SUNDAY
We arrived in Riga, Latvia around five-ish on Sunday evening, after leaving the Monk's Bunk early enough to make it to the bus station on time. We rode a double-decker bus, which was exciting, and all three of us had seats on the top floor! Ecolines reserves the right to randomly change your seat assignment without warning and for no discernible reason, so we were glad that the seats we bought were the seats we got, as it were.
We stayed at a hostel called Cinnamon Sally (other options in the area included the Naughty Squirrel and the Tiger Hostels). Cinnamon Sally is part of a network of backpackers' hostels in this part of the world, so they were affiliated with the Monk's Bunk. They were about the same quality, in any case; Sally was less brand-spankin'-new, but the facilities were nice and they even had a washer and a dryer available for guest use. Of course, none of us actually got around to doing laundry while we were there. But we could have, and that's the important thing.
The thing about Riga, we would soon discover, is that despite having a very active nightlife scene, not a lot of things are open on Sunday, especially in the evenings. We initially wanted to get dinner at this place called the "Folk Club Cave," which appeared to be closed, so we ended up at this UK-themed pub. Mostly because it was the first open place that wasn't deserted that we encountered, and there was a large group of loud young men wandering the streets about a block away that made us kind of nervous. Obviously none of us speak Latvian, but some of the guys were speaking in what sounded like Russian and Liz caught what she thought was something about "stupid tourists."
So, yes, we ducked into the first restaurant we came across that wasn't completely empty, called the Queens Public House and Restaurant. It was here that we discovered something else about Latvia: the beer sucks. Nearly every beer that any of us tried had an awful metallic aftertaste; one notable exception is a stout that Liz got at the Folk Club Cave, which we ended up going to twice. Riga is clearly a cocktails-and-shots kind of town. All the food was delicious, though. I got a tasty burger from the Queens place, and when we went back to Folk Club, I got this awesome bacon-wrapped stuffed chicken monstrosity of tastiness. I think it was a chicken fillet wrapped in bacon and stuffed with caramelized onions, cheese, dried plums and something else, topped with vegetable caviar, on a bed of a "potato and carrot mash." Trés gourmet!
Latvia is expensive relative to the US; they aren't on the Euro, instead still using their own currency of lati and sentami. The lat is among the strongest currencies in Europe, with one lat being approximately equal to about US$1.90. So, you know, at first you look at your check and think "OK, 14-something isn't bad for all we got," and then you remember that that's approaching US$30. At the same time, though, for the quantity and quality of food and drink that we got, at a similar place in the US, the bill would probably come out to be about the same. So, it's expensive relative to the US when you're on a student budget. I didn't buy any souvenirs in Latvia for this reason, although we're going to have ten hours to kill in Riga on the way home on Saturday, so I suppose there's still time.
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MONDAY
A funny thing happened while we were in Latvia. As you know, if you were smart and started reading the glut of posts about my Baltic adventures with Estonia, we went to Tallinn for a music festival. Among the acts we watched there was this Austrian band called Diver. I talked about them in the last Estonia post. Anyway, it turns out that Diver inadvertently followed us to Riga, and Monday night they were playing at this little hole-in-the-wall bar in the old part of the city called I Love You. So, we decided to check it out.
First, we thought the show was at 8 PM. I don't know who misread the 24-hour time, Liz or whoever maintains the Diver Facebook page. So we all took a nap and then hauled bones to make it to the bar by 8. Upon arrival, we inspected the poster advertising that evening's entertainment, where the start time was listed as 10 PM (22:00). We were in the middle of freaking out about being 2 hours early when the band showed up. Awkward!
We went inside and decided to get some food, anyway, as long as we were here and had some time to kill. Each of us ordered a 20cm pizza and gave a slice to each other when they arrived. The bolognese I got was amazing; there was some hot sauce on it, as well as jalapeños and pickle slices. It was wonderful--see, I like spicy food, but the Russians don't, so truly flavorful spicy deliciousness is hard to come by in Petersburg. Liz's margherita pizza was good too, as was the veggie pizza Corinne opted for, but oh god the spiciness. I miss it already. Luckily, I think I can recreate it, and I'm gonna try to do so this summer.
We finished our pizzas and still had about 45 minutes to kill before the show was to begin...so we just kind of sat there and talked for a while. Eventually 10 o'clock rolled around and we went downstairs to the basement. The show was a really intimate affair--about a dozen chairs and two dozen people packed into a tiny room while three Austrian guys with guitars (plus a keyboard, accordion, and melodica) sang songs about awkward romance and drinking. Their set was longer than it was in Tallinn, and we got to hear a couple more songs from them, which was cool.
Afterward we went back to the hostel and got to bed relatively early, because the next day was Liz's birthday and we had plans to go to the seaside. But you know what they say about plans, right?
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TUESDAY
The best-laid plans of mice and men and all that. We did manage to get up early as well as navigate the complex interaction that is "buying train tickets" without much incident.
And then we missed the train.
Twice.
Luckily, the ticket didn't specify a time; the train out to Majori (coastal town) leaves roughly every 40 minutes and you can basically hop on whenever, as long as you're at the right station, so we just waited around and got some lunch. Our original plan was to go out to the seaside in the morning, leaving time that afternoon to check out some museums; we didn't actually manage to board a train until 1 pm. But we did manage it, and we saw the Baltic sea! I've got a picture here that will look very silly to friends and family in Florida, both because I am a silly girl and because it shows me on a beach, in a long winter coat. Here:
Here's me and Corinne being silly. I think there were two other people on the beach that day, thankfully they ignored us as we ran around laughing like crazy people.
And here's Liz, being silly on a swing. It's hard to see but these swings are about 10 inches off the ground. Clearly not for young ladies such as ourselves. Did that stop us? No.
We walked around for a while after that, poking into souvenir shops and the like, before deciding to head back to the train station and return to the city center. For the return trip, the lady at the ticket counter sold us one actual ticket for three people; the lady at the Riga station gave the three of us separate tickets. They just look like receipts, and the attendants on the train just stamp the backs of them, they don't tear them or punch them or anything. So, of course Corinne pulled out her Riga-to-Majori ticket by mistake when the attendant came by on the return trip. Cue panic! I mean, why would she have sold us a ticket to Majori in Majori?! But the proper ticket was then found and all was well.
Tuesday just turned out to be a comedy of errors for everyone, really. After taking a two-hour nap in the luxuriously comfortable hostel beds (because somehow missing two trains is exhausting), Liz checked her email and saw that she had a response from one of the universities she'd applied to for grad school, a university she was really excited about. They turned her down. :( The obvious course of action was to locate the nearest pub and stay there until it closed, so that is essentially what we did, going back to the Folk Club Cave because they had beer that didn't taste like metal.
We would have stayed out later, and Liz would have ordered some whiskey and "descended into Liquor Land," as she put it, if we didn't have to get up early to catch a bus on Wednesday. But we did, so she didn't, and we called it a night around one in the morning.
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