riga

cloe and i got to go to riga, latvia for a weekend...fun times:)...a new country for me, though i'm not the first in my family to get there...(being the first in my family to get to a country is rare!)...the flight is under two hours (listed at 1:50 but only takes 1:35) which is great...latvia is a member of the european union, (EU) and is a schengen country...since cloe is french, that means she got to go through a different line at immigration...her line moved REALLY FAST, she didn't even get a stamp in her passport when we entered the country!! i have traveled a fair amount, and should totally be over this, but i still love getting stamps in my passport...as soon as i'm through immigration in any country, i always open my passport to see where they put the stamp, and what it looks like...

since our flight arrived after 2300, and we knew it would be pretty chilly, we opted to book a hotel ahead of time...this worked out well, as they were able to send someone to pick us up at the airport...it's nice to come out of immigration/customs and see someone holding a sign with your name on it...the ride to the hotel was pretty quick, the airport is very conveniently located:)
i'm glad we had the taxi to take us directly to the hotel...w/out the taxi, there is no way we would've found it...sure, we had the address, but that is far from all the information we needed...the guy on duty met us as the taxi pulled up, walked us to the proper door (the building had quite a few businesses) and told us the code we needed to open the door...then we climbed three full flights of stairs (thank goodness for climbing stairs every day in kyiv) and got to the front door of the hotel...the only signage was a single A4 sized sheet of paper with the name of the hotel printed on it, taped to the door...clearly this place doesn't rely on walk in business...the guy showed us our room, and gave us the set of keys...

at that point we realized we needed to exchange money...we were tired, but figured we could try to find an exchange place open, and we were successful...there were 4 or 5 w/in a 5 minute walk of our hotel...woo hoo...i'm usually pretty cautious about such places, (i always prefer to use an ATM card, but since that wasn't an option with this trip, we had to exchange ukrainian grivnas for latvian lats) so we checked out the rates at all the places we could see...which was smart, as the rates varied by quite a bit...living in kyiv, every place that exchanges money has really similar rates, but that isn't the case at all in riga...one place was only half of another, with others in between the two...
after getting some money, and water for me, we went back to the hotel...it was after 0100 by that point...time flies in the middle of the night...we were asleep pretty quickly, as traveling is always wearing, even when the trip isn't long...
the next morning we slept in...we only had two days in the city, but we wanted to relax in addition to touring...plus, the weather wasn't spectacular, so there wasn't much motivation to get up and go...i think we finally left the hotel around 1100?

the areas tourists in riga want to see are quite small, and centrally located...it's a great city for a weekend trip, you can see everything just by walking around...yay!! we found the opera house, in the middle of a park...we stopped for hot chocolate (riga has heaps of chain coffee shops, though i didn't see a coffee bean or a starbucks)...we found the freedom monument, which apparently has quite a bit of history...the soviets didn't like it much, as it symbolized latvian independence; they wanted to get rid of it, or at least move it...but that never happened, so it's right in the middle of a big platz...there are two soldiers standing in front, it could also be the latvian version of the "tomb of the unknown soldier"...the weather was crap, so the photos i took at that point weren't very good...

from the monument we walked into the park a little bit, and had more fun with photos on a bridge with more locks...this seems to be a popular thing to do in this part of the world...buy a padlock, lock it on a bridge, and it's supposed to represent never ending love, or something like that...i wonder how often it works? from there we could see the gunpowder tower, which is now a museum...we didn't go in the museum, i don't know why...with the 'meh' weather, it probably would've been perfect...instead, we walked into another coffee shop, i had a snack...two shops down the street was a souvenir shop, we investigated that next...i found a hat i really wanted, cloe found amber items, i found postcards, cloe found magnets, etc...i don't think we actually purchased anything at that point, but we got an idea of what we might find throughout the city, and started thinking about what we wanted to take with us back to kyiv...

from there we wandered...knowing that the area we wanted to explore was fairly small, we didn't get the map out again for a while...it was easy to say "hey, that must be the ......" ...wandering around took us to a couple churches (neither of which was open at that particular time) and the swedish gate (one of the only remaining gates to the city, i think there were originally 9 gates?) and a couple platzes and more...most importantly, we found a lollipop store!! great lollipops:)...we only bought a couple that day, we wanted to do "quality control"...gotta make sure they are good enough before buying heaps of them, right? we ended up buying them for our coworkers as well, just because we could...who doesn't love lollipops? these lollipops looked pretty as well, which made them even better:)

at that point, cloe was starving, as she hadn't eaten when i had my "snack" (which was two pieces of quiche)...we ended up at a japanese place...not bad, and i love love loved my virgin strawberry mojito...tasty, and good looking, what more does a girl want?
after lunch (which was at 1600 or so, i guess it wasn't really lunchtime anymore) we headed toward another church...st peter's i think...the inside of the church isn't particularly noteworthy, but you are able to go up the steeple (the signs say the lift runs every 10 minutes, though it actually comes more often than that...it's super old school, not particularly fast and doesn't carry a lot of people) which gives you great views over the city...SUPER WINDY...

close to st peter's is the house of blackheads...back in the day this was where the unmarried foreign merchants used to live...part of it is now one of several tourist information centers, and another part is a museum...we only visited the tourist information centre...a nifty looking building...since the weather wasn't great, there weren't many people out, so i was able to take a few photos w/out anyone in them...yahoo...except when cloe was running around, doing her best to stay in range of my lens...she knows i'd much rather have photos without anyone in them, and she was just in that sort of mood...oddly enough, i didn't care...normally that would've annoyed me...hee hee...

next door to the house of blackheads is the latvian museum of occupation...the only one like it in the world...we arrived at 1700, which is when it closed, so we decided to come back another day...from there we checked out at least two more souvenir shops...from those shops to another cafe, i had another "snack"...a lovely piece of cake:)...across the street from this cafe was a hair salon...normally i don't pay any attention to these places while traveling, but my hair had become really long, and rather disgusting at the ends...it was time for a haircut, so i set up an appointment for the next day...i'd been meaning to do it in kyiv, but i was concerned about the language barrier...in riga there didn't seem to be any barrier at all...

we walked back in the direction of the platz near our japanese restaurant, as we wanted to see another cathedral...go figure we arrived just after it had closed for the day...again, we took note of the opening hours and vowed to come back the next day...
at that point it was still yucky, and we didn't have any more ways of killing time...not that either of us was particularly hungry, but we figured it was a good idea to have dinner...i'd seen a branch of an american chain restaurant, and cloe wasn't against it...she got to check off an item on her to-do list: try balsams, the local liquer...she didn't like it, at all...hee hee...sometimes i'm glad i can't drink, otherwise i know i would've tried it as well...
not long after we finished eating, many of the lights in the city went out...riga took part in "earth hour" (as i think it's called) when cities around the globe turn off as many lights as possible, for environmental reasons...i wanted to see the house of blackheads at night, which meant we had to wait an hour for the lights to come back on...fortunately, that was easy to do at this restaurant...

the lights came back on at 2130, we saw the nightsights, and got back to the hotel...asleep around 2300, woo hoo!!
the next morning dawned a whole lot nicer...blue skies!! not that we got out of the room any faster, but both of us were a bit more eager to be outside...sunshine does that:)
we started by heading toward the russian orthodox cathedral...sure, we live in a country that has such buildings on every block, but i still love seeing them...the inside wasn't as impressive as i've seen previously, but the outside was different, which was fun...the church was right next to a small park, with a statue...i don't remember the name of who the statue represented (it started with an R i think?) but we took the opportunity to take a couple photos together...when there are only two people traveling, most photos have only one or the other in them, we wanted both...gotta love time delayed photos:)...

because the weather was so much nicer, we ended up retaking a number of the photos we'd taken the day before...blue skies are so much prettier than white/grey skies...
we finally made it to the museum, yay!! i don't know when it was established, i suppose i could look it up...it's a pretty intense museum, there is a lot of information, both written and visual...they've done a great job with setting up exhibits about the various times during the 20th century when latvia was occupied...by both the germans and the USSR...until i walked through this museum, i didn't know that the US was one of a few countries that didn't always recognize latvia being a republic of the USSR...there was a lot of written information, i would've loved to have the time to read all of it...i was able to see a lot, but not everything, because i had to boogie over to the hair salon...
yay for getting my hair cut!! i love the head massage, and my hair looks soooooo much better without all the split ends...afterward i met up with cloe at another coffee shop...from there we walked along the river, cloe loves walking next to water...we saw the statue of the guy who founded riga, according to the myth...not a very impressive statue...after crossing a big street we made our way into an entrance of the central markets...

the central markets are the #1 sight in riga according to lonely planet...4 LARGE buildings with local markets...meat, seafood, fresh produce, dairy, etc...we saw it all...the fish area smelled like...fish...i bought strawberries, just because...there were plenty of people shopping there, so the prices must be reasonable...
speaking of which, the latvian currency is really strong...1 LVL (lat) is equal to $2!! it was easy for me to figure out how much i was spending on everything, just double the number i could see...a euro is about 2/3 of a lat, so it was a bit more difficult for cloe...there aren't that many currencies in the world that are that strong!! seeing as how $1 = 8 ukrainian grivna, the prices in riga were tiny compared to the numbers we're used to seeing in kyiv...

from the markets we walked back into the tourist/city centre area...we knew we wanted to eat before heading to the airport...nothing special...
from there we found where to catch the bus to the airport...the frustrating thing is that there are two prices for that bus...if you buy the ticket ahead of time, it's .5LVL...if you buy it on the bus it is .7LVL...it's not a big difference, but why would anyone want to pay more...we found a machine where you can buy the tickets, but it wouldn't take money! it would only take cards (as in credit cards) which we didn't want to do for a single bus ride...oh well...the ride to the airport was easy, as was getting our boarding passes, and going through customs...again cloe sped through the line, since she is an EU citizen...argh! i would love to be an EU citizen...

we arrived in kyiv on time, took a bus into the city, then the metro, then walked back to our flat...another lovely weekend exploring somewhere new:)