20 June
Our travelling companion advised us to keep away from the other side of
the Daugava River as it tends to be more challenging. Besides, he said, all the good restaurants and hang out places are in Old City. He also shared his knowledge of the Baltic coastline, showed it to us on the flight and regaled stories of the resorts there. He was good company and we parted company at the airport.
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| Just around the corner from our apartment |
We easily found bus 22 which would take us from the airport to the city. 22.
It was on the other side of the car park as per the direction of the lady at information. For a smallish
airport, it is well equipped, complete with Wi-fi and all the usual facilities expected of a much bigger airport. We got off at the Street, 11 November. We found the technical university but could not find the check-in for the apartment. We walked around the place but could not find the place even with Map.Me. It was really hot and the whole place was cobblestone paved so dragging the luggage was tough. Then we realised why we had not found the place. We had misread the instructions. Next turn we made, we found the check-in office.
We thought the apartment would be above the check-in but we were told that someone would walk us to our apartment shortly. Then we were really unhappy. More dragging of the bag across the cobblestones. The apartment
was across the old city, a 7 min walk away. Again, its location looked a little suspect. It is located on the ground floor and next to a pub in a building of residential apartments. It is behind a street of the main retail area of the old city. It looked a little run down with a kitchen that looked like a cave with windows to the not so picturesque inner courtyard. But it was huge. There was a roller shutter over the door leading to the inner courtyard that we could not get working. Nor could we get the washing machine working. So we insisted that the lady who walked us there stayed with us there until the handy person came and fixed it all. He turned up a little later and got everything working again.
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| The incredible sunset over the Daugava |
By the time everything was settled, it was around 6pm. We were tired by then but the sun was still shinning brightly outside. So we decided to explore our immediate neighbourhood. As usual, we marked our location on Map. Me and then proceeded to wander without worrying about getting lost.
Our wandering took us all the way to the bank of the Daugava
River where we watched a beautiful sunset in progress. Folks were canoeing, kayaking or
paddle boarding in it. We wandered through the old city back towards our accommodation. We decided to have dinner at SteikuHoas, a restaurant a stone's throw from our accommodation. We observed that about things American and cowboys are popular judging from the number of pubs we passed bearing that theme.
The city also appear to have a substantial Russian population. We also note that Latvians who do not
speak Russian and Russian who do not speak Latvians (30% of Latvians are
Russian speaking) speak in English to each other. Architecture in the old town is a little
quirky. There were modern sculptures on
roof tops inter spread with original(?) old ones. The skies were barely getting dark there even late. The northern white nights were near. The city appeared to be in celebration mode
for midsummer already.
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| House of Blackheads, a distinctive building in the old city of Riga |
The lady who walked us to the apartment earlier had told us that the bus stop for our bus to the airport was just around the corner … just behind the apartment she said. We had not checked it out. We had made the arrangement to leave the keys on the kitchen counter on the morning later when we would check out. We got home near midnight after all
the wandering. It was still light and there were folks drinking sedately at the Armory Bar next door. The whole place did not look threatening anymore.
21 June, Tuesday
We decided that we needed a bit of rest … so we dispensed with the alarm and woke up rather late … around 9 am. We pottered around as we were not required to be anywhere until 12 pm for the free walking tour.
It was 11 am before we went to the apartment check in office again to settle our accounts.
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| Interior of St John's, Riga's oldest church |
We tried to get some coffee with soy milk. No luck, we were back in
no soy milk land except for Costa, Starbucks and specialised coffee places. We still had time so we popped
into the oldest church in Riga. It was interesting as the details were all on the roof. There was even an angled mirror on the floor to facilitate looking at the ceiling without hurting one's neck. At the market outside it, we bought a hat that is both warm and could be used to shade us from the sun. We then headed St Peter's Church where we were not too impressed with the interior. This would be the meeting place for the
walking tour.
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| St Peter's |
It appeared that this was to be the alternate tour instead of the old town
tour. So we will miss the tales of the old city. They have alternative tours on alternative days. That was a little disappointing. But on the bright side, we would learn more
about Riga than just the old city.
Our guide was Anita. The tour would take us both
through the old city and the new city. Our first question was why the statue of St Peter outside the church bearing his name was headless. It appeared that the tower was reconstructed
as was part of the church after the war. Both are now part of a museum charging 3 Euros to visit the main church hall with another 9 Euros for the
tower. We were thinking of checking it out after the tour but with the cost information and noting that there are no impressive stained glass windows, we may reconsider.
The history of Latvia went back to the 13th
Century when it was first settled by Germans.
Then came the Swede, followed by Imperial Russia, the Polish-Lithuania Empire and finally the Soviet USSR until it achieved independence in 1991 much like the other Eastern European nations that were part of the Soviet bloc. It has been a member of EU since 2002. In 2014, it adopted the Euros. We did not
get a lot of history but enough to explain some of the architecture in this
place. It looked like they did not fare too badly during WWII as Soviet invaded them first before the Nazi could come. Some places were bombed. We did not learn the extent of the bombing during the tour.
The old city used to be walled like Tallinn, Estonia. Of the Baltic Nations, Latvia is the largest with a population of 750k of which 30% speaks Russian. In Riga, more than 56% speak
Russian. There are Latvian schools which
teaches in Latvian and English and Russian schools which teaches in Russian
(hence the previous observation of Russian and Latvians speaking in English). Russians here are culturally different
from in Russian Federation, just like overseas Chinese are culturally different from
mainland Chinese. Latvians of all ethnicity live in peace with each other. When asked, Anita said that they
were not too worried about the same fate as Crimea befalling Latvia.
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| Remnants of the ancient wall |
We went next to the City Wall where we had been in our wandering
the evening before. We walked through the gate
of the wall. Apparently the gardens and
the stream had been part of (though not completely) the original moat. Too bad that we would not get to hear about the
tales of the old city. There must have been really interesting tales.
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| Cat Hostel |
Our next stop was the Youth Hostel, YHA, where Anita deposited her
yellow suitcase and we found the smallest hostel in Riga. It was for a cat. We then visited the Central market
consisting of 5 re-purposed hangers from WWII.
There are only 6 such hangers which are still intact in the world. The central market looked like those one would find in Asia, except that they are richer and cover a wider range of goods. Each of the hangers is dedicated to a single product range; there was one for each of meats, fish, dried products and others. Outside, fresh flowers were sold too. We visited the fish market and noted that the fresh caviar was very cheap at
29 Euros a kg. There were all kinds of smoked meats and smoked fishes. Anita told us about trying black bread as
well. We are coming back here after the
tour to get lunch for sure.
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| Assortment of caviar at Central Market |
From there, we went to Spikeri district, where we visited the recreational area on the bank of Daugava. The warehouses were
interesting … some of them do not have square corners. Anita did not know why.
We learnt that the midsummer festival holidays that would
start on Thursday and would last the entire weekend with lots of drinking and
jumping over bonfires (she agreed that the two were not the best combination). Interestingly, we had observed similar folk dances in Warsaw earlier. We recalled the night before that we thought we heard fireworks as we were falling asleep. Then we knew the reason. There would be an interesting market taking place the next day. In the past, most of the people would
leave the city Riga for the countryside or the beach during this time. Riga would have been literally a ghost town, but there is these days an attempt to keep folks in town for the otherwise
poor tourists!!
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| The military convoy |
While we were at the bank of the Daugava, we saw a train
pulling a military convoy on its track beds. NATO exercise is in town. Anita had not seen such a large gathering of military vehicles as well prior to this.
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| The oldest wooden church in Riga |
From there we would go to visit the oldest wooden church in
Latvia. In the olden
days, outside the city walls, the suburbs were intentionally built with wood
(even the bricks were wood bricks), so that in the event of an attack, the suburbs could be
burnt to clear the battlefield. Riga
(from the word ring) had suffered such a fate before in history when a cloud of
dust was noted and the suburbs were burnt in preparation for battle. It was only then that it was discovered that the cloud of dust was not an incoming army but animals on the move.
Luckily, they were rich enough to rebuild. Buildings made of bricks in the suburbs were only permitted after the city walls came down. Some of those buildings remain to the present day.
They are well maintained and are unique.
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| University of Technology aka Stalin's birthday cake and a building from when Riga was still a walled city |
We visited next Stalin’s birthday cake, the University of
Technology. It was built for Stalin for his birthday but it was not completed before
his death. This was
early in Communism when the buildings were still beautiful and not like the
latter Soviet blocks which were purely functional and ugly.
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| Interesting statue at the park |
And we went to visit this nice park where a festival market was preparing for the festival. There were several impressive statues there. The stalls were selling all kind of traditional objects used during the festival. I
particularly like the heavy felt they produces here which looks so so warm!!
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| Riga's Orthodox Church |
We then went to see Riga’s gold eggs – the
Orthodox Church which during the Soviet was turned into a museum. Its interior was gutted. Since its return to the Orthodox
Community, the interiors have now been restored.
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| Change of guards at the National Monument of Freedom |
Next to the Church was the National Monument of Freedom. When we were there, we were lucky enough to witness the change of guards. Next to it was the garden and the canal that runs through Riga. The gardens appeared to be regularly patrolled. May be it is the festival crowd that brought on a higher sense of security.
We had been chatting with the Hispanics from Los Angeles, the
Mexican, the other Australian and the Krakow-ians along the tour as well as
Anita. It is interesting to see how different nationalists see the same things differently.
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| 4 of the repurposed WWII hangers that are now the buildings of Riga's Central Market |
When the tour group disbanded, we took off to the Central Market where we procured for
ourselves, some smoked pork, some smoked salmon, Kvass (as recommended by Anita), black bread, and
some salmon roe. The lady would not sell
us the cheapest variety and we could not understand why until another explained
that it cannot be eaten until it had been further processed. We bought the processed one
(it turned out to be most expensive at 65euros/kg (the range was 35euros to
65euros). We paid 11.5 euros for a small container. And as we were leaving we wanted to buy some kavass
on tap but they only give it to us in a cup instead of a bottle. Oh well.
We will make us a picnic by the river bank where we have been earlier. We walked in that direction looking like we had beer in our cup.
We were on the way to Spikeri when someone tried speaking
Mandarin to us. Not wanting to be mistaken for a Chinese, we yelled back that we are sorry but we spoke no
Mandarin. Sometimes it is safer to pretend not to speak the language especially when they are associating it with a certain ethnic group. He yelled back that he spoke no
English. Too funny.
We found the river bank and proceeded
to have a picnic on the bench, keeping an eye on an approaching storm. We hope that it will blow away. We photographed its approach. Then we thought it might be best to deposit our food back at our accommodation before we did anything else as it started to
spit a little. We wrapped our camera in our
jacket which we took off and took shelter under the railway bridge
when we realised that we would probably not be able to outrun the storm successfully. The deluge was really heavy. The rain came in bucket loads. The bridge did not afford us much shelter. As we were waiting, a young couple also took
shelter there, but then they ran off to some other overhang. We stood where we stood and watch 11 November
flash flooded. We were getting drenched. We held our camera above our neck so that its strap around our neck would not trickle rain drops down to it. It was starting to get cold.
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| The approaching storm |
The young man of the couple came back to get us. They had found better shelter in the overhang so he had come
to get us to join them. The three of us waited together under that overhang. Apparently summer rains in Riga are usually sudden and heavy. We watched traffic on the main streets came to a dead halt as water pooled across some parts of them. The flash floods were not occurring only on the streets but footpaths and under passes as well.
When the rain abated a little, we started towards our accommodation. The overhang was near where we had gotten off the airport bus the previous day. We were barely 10 minutes from home. Gingerly, with our precious camera above the "water line" and our food in the plastic shopping bag which kept it dry, we braved our way back to our apartment. It was a good thing that my travelling companion's backpack was reasonably water resistant so I did not get too wet hiding in there.
Our camera had survived the ordeal well; only the straps were wet. We unpacked and put
all our wet clothes into into the washing machine with shampoo for soap. My travelling companion ran a hot bath and climbed into it to warm up –
we do not need a recurrence of that cold. She made herself a picnic dinner which she ate as she soaked in the really hot bath. It continued to rain outside. As we could not bring ourselves to brave the rain, we decided to stay in. There was nothing in English on the TV except world news which was broadcasted in a loop. Then we remembered the Tune In Radio app that Michael introduced us to in Krakow. We decided
that we would listen to Aussie music and work on our
photos so that we can send some to Jorgen and Helle.
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| A bridge over the canal in the garden |
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| A view of Riga from Skybar |
As we really did not want to miss out on seeing the city properly, at 8pm (since it was still bright), we ventured out after noticing that the rain had finally stopped. We checked out the garden around the canal
and found a boat cruise which we decided we would take the next day. On an impulse, we decided to go to the Skybar at the
Radisson Blu where Anita had told us that the views would be great. We went first to the 27th storey
and took some photos before getting a coke at the Skybar on the 26th storey for 2.5 Euros. We stayed a while to wait for lights of the city to come on. There is
hardly total darkness. Few lights turned on. It was not as spectacular as we expected. It was 10.30pm before we headed back to our accommodation. We had planned to go to Kimeri National Park the next morning.
On the way back, we noticed the light colour
of the skies and the increasing intensity of merry making for the festival. More impromptu tents for celebrations have sprung up. The old city became more confusing with these additions. Luckily for us, Map.Me got us home. In spite of the rain, it had been a rather fruitful day. It was when we were soaking in the tub earlier that we noticed that the bathroom floor had heated tiles … that would come in really useful in a pinch for drying laundry. What else can we improvise? We made a little supper from our delicious food stash before bed.
22 June, Wed
The alarm we set woke us up at 5.30 am.
No, it could not be time to wake up yet.
For some reasons, we were still exhausted.
As we wanted to go to the national park, we must make
haste. The train would leave at 7.30
am. When we went out to check the
gardens the night before, we had found the bus stop for the airport literally at our back door
steps, opposite the central market and so near to the train station. Aiye Aiye Aiye!! We had been walking in circles. We made for the train station via the underpass. A passing traveler was playing wake up music for himself at top
volume. Usually that would have bothered us but
that morning, it was helping us to wake up.
We got to the train station and bought our tickets in three sub-journeys : Riga
– Kimeri, Kimeri – Majori, Majori - Riga. The total cost us 3.8 Euros. At the cafe, we picked up our breakfast to go – two chocolate filled croissants and a coffee.
Then we went to wait for our train at the platform of Track 5. While there, we fed a little bit of bread
to a single rather hungry looking and rather thin sparrow. In seconds literally, an army of sparrows and two doves surrounded us as
well as two doves. "Our" sparrow was the bravest too, picking up even the bits we dropped between our hiking boots.
We boarded the train and took a seat. When it pulled out of the station, we realised that we had picked a seat facing away from the travel of the train which was the opposite of what we had intended. Oh well. We try to take in the scenery even though we were sleepy and in danger of nodding off.
The train weaved its way across the Daugava River past the
impressive library and over a park. This is the area immediately on the other bank of the Daugava which in recent times have been gentrified by the presence of the artists. The train was more like a very slow local metro but above ground. The areas north of the river
looks much poorer after the park until Jurmala stops. Even these looked a little drab. We conclude from what we have observed thus far that drabness is something that is being eliminated at different speed by these former Soviet bloc nations. After the resort stops, the national park stops began.
Around this time, the gentleman in front of us left the train
so we moved to take his seat so that we can look at things the way the train went. As the train approached Sloka and Kudra, it looked as
if the national park may have started. We wished that we had done more
research on the extent of the national park area. We
finally arrived at Kimeri. It is an official
stop, but the station was closed and not manned. There were ample signposts for various walks; even one
for the bog walk which appeared to be in the direction opposite to the National
Park. Hmmm …. although intended to be self service, the directions were not exactly clear.
We decided to go towards
Lake Sloka …. even though that was a good 4km away. We encountered an ambulance on the way, but the two paramedics in it spoke no English so they declined to help. One would need to have fortitude of character to do this trail as there was no
encouragement to do it. The village was all but abandoned except for a few persons.
We decided to check out the head of sulphur waters first and was welcome
by a tabby cat similar to our previous pet cat. It
rubbed up against us and was all friendly. There we found the Sulphur Lizard where a
sulphur springs put room temperature waters into the stream. We patted the cat and
then walked in the direction of Lake Sloka.
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| Ducks among reeds - Lake Sloka |
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| Blue dragonflies |
On the way, a panel van came by. It rushed
past without offering us a ride. It
appeared that the driver was heading for the power station a short distance down the road. Industrial and other buildings on the way
looked really really run down. We fought
with the inner voice in us to abandon our quest … after all … what was the
worse that could happen? Wolves? A sprained ankle? We would just have be careful and alert. And we did just that. The first km was lonely but the second one
went on quite easily …. before we know it, we were at Lake Sloka’s bank. On the distant bank, we could see Jurmala ... with its leisure fishermen.
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| Lake Sloka |
The calm waters of the lake reflected the
skies and the trees above it. Sulphur
springs drain into this lake too. One could see the vegetation growing at the bottom of the shallow bank. Birds
were few but there was a huge stork, and several swans and ducks. There were also blue and grey dragon flies.
As we were about to head back to our train station, we recalled seeing a trail that headed for Kudra. We decided that it
may be worth it as we had thought that the national park started at Sloka
stop before that. A plaque about the trail promised picturesque lakes ….
So we walked through the raised bog bike paths, stopping at lakes, and bogs to
have a peek.
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| A lake in the bogs |
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| Swallow exiting nest after feeding chicks at Kudra Station |
At the station, we asked the two railway workers when
the next train would be. We were advised it would be a 20-25 minutes wait. We decided to photograph the swallows that were fluttering around. We found
their nests in the eaves of Kudra Station.
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| Me in front of the beach - behind me the fire pyres and the stage for Jana the next day |
The train pulled into the station, we jumped in and headed
for Majori. It looked much more alive
then than earlier before 8 am. The move to the
countryside and resort had started for the Jana festival taking place the next day. Train loads of people were arriving in Majori from Riga. We walked
down Jonas Street – it reminded us of Brighton near Melbourne, Manly near Sydney and
Noosa near Brisbane. We walked to the
end and on to the sandy beach there. The sea was shallow for a long way and the water was warm. Kids and sunbathers
were in the water and on the beach. Preparation for Jana the next day was in full swing, with bonfire pyres and a band stand being put into place.
We strolled for a short
distance and then decided to go look for lunch.
We stopped at a restaurant along the beach and ordered pink soup (beet
root, cucumber, coriander and kefir served cold) and potato cakes with
salmon. Both were delicious. We had hvass again and some water. We are developing a serious taste for hvass.
After lunch, we wandered through the resort area. On the way back to the station, we passed someone taking photo of something near the garden. We went to see what caught their eyes and found a small snake
being pursued relentlessly by the other photographer so we followed suit. It escaped to hide under a seat.
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| The small snake |
We took the 2.30 train back to Riga,
intermittently falling asleep along the way. A
little sleep deprived that morning was taking its toll. We toyed with the idea of stopping at that interesting library and the area on that side of the Daugava but we abandoned that idea at the last minute.
On our way back to the accommodation, we
noted that they have closed 11 November for the Jana celebration. We had to take several detours. Along the way, we found a statue that told the story of a friendly giant who carried a child across the Daugava. The child got heavier and heavier along the way. It so exhausted the giant that he fell asleep immediately after setting the child down in his hut. When he awoke, he found a chest of gold where the child had been. And it was with these monies, that the city of Riga was started.
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| Zalu concert - folk dance |
We found the Zalu (eve of Jana) market. There were concerts with folk dancing and stalls selling everything you need for Jana – flower wreaths
for the head for the ladies and hats of oak leaves for the gentlemen. We tried unsuccessfully to get a young gentleman manning a leather store to explain the festival to us. We weaved through the market to get back to our accommodation for some rest. We napped for an
hour, got up and had a soak in the tub and then had dinner before heading out again
to do the canal boat trip.
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| Cruising along the canal in Riga |
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| Riga from Daugava with Jana tents on 11 November in the foreground |
We had meant to go all the way to the Bastion Stop to do the canal trip on the historic boat. On the way, another boat made us an offer for 2 Euros
less. We were tired enough to succumb. It was a pleasant cruise with
few folks so we could move around a lot to take the photos we desired. There were some interesting pedal-boats which looked like a floating water slides. The canals weaved through the gardens. The boat also cruised along the Daugava, enabling us to see the city from a different perspective. There were also numerous low stone bridges. After the cruise, we headed back to the accommodation. We were too tired to pack. We would leave that for the morning.
23 June
We woke up at 7 am, and started to pack after
breakfast. It was a good thing that we were at the bus stop by 8.50 am as all the bus routes had changed a
little for the weekend. Bus 22 did not appear to be running. Bus 222 appeared and
since we did not have prepaid tickets, we ended up paying 2 Euros for the bus trip to the
airport. It would have cost us 1.5 Euros otherwise. We were early at the airport, so we decided to have a
bowl of coffee while waiting to board our flight for Saint Petersburg.
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