RIGA Monday February 5, 2007

It was pretty chilly this morning with the hint of the possibility of snow – and indeed there were a few flakes this afternoon, but nothing more. What there was this morning was a thick mist which detracted a little from our tour of the city since some of the views across the river were hidden.

The drive itself was a bit of a swizz. The bus was meant to pick us up at 10h30 but only arrived at 10h45 due to ???? You guessed it – an accident! Mind you the way they drive here made it more believable than in Tallinn. Then we went trundling around to various points to pick up non-existent passengers. There was a pleasant guide on the bus at this stage giving a somewhat garrulous commentary. We finally got to the square in the Old Town where the tour officially started but had to wait until 11h30 before we left with three others.

There was a taped commentary which was unfortunately out of synch with the route we took, which included some areas with pretty heavy traffic. But it was still worthwhile because it gave us some idea of what the city is like. Parts, especially on this bank of the river, are reasonably good looking with some fine buildings and wide roads in pretty good condition, but even here there are some awful places, old wooden buildings falling apart, bigger structures with cracked and peeling plaster. Over the other side of the river it was even worse with some really run down areas. I guess forty years of Soviet rule had an impact. One of the buildings we saw was the KGB headquarters, now very dilapidated. I wondered why it had not been either demolished or refurbished.

There were still 'Soviet-style' monuments

We ended the tour at about 12h45 back at the Opera House and just walked into the Old Town. There are some lovely old buildings and churches but very few shops of any interest. Plenty of pubs, restaurants and strip cluns etc and a lot pf shops selling amber, art and jewellery; shops selling designer clothes and a surprising number of hair and beauty salons – and saunas.

Old Town Square

 We decided to have lunch at a “Salt & Pepper” which seems to be a chain restaurant. They had a lunch time special of frikkadels (South African braised meat balls) with pasta for only L1.78 (A$4.00) so we thought we’d try that. After about 25 minutes the servitor to whom we had given our order re-appeared with a substantial plated of food which on examination proved to be a chicken leg and thigh (rather underdone by the look of it) on a bed of spaghetti. We called her back and pointed out that this was not what we had ordered. To which her response was that they ahd run out of frikkadels! She seemed most surprised when we rejected her chicken and moved on to a Double Coffee Shop. We had had a coffee in one of these in Tallinn and we knew they were OK.

We shared a toasted sandwich and had a good cappuccino each and then strolled on through the main square, picking up a copy of the Guardian of all papers and some water and then popped into an Internet cafe to see if there was any mail. Rab was fascinated because there were probably a hundred computers in the area and about  eighteen in the area where we were. She reckoned half the people were playing games and the other half surfing sex sites!!

We made our  way to the correct trolley bus stop and only had a short wait for a #19 which whisked us back to the hotel at high speed all for 0.15 centas each, which is to say, very little! (One of the pages I downloaded had this to say about the local currency: “The unit of currency in Latvia is the litas (Lt), which comes in denominations of 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500Lt notes. The coins can be divided into two categories: the significant 1, 2, and 5Lt coins; and the nearly weightless and worthless centas coins of which there are 50, 20, 10, 5, 2 and 1”. By my calculation the 1 centas coin would be the equivalent of a farthing or a quarter of an Australian cent.)

 

Our trip took us past the restaurant we were going to eat at and also past the Russian church. It seems from our limited data that beggars congregate outside these churches. One had two dogs with her, all wrapped up in blankets with home made muzzles. They looked pretty pathetic, all three of them. There are not many signs of poverty, apart form the rickety houses, while on the other hand there are many signs of prosperity. We spotted a Rolls Royce and a new Bentley in our travels and there are many big Mercedes and BMWs. As I mentioned earlier there are plenty of designer outlets and women wearing the clothes sold there plus of course some magnificent furs.  The clothes don’t seem quite as flash as some we saw in Tallinn though, where there were many very high heeled and rather kitsch ones.

This evening we caught a cab to the restaurant which turned out to be very nice and good value. It was a genuine Latvian  meal – our first truly local meal since we started our trip. I had a herring starter followed by what they called grey peas and ham, while Rab settled for braised pork ribs and sauerkraut. Both were very tasty – mine was really what we would call pork and bean – and we shared an ice cream to finish with. I tried the local liqueur – Black Balsam – but it was pretty grim – very bitter. We strolled back to the trolley stop – avoiding the Russian beggars and were lucky enough to arrive simultaneously with a trolley bus.