Hotel Valdemars Riga

... about the city is uniquely Latvian and they're
not trying to please anyone else. I say this because from my experience
what happened to Prague was that tourism seemed to stiffle the soul of
Czech culture. Walking around that city it was hard for anyone to tell
what was Czech and what they wanted people to think Czech was. Riga has
its modern (aka "New City") parts as every city does... but they've
definitely still held on to a traditional pulse.

... we are! The weather got worse throughout the day and by the time it came to flying to Moscow it was full scale blizzard. The airport was cancelling and delaying loads of flights and at one stage we didnt think we'd be going anywhere. But after one hell of a bumpy take off we were off to moscow.....

... a number of Soviet leaders had left behind a characteristic architecture of residential buildings construction. None of those buildings was exactly a study in creativity, so a human being in residential suburbs, where they had been building them in bunches, for that's how they usually had, needed almost a navigational system of a swallow or a salmon to find the one they were living in. I may imagine that many a soak missed his when it was at its most critical. And yet, there were ...

... I had a much more chilled out day and just ended up wandering around one of the large markets in Riga. One great thing about Europe is the markets they have. You can usually find almost anything there, including pigs heads (yep saw a couple of those) to cow tongues. Didn't see any intestines but I'm sure they were around. After all, where there are cow tongues there is sure to be intestines. Also saw lots of dried fish. They eat a lot of dried fish in this ...

Got out of the bus outside the Stockman centre (as I was to discover, these are a fixture of all the Baltic capitals) and headed over to the bus station to book a ticket the next morning to Lithuania. Was relieved to discover that the woman at the desk spoke good English and was able to get a ticket for around the equivalant of 8 pounds- which is pretty hard to top really. Afterwards I wandered over to the market place, which is based around ...

... stop at nearby smaller palace as well.

Arrived Riga mid-afternoon at Centrum Hotel Monika - upgraded to a corner suite overloooking the park - very nice!

Walked across town to dinner, via nearby streets with amazing Jugenstil architecture, then back via park

... much influence too fast. ----------- December 19 James was leaving today, Elita coming back from Istanbul. I was without energy and only moved later out to go to the embassy and sort out my problem. Got appointed with the doctor for the next morning, contacted travel insurance and went back to eat, finish watching da vinci code (gosh its bad) and sleep. Snow for the first time of the year, at least that brings me a smile! ------------ December 20 I woke up early to go to Marcus ...

... down point was she smoked and her friend was a b!tch trying to scupper Si's chances (which would have been minimal if I tried :o) ) to pull her. This girl was such a 9 and 1/2 out of 10. Sooooooooo FIT! Anyway, I digress...............so queuing for a while to get in about midnight/1am and when we got in there it was a superclub. It was rather quiet tho - as if they were trying make the place look busier for the crowds outside. Anyway, 1 room was pretty dancy and we spent ...

... the 16th century. Very interesting and good to look at. You could go in most of the buildings and see what their living conditions were like. Very cramped around the stove with tiny beds. Most of the rooms in later houses seemed to double up for various things, ending up as bedrooms at night. The equipment and furnishing were interesting too. Most had some sort of spinning or cloth making devise in them. All had plenty of cooking ...

... Unfortunately I feel a little distressed about writing about those "hours". A traditional Bagna involves heating a room to scorching heat and "beating" one another with branches from a ***** tree. Yes it did take us a while to get comfortable with the situation, but a room with beers, thirteen men in undersized white towels and a stunning Latvian guide I will leave that for the imagination. ;-) Wishing Bruce and Michelle, the very best for their wedding day. 26th February 2005.