype so I took the chance to say hello. Dad walked in the door while we were talking to I got to chat with him for a while as well. They both seem to be struggling getting back into the real world after the best part of a month off work themselves. By the time I walked out of the hostel door it was 10:30 and on stepping foot outside I was immediately confronted with a burst of heat. From the hostel I wandered down to the Central Market which is housed in a series of mammoth Zeppelin hangars. This food market is probably one of the most impressive I have seen on my travels but more impressive still were the ridiculously outdated hairdos worn by the saleswomen
. It felt like you were walking around the set of some tacky 1980s movie. Next I made my way to St Peter's Lutheran Church were I intended on catching the lift to the top of the spire. When I got there however I found it to be closed so I moved on to see the most underwhelming Riga Castle. Having worked up an apetite my next stop was at a dumpling house for lunch. Dumplings were traditionally considered peasant food but if that is all I could afford to eat then I would have been a happy enough man. Even today the prices are extremely reasonable as I filled my bowl up with and assortment of scrumptous dumplings with sides for the equivalent of just AUD $2.50. After lunch I went to the Museum of Occupation of Latvia which presented very similar information to that of the War Museum I visited yesterday. None the less I still spent close to three hours there, consolidating my knowledge about the Soviet and Nazi Germany occupation of the Baltic countries. I spent the next hour or so getting lost in the maze of windy cobblestoned streets of the old town before returning to the hostel to relax. Just after 18:00 I went for a run which turned out to be poorly timed as I had to jostle my way between hundreds of workers who filled the sidewalks on their way home from work. After having a shower to freshen up I headed out one last time to the Academy of Science building which boasts impressive views of Riga from its 17th storey observation deck. This building is also known as "Stalin's birthday cake" due to its tiered architechural design. On my way back to the hostel I made a quick stop at the dumpling house for my second helping of this delicious food for the day. I returned to the hostel for the last time just after 21:00 absolutely exhausted but satisfied with a fantastic day.
