Riga, Grey Skies and a Quick Thaw

When I woke I could hear the sound of the old lady snow clearer scratching away at the pavement below and I thought this sounded promising so I rushed to the lobby where I knew Micky would be waiting following his early morning walk.

He assured me that there had been some snow but unfortunately it had recently turned to rain and this had washed away the two or three inches that had fallen earlier that morning.  Was he teasing? I couldn’t tell but a step outside confirmed that the old lady was simply scraping away the dirty brown slush that remained in the taxi rank.  I certainly would not have predicted this but the temperature had continued to rise and the snow that only two days ago looked a permanent feature had almost completely gone.

After breakfast Kim cleaned her boots and emptied the shoeshine machine of all of its wax and polish for at least the third time and we walked again through the art nouveau district then through the parks to the city centre.  This time we had to negotiate sprawling puddles of melted snow and the whole place was suddenly less attractive.  The Orthodox Cathedral was less impressive under a grey sky, the statue at the top of the Freedom Monument looked unhappy and the guards at the base were miserable.  The canal was no longer frozen but at least the ducks had somewhere to swim again.  Now and again some bits of blue sky skidded past but there was never enough to replace the leaden grey skies.

So we needed to find some things to do inside.  First we went to the little café at the House of the Blackheads and then we went inside to the see the museum.  This building was completely destroyed in 1945 and there were photographs inside to prove it.  In fact most of the Town Hall Square outside had been reduced to rubble but had all now been replaced.  The restoration was truly impressive and the building had been completely rebuilt in its original style.  Inside there were exhibits that had miraculously escaped the pillage that had accompanied the various occupations.

After the museum we went for lunch and because of the weather we prolonged this stay longer than we normally would.  Micky gave an informative talk on sheep shagging and Christine contributed to this with an impressive repertoire of lamb impressions.  We had some rambling and reminiscing conversations ranging from ‘what we used to do in the snow’ to the boring things we did as kids including such glorious pastimes as I Spy books and car number plate spotting.

After only a single glass of wine Calamity Christine got up off of the bench and whilst getting her leg-over got tangled up in Micky’s sleeve which resulted in a dramatic headlong crash to the floor.  As if this wasn’t funny enough she spun round, sat up with an accusing glare and shouted “MICKY!” which drew the attention of everyone around.  And he hadn’t even touched her!  Luckily she was unhurt and we were joined in our amusement by all of the other customers in the place.

It was still gloomy and we needed more indoor activity so we walked out of the centre towards the shops and on the way we passed through some streets that were yet to benefit from the city regeneration project.  Here there remained the legacy of the communist era, some original buildings bearing the scars of abandonment and neglect waiting their turn for refurbishment and other ugly functional concrete buildings added during the occupation period.  The Russians especially liked concrete and had added acres of hideous grey cement to the city, overwhelmingly dreary and the most unsightly blots on the environment and hopefully now all waiting their turn for demolition.

There was no chance of improvement in the weather so we made our way back to the Skyline bar for what had become our late afternoon refreshment break.  The lounge lizard was there again and there were more Brit-louts behaving badly in one corner but we didn’t let this spoil it for us.  Because of the weather we stayed there for the rest of the afternoon and had some tasty and reasonably priced plates of food and a final drink or two and enjoyed some last views of Riga.

Back now to that brilliant idea to book and pay for the transport to the airport in advance.  A taxi arrived at the agreed time we piled in and set off to the airport.  It was observant Kim who first noticed that this was not the same driver that we had made the arrangement with so whether he treated himself to a bottle of Balsam and stayed at home tonight or turned up at the Albert and wrote us off as generous time wasters we will never know.  Micky did his best to explain that we had paid in advance but the driver was not responsive so he had to be paid as well!

At the airport Kim played Miss Marple when she spotted some doubtful looking characters checking in with empty bags that thirty minutes later were suspiciously bulging and a quick examination of the rubbish bin into which they had discarded some litter confirmed that they were cigarette smugglers.

We arrived home five minutes ahead of schedule and then the airport and the immigrations conspired to hold us up for forty minutes to compensate for this.  I felt a complaint coming on and challenged the immigration staff for an explanation into this unacceptable treatment and an apology for the delay but naturally received neither.  Finally there was a second fiasco at immigrations when the staff tried to identify passengers from the Riga flight in a search for the smuggled cigarettes.  They should have asked Kim, she knew exactly where they were.  It was a pantomime and a complete failure with a procedure that leaked like a damaged sieve but thankfully it was only cigarettes they were looking for and nothing more sinister.

It had been a good four days and on the way home I reflected on the highlights which for me were the snow, the art nouveau area, the beach at Jurmala, the Spa, the Skyline bar and the amusing taxi Russian taxi driver.

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More posts about Riga…

Jurmala by Train

Jurmala

Riga – The Skyline Bar

Works outing to Riga

Riga- Lunch at the Lido

Rosa Klebb’s endurance sightseeing tour of Riga

Sigulda, Latvia

Latvia Dining – a Chronic Case of Indecision

Jurmala, Latvia

Riga sightseeing

Riga – Festival of the Family and a BBQ

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Riga, A Brilliant Taxi Idea

That evening as we walked back into the city for dinner it was obvious to us that the temperature was beginning to rise rather more quickly than we liked and the firm snow that had been a joy to walk on earlier was turning to a rather unpleasant watery slush.  Whilst crossing a road Kim did a doctor Foster and spectacularly stepped into a puddle, not quite up to her middle but certainly up to her ankles.  We all assumed that carried away by the beach experience earlier she really did think that she could walk on water.

We had an adequate but by no means memorable meal at the Lido and as we were discussing snow prospects we were almost immediately disappointed to see people coming inside and shaking rain from their coats.  A dash to the street confirmed the worst, the temperature had risen and it was raining.  We were not prepared for this and had to beat a hasty retreat from the city centre back to the Skyline.

Sadly the place was different tonight.  The casual and relaxed ambience that we had all enjoyed had been replaced by a rowdiness, which accompanied the arrival of the boozy Brits on stag weekends.  What a great shame.  The forty-year occupation of Riga by the Russians has now been replaced by the weekly invasion of loutish gangs from Essex and Lancashire, people who do not know how to behave when representing their country abroad and visiting a European cultural capital.  I think I know now how the Romans must have felt when the  barbarian hordes gate crashed their party.

The arrival of these undesirables clearly also brings out the local low-life.  Some of the girls were pretty but obviously hookers and the bar was populated by sinister looking local men who looked as though they had been left over from the KGB era.  One man in particular acted very strangely.  He was a solitary lounge lizard but insisted on occupying a prime location meant for four.

We temporarily joined him but he made us feel uncomfortable and we moved on when alternative seating became available.  He acted shiftily, especially when he ordered a sumptuous plate of food and then left it in full view while he played hide and seek behind a pillar.  He was obviously important because the waitress was fiercely protectionist about his seat but eventually when a group moved in on the table he reappeared to reclaim his sofa with a teasing grin.  We left early and returned to the cocktail bar at the Albert, it wasn’t such a good location but at least it was quiet and tonight there was a better atmosphere there.

On the way home we had spotted the taxi driver who had taken us to Jurmala and back and in a moment of brilliant planning we approached him and booked him to pick us up tomorrow and take us to the airport.  Just to make sure that he turned up Micky paid him in advance and we all thought that this was very clever.

Furthermore he was still confident that we would see more snow overnight and we trusted in the meteorological prediction that we all wanted to hear and went to bed.

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More posts about Riga…

Jurmala by Train

Jurmala

Riga – The Skyline Bar

Works outing to Riga

Riga- Lunch at the Lido

Rosa Klebb’s endurance sightseeing tour of Riga

Sigulda, Latvia

Latvia Dining – a Chronic Case of Indecision

Jurmala, Latvia

Riga sightseeing

Riga – Festival of the Family and a BBQ

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Riga, Frozen Beach and a Health Spa

After breakfast we took a mini-bus taxi to the seaside town of Jurmala, which was another bargain at only 15 Lats.  It was a sunny morning and we walked through some houses in various states of disrepair and renovation towards the beach.  The houses were fascinating, mostly made of timber and in contrasting styles that suggested that the owners had had fun building them in a competitive way each determined to eclipse the efforts of their neighbours.

These were once grand seaside villas accommodating only the most wealthy Russians who used to like to come here for their summer holidays and we were relieved to see that thankfully many were being restored, rather than being demolished to make way for modern structures.  The town has an official list of four hundred and fourteen historical buildings under protection, as well as three thousand five hundred wooden structures.

The last time we had seen Jurmala beach was in June sunshine when Micky claimed it for Lincolnshire by raising the County flag.  Then it was a wide expanse of inviting caramel sand and gentle seashore so we were amazed to find it now covered in ice and snow.   We had been told stories of a freezing sea but I don’t think we altogether believed them so to see this was truly awesome.  The sea had frozen at high tide and formed into extraordinary natural ice sculptures well over a metre feet deep and topped with an inch or two of undisturbed crunchy snow.

We clambered over the ice to the sea line and even Christine got brave and released her vice like grip on Micky’s arm.  The sand was frozen solid too, I imagine the sea was cold but of course no one was brave enough (or insane enough) to try it.  We walked along the frozen shore and enjoyed every minute of kicking through snow and picking our way along tracks made of ice. None of us had seen a beach frozen solid before and none of us had walked on water before either.

Back off the beach we walked through more timber houses and stopped for coffee at a friendly little café with a comforting ethnic atmosphere.  Here Mickey announced forty-eight hours without a cigarette and we all admired his achievement of going from a daily narcotic experience of fifty to zero in one go which I guess takes some doing even with the assistance of nicotine substitute tablets.

One of the main reasons for going to Jurmala was to visit the health spa at the Lielupe Beach Hotel again with its saunas, Jacuzzis and swimming pools and with the opportunity to have a relaxing massage. Kim, Christine and I opted for this option while Sue and Micky elected for more snow walking instead.

This was well worth the visit. We started off in a salt sauna where by rubbing salt over the body we proved that it was possible to remove about twelve layers of epidermis in under two seconds.  That really did sting.  The hot steam room was nice but Christine left the door open and let all of the heat out.  Next was the volcanic heat of the hundred and ten degrees sauna where molten magma bubbled away menacingly in the corner of the room and the only way to combat the sizzling heat was through the liberal application of handfuls of ice down the swimming costume.  The Jacuzzi was relaxing and the swimming pool had a variety of bubble bath zones and a sunken bar but no barman.  Kim and Christine left me and went for a massage and I did another circuit of all of the attractions before changing and rejoining Micky and Sue.

For those going for a massage the hotel had a curious layout that required a semi-naked trek through the public areas with only an undersized towel to preserve modesty and spare blushes.  Kim and Christine also had to share a lift with hotel convention guests who were as amused as they were to find themselves sharing an elevator with two scantily clad brazen English women.  No design prizes for the hotel architect then!

Afterwards we walked around the town some more and then went for a late soup lunch in a cozy little café on the main street where we had Solanka soup and cheeseboard.  The weather looked promisingly snowy and the latest edition of the Baltic Times confirmed this.  We were certain of more snow as we took the prearranged taxi back into Riga under heavy grey skies and we went once again to the Skyline bar.

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More posts about Riga…

Jurmala by Train

Jurmala

Riga – The Skyline Bar

Works outing to Riga

Riga- Lunch at the Lido

Rosa Klebb’s endurance sightseeing tour of Riga

Sigulda, Latvia

Latvia Dining – a Chronic Case of Indecision

Jurmala, Latvia

Riga sightseeing

Riga – Festival of the Family and a BBQ

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Riga, A Russian Taxi Driver’s Perspective

For evening meal we choose the out-of-town Lido amusement park where we had been before on our previous visit.  Kim was certain that it was a very precise eight-minute walk but we were all pleased that we overruled her and took the twenty-minute taxi ride instead.

The Lido looked wonderful, there was a skating rink with people enjoying themselves on the ice, someone had forgotten to switch off the Christmas lights and the whole place was like a huge fairy grotto made all the more impressive with the liberal covering of snow below our feet and a clear velvet black sky above our heads.  Inside there was a sumptuous display of self service fare all carefully arranged by meat types which to be honest only vaguely assisted selection, faced as we were by an overwhelming choice of food.

This place didn’t seem to fit the vision of Latvia as being a place to get away from and move to the east of England instead.  I know that with the lowest average wage it is officially the poorest country in the EU, and for that reason tens of thousands of Latvians have left for England where they can earn as much in a week as they earn in a month back home but this place was lively and vibrant, the food was excellent and inexpensive, and the customers seemed affluent and happy.  With women in stylish fur coats and extravagant high heel boots none of this seemed consistent with tales of migrant worker woes back home!

The journey back to the hotel was one of the highlights of the holiday! We left the Lido and looked for a taxi and it was just our luck to select one with a lunatic escaped from an asylum for a driver.  When it comes to taxi drivers we certainly can pick them.

Kim made the first approach and asked if he could take some of us back to Riga and to our surprise he indicated that he could take all five of us in his Renault Megane.

This was a vehicle that was clearly unsuitable for accommodating five passengers and probably not licensed to do so either!  Kim doubted this and just for clarification enquired a second time and clearly running short on patience he gave her his “why can’t this stupid woman understand look”, and immediately increased his carrying capacity to an absurdly optimistic eight!  Kim looked even more startled by this and even examined the interior of the car for concealed seats by sticking her head through the open window.  He responded by raising his eyeballs so far into the top of his head that if he’d had laser vision he would have fried his brains.  This was our cue to accept the five in a taxi invitation and we piled in.

Then the fun really started!  He immediately quizzed us about our national origins: “Where are you from?” He enquired, “England” said Micky, “London?”he followed up.  This is a standard opening conversation with a European taxi driver that frequent travellers will be familiar with; the only place they really know in England is the capital, and sometimes Manchester, so they always make reference to it “No, Lincolnshire” Micky informed him without managing to raise a flicker of recognition and immediately closing down this topic of conversation.

Taxi driver “Do you know Tony Blair?”, Micky “Well, not personally, no”

The scary driver went on to explain how from his personal perspective life was desperately unfair in Latvia.  From his explanation of conditions we discovered that he was a Russian living in Riga and by his own self-assessment suffering all sorts of discrimination (which is hardly surprising really when they (the Russians) had spent forty years or so kicking the shit out of the place).  His solution to the problem was the advocacy of a red revolution and I for one thought it sensible not to disagree too robustly.   He spoke with a thick Russian accent and had the unfortunate habit of preceding each statement with an unpleasant phlegmy hack that was half cough and half retch and definitely only half human.

“Times are hard, it is very expensive to live in Riga”, “No way” said Micky, half mocking him now, “This place is very reasonable!” This led to a few seconds of choking laughter and uncontrollable hacking by the driver and after a few more cost of living exchanges Micky, fully mocking him now, did eventually concede that life was getting a bit tougher in the west; “Yes,” he said “I have to agree, things are getting harder in England too, look at us, we used to have two wives each but now we can only afford one and a third to share between us!”

Then the driver lamented that it would cost him a month’s wages to stay three nights in a Riga hotel and again Micky put him straight and corrected his estimate to just the one night. This man was good fun and he even thought it was amusing when we directed him to the wrong hotel and he had to make readjustments to his route to get us to our intended destination.  And it only cost ten Lats, that’s what I call good value, a taxi ride, conversation and excellent entertainment thrown in.

Actually Russians have had a bit of a hard time since independence because when Latvia broke free in 1991, it granted automatic citizenship to those who had lived in the first independent Latvian state, between 1918 and 1940, but not to those who immigrated here after the war, when Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union.

Under Soviet rule during the Stalin years thousands were arrested and sent to Siberian labour camps, or executed. Later, hundreds of thousands of Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians flooded into the republic under a deliberate policy of Russification. The Latvian language was squeezed out of official use.  Latvians were resentful citizens of the USSR and by 1991 they comprised only half of the population of their own country, while in Riga only a third were Latvian.

Today Latvia is determined to revive the national identity. It says that its policy towards Russians who immigrated there during the Soviet period is aimed not at punishing them for the ‘crimes’ of the Soviet regime but at ensuring that they learn Latvian and integrate fully into society. In order to naturalise, Russians must take a test in Latvian, and pass an exam about Latvian history in which they must ‘correctly’ answer that the country was occupied and colonised, not liberated, by the Soviet Union in 1945.

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More posts about Riga…

Jurmala by Train

Jurmala

Riga – The Skyline Bar

Works outing to Riga

Riga- Lunch at the Lido

Rosa Klebb’s endurance sightseeing tour of Riga

Sigulda, Latvia

Latvia Dining – a Chronic Case of Indecision

Jurmala, Latvia

Riga sightseeing

Riga – Festival of the Family and a BBQ

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Riga, A Pedestrian’s Guide

Replenished with hot food we resumed our walk through the city and made for the old Jewish Quarter called Little Russia, which took us through the market on the way.  This area of the city was interesting for consisting of buildings constructed of timber that are fighting a losing rearguard action against decay and neglect and caught in a catch twenty-two situation, too expensive to repair and restore and too culturally important to be demolished.  If something isn’t done soon it is almost certain that Mother Nature will have the final word on the matter.

Adjacent to this area was the Academy of Sciences building, constructed by the communists in the style of the Seven Sister’s Skyscrapers in Moscow and although impressive in its appearance was seriously ill conceived in respect of location.

The sky was still clear so we decided to make the Skyline bar for the sunset, which the guidebooks described as not to be missed.  We walked back through the market, this time through the old zeppelin hangers that had been converted into a huge indoor market with an impressive array of produce.  The meat looked especially good and Micky (being a butcher by trade) gave us a guide to the cuts and the comparative costs to those back home.

On the way back we passed some currency exchange kiosks and Micky panicked because he had already spent about twenty Lats today and he felt the need to convert more sterling just to restore the size of his wad and to be on the safe side just in case the inflation rate hit 1000% overnight.  He became even more concerned when the first kiosk had run out of Lats!  Christine was fortunate not to be arrested when she hung about outside looking suspiciously like a bank robber under a black hood and neckerchief auditioning for a starring role on Latvian Police Five.  The rest of us moved on and kept a discreet distance away not wishing to be involved in a potential incident with the authorities if by chance she had been caught on CCTV.

Walking around Riga is quite safe so long as you keep to the pavements and watch the traffic signals carefully because the drivers are not very pedestrian friendly if you inadvertently stray into their road space when they have priority.  Walking back to the Hotel Latvia we used the pedestrianised central reservation of the boulevard style road, which at one stage required a perilous negotiation of an intersection.

Four of us strode confidently across ignoring the nearby line of traffic waiting at traffic lights with snarling engines and drivers scenting blood with right foot poised to hit the accelerator pedal and lunge forward at the first hint of green.  We made it (but only just) but Sue had hesitated and got caught almost mid way across in a stream of traffic that heavily resented her presence on the highway.  “Hold on” she screamed but I’m not sure if it was directed at us for uncharitably leaving her behind or at the drivers moving in for the kill.  Anyway she judiciously retreated to safety, waited for the lights to change and then carefully but quickly made her way across to join us.

Riga has a curious system for pedestrian crossings, which is designed to deliberately confuse the foreign visitor.  For the person on foot standing at the pavement edge the pedestrian light turns green and it is their turn to go but the traffic ignores this and continues to hurtle uncontrollably forward almost daring the confused visitor to try his luck.  This is followed by a moment or two of nervous hesitation and jerky indecision and then a hokey cokey leg in, leg out test of willpower to see whose nerve will break first, the driver or the pedestrian.

Not a bit of this roadside performance is remotely helpful however unless the pedestrian is prepared to take a deep breath and a massive leap of faith and put a foot down firmly and confidently on the carriageway as though playing a game of ‘chicken’, because it is only at this point that the traffic is finally obliged to stop.  Reassuringly it almost always does but I wouldn’t recommend trying it in front of a Riga tram, which seem to be excused from all of the most sensible traffic regulations and weighing in fully loaded at a little under fifty tonnes or so just might take a bit of stopping.

The Skyline Bar is a great place to relax in the early evening after a day sight seeing and a good spot for watching the sunset and it is the place to be seen with modern trendy furniture and décor that suggests a level of exclusivity to this place that is in contrast to its total accessibility.    It is easy to just wander in off the streets and take the external lift to the top and you are in the best cocktail bar in the city.  One of the best views is from the men’s toilets where there is full length window and the panoramic view from it is quite stunning.

Getting one of the seats by the windows is essential but can be a chore when the place is busy and competition is fierce, and you really need one that looks to the west to enjoy the stunning view of the City and the Russian Orthodox Cathedral that stands nearby.  Sometimes you have to sharpen elbows, wait and stay alert for window seat opportunities but it is worth the effort, especially if there is a sunset to be seen and with a view like this it really doesn’t matter when the service is slow.

It is supposedly designed to resemble a Manhattan bar but as I have never been to New York I am unable to confirm whether it has achieved this objective.  The place has a relaxed atmosphere and a friendly ambience and it certainly doesn’t have Manhattan prices with generous cocktails costing on average less than a fiver.

There are many suggestions for the origin of the word cocktail, almost as many as the choice of drinks available at the Skyline Bar.  Some say that it was customary to put a feather, presumably from a cock’s tail, in the drink to serve both as decoration and to signal to teetotallers that the drink contained alcohol but my favourite is that after a cock fight it was customary to mix a drink with a different shot of alcohol for each remaining feather in the winning cock’s tail.

At the bar we found a grandstand seat by the window and settled down for the sunset that we estimated to be due at four-fifteen.  We got that wrong and had to wait until five-to-five but there was a pleasing atmosphere in the bar and we watched the last puddles of sunshine laying on the rooftops of the city until the sun quickly dipped below the horizon and it went dark.

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More posts about Riga…

Jurmala by Train

Jurmala

Riga – The Skyline Bar

Works outing to Riga

Riga- Lunch at the Lido

Rosa Klebb’s endurance sightseeing tour of Riga

Sigulda, Latvia

Latvia Dining – a Chronic Case of Indecision

Jurmala, Latvia

Riga sightseeing

Riga – Festival of the Family and a BBQ

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Riga, A Baltic Winter

After the first visit to Riga I made myself a promise to go back one day but I didn’t expect it to be quite so soon.  Returning to a place for a second time is something I have vowed not to do if I can possibly avoid it mainly because there are forty-five countries in Europe and I have only so far been to thirty-0ne.  But with cheap flights helping me to shorten the list of places left to visit I decided that it would do no harm to take another look at Latvia.

I found the 1p flights to Riga in September and snapped them up immediately, Micky and Sue did the same and Christine signed up for the trip a little later on.  We had been to Riga before in a pleasantly warmJune and really liked the place so we were keen to return and see the city in the grip of a cold Baltic winter.

In the couple of weeks before the trip we kept our eye on the BBC Web Site weather pages and were disappointed to see that the conditions were changeable and that we could not reliably be guaranteed the snow and the cold temperatures that we really wanted to see.  This was unusual because Riga in January should be very cold indeed but this year the temperatures were unpredictable and that made us anxious.

There was also a useful Web-site with some web-cam pictures that as the trip got closer encouragingly showed streets covered in snow, but we weren’t absolutely convinced that these were genuine and we began to suspect that they were recordings of what the tourist office wanted people to see rather than representing reality.

We travelled to Stansted Airport by taxi, which at £30 each seemed a bit expensive to go eighty-five miles compared to the 1p airline flights to go one thousand two hundred.  To put that into perspective I calculate that if we were going to the moon it would cost £42,150 by Cockrams Coaches but only £1.99 by Ryanair.

When we landed in Riga the airport was covered in snow because there had been a big fall during the day and the snow ploughs had piled it high along the sides of the runway.  This looked very promising.  We found a taxi and had an entertaining ride into the city along untreated roads covered in snow and ice and with a driver bursting with testosterone who was determined not to make concessions to the conditions as he picked his way through the traffic in an over confident way that made us grateful to arrive at the Hotel Albert in one piece.

After we had all settled in we assembled in the lobby and set off on foot into the city.  It was cold and the snow was delightful, new and undisturbed but not too thick to make walking difficult.  The city authorities hadn’t started to tackle the clearance plan yet so everywhere we walked was through fresh virgin snow and especially through the park that took us into the city past the Russian Orthodox Cathedral and the Freedom Monument.

Because we had been here before we had a good idea of direction and we knew that we were heading for the Lido for a cheap but substantial meal.  Sadly when we arrived there the food was finished and after an unsuccessful conversation to identify an alternative establishment with the most unhelpful barman in Riga we went back to the streets to see what was available.  It was only half past nine but the restaurants all seemed to be closing down for the evening so we had to settle for TGI Fridays, which to be honest wouldn’t have been our first choice but turned out to be extremely good and unexpectedly the food had a predominantly local rather than a corporate flavour.

After dinner it was off to the skyline bar at the Hotel Latvia, twenty-seven storeys high and the tallest building in the country with a cocktail bar on the twenty-sixth floor giving panoramic views of the city.   On the way back Christine slipped and tried to plunge head-first through a plate glass window, knowing how accident prone she is we were relieved therefore that after that she clamped herself onto Micky’s arm for safety.  At the Hotel we found a window seat and we spent an enjoyable two hours experimenting with new cocktails.

The prices were nicely inexpensive and the vodka must have been cheap too because on an adjacent table there were two extremely drunk local men sharing the last remains of a bottle under the watchful eye of an attentive hotel security man who looked as though he had stepped from the pages of a Len Deighton novel.

Later we walked back to our hotel through the snow.  This was snow as I remembered it when I was a boy, not the stuff we get now that disappears almost as soon as it hits the ground.  This was the sort of snow that you can go confidently to bed safe in the knowledge that it would still be there in the morning.  So we did.

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More posts about Riga…

Jurmala by Train

Jurmala

Riga – The Skyline Bar

Works outing to Riga

Riga- Lunch at the Lido

Rosa Klebb’s endurance sightseeing tour of Riga

Sigulda, Latvia

Latvia Dining – a Chronic Case of Indecision

Jurmala, Latvia

Riga sightseeing

Riga – Festival of the Family and a BBQ

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Jurmala, Latvia

We had a short drive to the beach resort of Jurmala and when we arrived we had another tour reorganisation discussion that convinced me to finally dispose of my useless personal itinerary.  This was really beginning to irritate people so I was pleased when it was all sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction and we were allowed to get off the coach and head for the sea.

This was a real surprise for this was a very high quality beach with miles of scrupulously clean sand and a clear Baltic Sea stretching out towards Sweden over the horizon.  I had expected the sea to be grey and forbidding like the North Sea of my childhood holidays but instead it was a serene denim blue with a fringe of seal grey sand and it looked genuinely inviting.  Under the Communist regime up until 1991 this was a popular destination for high-level Communist Party officials and it was a favourite destination of Russian Presidents Brezhnev and Khrushchev.

We came dangerously close to another incident when we found a beach bar to stop for a drink and Alona helpfully gave menu interpretation assistance.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I am reasonably proficient in ordering a lager from a menu in almost any language in the World and there really wasn’t any difficulty at all here in translating from the Latvian ‘beer’ to English ‘beer’.  Kim however interpreted the offer of help as down right interference and I think Alona came within a whisker of finding the menu deposited somewhere uncomfortable.

After the beach we separated and half the party returned to Riga and the others went to a Spa resort at a hotel and enjoyed the saunas and steam rooms, the swimming pools and Jacuzzis.

Tonight we had agreed to eat at the Maritim and when we arrived the others were waiting for us in the lobby of the hotel.  At the bar there were some misbehaving Brit-louts who had been drinking heavily and were rearranging the furniture in the bar so we declined to join them in there and had a drink in the lobby instead.  Eventually Nick joined us, looking pretty rough it has to be said, he clearly hadn’t recovered completely and he rejected the offer of a beer.  I have no idea exactly how much he had had to drink the night before but it certainly resulted in the loss of a whole day of his holiday so it must have been a considerable amount.

The restaurant was on the top floor but it was quite a challenge to get there using a lift that absolutely refused to cooperate with our instructions; we pushed the buttons but found ourselves going up and down like an out of control yo-yo with frequent stops at floors we hadn’t requested and a couple of return visits to the lobby.  We laughed and were about to give in when it stopped one floor below the restaurant and we decided that this was probably the best we could hope for and so took the stairs for the final part of the way.

The restaurant was nice but it was posh and I wasn’t really in the mood for posh.  Or the posh prices either I have to confess!  By Riga standards this was very pricey indeed so when Kim, after heavy prompting from me, decided that she didn’t fancy it either and left I let my mean streak take over completely and was quick to follow her example.  We took a taxi into the old town and went instead to our favourite from our previous visit, the Lido pub where we had beer and wine and copious amounts of food at the sort of prices that we prefer.

We finished the evening in the top floor bar at the Albert, which on account of it being Friday was busier tonight.  There were two burly bouncers at the door whose main task seemed to be to supervise the activities of the prostitutes.  There were a lot of dubious looking women about looking for customers and there was a continual flow of what we took to be hookers going up and down in the lifts to the bedrooms below.

There was a lot of  activity at the Hotel Albert tonight that was for sure!

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More Beaches:

Ambleteuse, France

Galicia Blue Flag Beaches

Cofete Beach

Mwnt Beach, South Wales

Albufiera

Portimão, Carvoeiro, Praia Vale de Centianes and Silves

Portugal, Beaches and a Sunset

Kefalonia, Fiskardo and Assos

Kefalonia, Villages and Beaches

Kefalonia, Lassi and Hotel Mediterranee

Benidorm 1977- Beaches, the Old Town and Peacock Island

Greece 2009 – Ios, Beaches and Naturists

Serifos Psili-Ammos

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Latvian Ethnic Open Air Museum

The next morning we were delighted to be woken early by shafts of razor sharp sunlight piercing the paper-thin bedroom curtains and blazing radiantly into the room.  I really don’t object to being woken like this.

We had another full day planned but for some the pace was beginning to tell.  Mark had decided in advance to skip the morning session to recover from his late night out and May choose to stay in the city for some solo retail therapy.  This was absence through choice; Nick on the other hand had planned to be there but he had rejected my sensible advice and had given himself a monster hangover and was quite unable to leave his hotel room because of his ferocious headache and constant vomiting.

With depleted numbers our first destination was Ethografiskais Brivdabas Muzejs, the Latvian Ethnic Open Air Museum located in a forest next to Lake Jugla just to the east of the city.  We arrived and were introduced to our guide who was an elderly lady dressed in traditional costume who accompanied us into the museum and provided us with a continuous and informative narrative. We strolled leisurely in the sunshine amongst the trees where there are about one hundred and twenty wooden buildings that have been dismantled and then rebuilt here as examples of the heritage of Latvia.

There are five regions to Latvia (Latgale, Zemgale, Kurzeme, the Liv land and Selija) and each had its own traditions and buildings styles, examples of which are all represented here. There were houses, farm buildings, windmills, barns, and churches and over the last fifty years or so genuine structures have been discovered all across Latvia and removed to Brivdabas for display.  Some of these buildings are as much as two hundred years old and were still in use until about fifty years ago before being taken apart and moved to this Museum.

I liked the guide’s story about the wedding tradition of the bride knitting a pair of highly coloured gloves as a gift for all the guests and in case we didn’t believe her she opened a chest full of them to show us just to prove it.  If I had to knit a chest full of gloves that would certainly keep the guest list numbers down.

At the end of the tour we looked for somewhere to eat and found a likely looking place amongst the pine trees with a delicious aroma of cooking food.  We went in to order but were told that this was being prepared for tomorrow, that didn’t seem to make a lot of sense and I wondered why, if that was the case, they hadn’t prepared some yesterday for today but concluded that it wasn’t worth asking the question; they had some drinks but seemed equally reluctant to sell those as well so we wandered back to the entrance and found an alternative little restaurant serving a limited choice of traditional Latvian food.  Mickey and David had black peas and bacon; there were an awful lot of black peas and not a lot of bacon and they both confessed later that it was not terribly appetising.

Now everyone should have known what to do next because we all had our personal itineraries but sadly they didn’t seem to help a great deal when we arrived back in Riga at the appointed pick-up point.

We quickly found Mark who boarded the bus but we failed to locate May and the driver was anxious about being parked illegally.  I don’t know what the penalty was but he was very nervous about it.   May appeared but disappeared into McDonalds so Alona went in after her and May came out of a different door.  Between us we managed to turn this into a Keystone Cops routine as I went to McDonalds to find Alona and she came out of the other door and vanished down the street, as I couldn’t find her I went back to the bus to be told she was heading away from us which required a hundred metre sprint to advise her that we had finally assembled everyone and to bring her back.

There was still no sign of Nick and he wasn’t answering his mobile phone so we assumed that he was still recovering and we left without him.

Latvia dining – a chronic case of indecision

Our next destination was the Turaida Castle and Museum, which we went directly to after we had been reunited with the mini-bus that had temporarily misplaced us and had been waiting at the wrong place to meet us after our cable car ride.  We were collectively worried about this in case his patience had been put to the test again and would trigger another angry driver explosion but he was calm now and the short journey was uneventful.

The castle and museum were well worth the visit and as the weather continued to improve our charming guide entertained us with tales from Latvian folklore, which she delivered in good English that was sometimes punctuated with amusing mispronunciations and some inappropriate vocabulary.  We enjoyed the stories all the more for that.

After leaving Turaida castle, the bus took us to a great log-cabin restaurant called Kungu Rija which s means “The Landlord’s Barn.”  The restaurant was built according to old Latvian construction traditions and at this stage of the visit we enjoyed Latvian canapés and accompanied this with a chaotic debate about what to do tomorrow.  Alona was desperate to please everyone so worked hard to achieve a consensus that proved hopelessly optimistic.  This took some considerable time and once completed required the tour guide to handwrite for everyone an individual and personal itinerary for the next day.  This was a nice touch but was probably going to be a complete wasted effort knowing how chronically afflicted we all were with changeable minds.

I’m afraid that Alona wasn’t a very quick learner and no sooner had we ended the tortuous deliberation about tomorrow than she prompted another about where to eat tonight, and that proved equally as painful.  I am a great believer in the democratic process but sometimes someone just has to make a decision.  I could sense that some of us were getting irritable so I was grateful that on the fourth recount following a confusing voting procedure that we finally agreed to stay at this location and order dinner.  I was only too pleased that the restaurant staff that witnessed the pantomime were bestowed with unnatural amounts of patience and didn’t close the place in despair because this was a very good decision indeed and we enjoyed an exceptional meal and washed it down with an appropriate amount of alcohol.

It had been a long day so that evening the Maritim group stayed at their hotel and had an early night, except for Nick who was planning to go clubbing with David, Mark and Alona, and Alona’s cousin Christina.  We met them in the cocktail bar at the Hotel Latvia for pre-clubbing drinks.  David and Mark got in the mood with some B52s and some tequila shots and because I knew that they could handle their alcohol I gave Nick some advice on sensible drinking which I was to discover later that he completely disregarded.  Alona and her cousin were dressed to thrill and David and Mark had already fallen in love with Christina who tonight clad in her best party attire looked quite stunning and they were both completely bowled over by her.  With hormones in overdrive they competed with each other for her attention and it was amusing to watch them using their charm, and sometimes their elbows as they competed for advantage over each other.

They invited us to join them at the nightclub and I confess that I was tempted but in the end wisely declined because I imagine that most of the girls at the night-club were there in part to get away from their fathers and probably wouldn’t be particularly delighted to find themselves on the dance floor with someone else’s, especially one with an embarrassing dancing style based on a curious uncoordinated medley of shadow boxing and goose stepping moves that was perfected in nightclubs in the 1970’s and remains marooned there for eternity.

Riga, The Russian Orthodox Cathedral

Next on the itinerary was the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which has been recently restored in an ugly duckling style transformation from a dirty grimy grey (which was of course the shade of paint that the communists used to paint everything) to a resplendent sandstone yellow under black domes with gleaming crosses.  The renovated building is clean and sharp with painted red brick stripes and elaborate white columns soaring proudly into the sky above.

Although most of Riga old town is restoring its vibrant colours to the buildings there are still examples of the communist absence of finesse or style.  Just across the road from the cathedral for example is a splendid old building that still retains its dreary grey exterior and is awaiting its own overdue transformation.  The Soviet Union must have had the biggest grey paint factory in the world and it was used indiscriminately everywhere.  I imagine that the paint shop colour chart probably had restricted options like, overcoat grey, battleship grey, storm grey, grease grey and so on and so on.

The Nativity of Christ Cathedral in Riga is a magnificent and impressive building that sits between the old town and the new and was built in a Neo-Byzantine style between 1876 and 1883 at a time when Latvia was part of the Russian Empire.  It is the largest Orthodox cathedral in the Baltic provinces and was built with the approval and a blessing of the Russian Tsar Alexander II on the initiative of local governor-general Pyotr Bagration and bishop Veniamin Karelin.

Russian Orthodox Church buildings differ dramatically in design from most western type churches. Their interiors are enriched with many sacramental objects including holy icons that are hung on the walls and  murals often cover most of the interior walls with images that represent the Theotokos (the Mother of God) and scenes from their lives of the Saints.  The cathedral in Riga is especially renowned for its icons some of which were painted by the famous Russian war artist Vasili Vereshchagin. During the First World War German troops occupied Riga and turned its largest cathedral into a Lutheran church but after the war the Nativity of Christ Cathedral once again became an Orthodox cathedral in 1921.

There was more unhappiness for the building under the communist regime because the Soviet Union was the first modern state to have the elimination of religion as an ideological objective and to achieve that objective the communists confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. The main target of the anti-religious campaign was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of worshippers in Russia and its subjugated territories.  Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labour camps, theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.

After the Second-World-War things relaxed a little for a while and the number of open churches increased and by 1957 about twenty-two thousand Russian Orthodox churches had become active again but in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev initiated a new campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about twelve thousand, including the Nativity of Christ Cathedral in Riga.  Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or just simply removed and their places were taken by state conforming clergy many of whom had links with the KGB.  The Cathedral in Riga was converted into a planetarium and it became neglected and was allowed to lose its magnificent façade.  Now that it has been restored the place is surely more heavenly than ever having been returned to its intended purpose.

We have visited the Cathedral before of course but because it is so fascinating we just had to do so again.  In a side chapel there was some activity and because on a previous visit here there had been a corpse laid out in a casket we suspected that this might be a funeral service but I wasn’t tall enough to see over the shoulders of the congregation and I though it rude to intrude to close to the front because of a macabre interest.  The service was attended by nuns in black robes and pointy hats who looked like extras from a Lord of the Rings movie and was led by a priest in a lavish scarlet and gold robe.

The interior of the cathedral is bright and cheerful, adorned with shining icons and smelling of sweet incense and today there was a lot of frantic activity because inside there were cameras and a film crew and I can only imagine that the were preparing for a broadcast on Latvia Songs of Praise or whatever its equivalent is.  There were a lot of people inside all bowing, crossing their chests, kissing the holy icons and doing their best to look solemn.  I suppose we must have looked a bit conspicuous.  Kim felt obliged to leave after she was rebuked for taking photographs.  I was a little more discreet and didn’t get caught but a little later on was chastised by a priest with a wild wiry beard for having my hands in my pockets.  Little did he know that I was looking for loose change to put in the offertory box but now that I had been told that hands in pockets was disallowed I decided not to bother.

We left the cathedral and retired as usual to the Skyline bar and from our window seats we watched the people flocking into the church and wondered just how it was managing to accommodate them all.  At the front door were some clergy in yellow cassocks who were obviously waiting for someone important to arrive and just before, what we guessed was, the scheduled five o’clock start a black limousine pulled up outside and the occupant was greeted with exaggerated reverence and hurried inside, presumably to get on with the service.  I wished that we had stayed a while longer to see exactly what was happening but I will never know if we would have been welcome to stay for the proceedings.