Riga

 After that bittersweet experience at the border we were on our way to the capital city of Latvia; Riga. The drive was pretty uneventful, although we were driving on the coastal highway, it wasn’t the like the Californian highway 1 or highway 101, mostly because we were in Latvia, and also because the Californian road runs on solid rocks, however the East coast of the Baltic Sea is sandy, and this sandy coast continuously forms as the different currents moves them, hence they couldn’t route a highway right on the coast. Thankfully we did get some glimpses of the sea on our journey.

It was almost three in the afternoon when we reached Riga, which was only problematic, because our accommodation didn’t have private parking and the later it got the less parking spaces were left. Our host was an old lady, thankfully she was one of the kinder ones, she was very welcoming, and extremely stressed about the parking, she was worried we were gonna get a fine. How nice of her?! Unfortunately she was over cautious about the virus, which is usually a good thing, however this time it meant she left the windows wide open, and the radiators couldn’t heath up the apartment, not even by the third day went we left.

The next morning we went exploring, we walked to the main square, on our way we saw one of the most beautiful wooden houses we’ve ever seen! Even it’s color was fascinating, the whole house just made me stand there, and stare at it. Which wasn’t really an option because Sari wasn’t that into that house, and we were quite cold anyway. 


We continued our trip, we admired the Freedom Monument, from there it was only a four minutes walk to the downtown. Which turned out to be the capital city of vans, every single street had at least one van parked on the side of the road, if not on the middle of it. It was funny that we had to take detours all the time because the road was blocked. It was funny for us, but who do people live there like this?! We got to the main square before noon, where we cruised for a bit. Eventually we started starving, however it was a pain in the ass to find a place to eat before noon. By the time we found a nice place to eat, we didn’t care about eating local food anymore, we went to a burger place. We had a nice burger and a Latvian beer — because there’s nothing that could stop me from discovering local beers. Both the burger and the beer turned out to be pretty amazing, which gave us some energy to explore more — remember by this time we were traveling for twelve days, and we’ve driven around 2,500km. We walked to the riverbank and the local market. At the market we were looking for magnets for the fridge, soon we found an stand that was ran by an older lady. She asked where we were coming from, and when we told her Hungary she got super excited, she told us she’s been to Budapest a few times, and she knew a lot of Hungarian actors’ name, unfortunately we have never heard their name before, so we couldn’t really chat about it. She showed us her magnets, she showed one with the market on it, she showed where we were. That was such a moving moment, we both agreed that we were must buy that magnet she showed us. After that we ran home to chill a bit, have a hot shower to recharge properly. 


As soon as it got dark we left our apartment and we went on a evening walk. Before we left we wrote a list of the bars we could have visited, we checked all of them and we chose our favorite. It was a quite big bar, with nice bartenders, and comfy seats, what more could we asked for? We spent the rest of our evening at that bar. 

For me, Riga was… erm how should I say it. So, I loved how nice the people were there, however I didn’t feel like the city would’ve gave me that much extra memories. Although I say that, I’m glad we had the opportunity to meet those nice people. I’m not sure if any of this actually makes sense. But I guess we should travel for the experience and to connect with people not for the hope of a magnificent city. Does it make any sense now?

Anyway have a great day, see you tomorrow!

Take care,

Almos

Location: Riga, Latvia

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