Latvian Whirlwind

This past weekend was our last out of the country vacation and we spent it in Riga, Latvia. We ended up leaving after teaching on Thursday night and we were on the bus and on our way at 9:40 pm.

This trip was just the three of us, Victoria, Kelsey and I. We got to Riga at a little after 7 am and it was snowing! It was so ridiculously cold, we found our hostel right away and tried to see if we could check in, but unfortunately we couldn't until 2 pm. We had time to kill and not a lot of energy to do so with. (Sleeping on a bus is extremely hard)

We explored the city a little bit, but everything is closed until 10 am so we ended up finding a cafe to stay in and "warm up" a little. I say "warm up" because we never actually did, it was freezing and I'm pretty sure our internal organs had froze by that point.

Once things opened up at 10 am we braved the cold again and went to look at souvenir shops and all that jazz, we mainly walked around and went to shops. The Christmas Market in Riga was opened so that was cool, but there weren't as many shops as we expected I think.

The Musicians of Bremen based on the fairytale by the Grimm Brothers

Laima Chocolate is made in Riga

I loved seeing sweaters on the poles outside this little shop

Around 1 pm we couldn't take it any longer and we tried to go check into our hostel (again) and they told us it needed to be cleaned still but that we could hang out in their common area, so we did, hoping it would be warmer (it wasn't). They had a candle on the table and we all kept trying to warm ourselves up with it. We waited until 2 and then we were let up to our room, it had 5 beds but just the three of us stayed in it, so that was cool. As soon as we got into the room we all huddled around the space heater they had just plugged in (none of the other heaters worked) and we didn't move. We kept trying to lay on it and get as close as we could, we didn't even care at that point if we got burnt because we were fairly certain we would never know what warmth was again. We fondly gave the heater the name Hank.

Kelsey and I passed out in our jackets, hats, scarves, gloves, etc. with our beds pushed up to the heater and Victoria quickly followed suit, we all woke up around 7:30 pm realizing it was finally warm again! It was so nice to feel warm again because we had been so cold for so long, and it had stopped snowing so we went and found a grocery store to buy something to eat and then spent the rest of the night in the hostel hanging out.

The following day we explored a little bit and then we got to meet up with Alisa, a Riga native. We were lucky enough to be put into contact with her through Victoria's brother who is currently serving a mission in Latvia. It was really awesome getting a chance to be taught more about the city by someone who lives there, plus we got to know her and she is such an awesome person! I'm so glad we got to meet her and hear her stories!

Freedom Monument

The Cat House

I want to take a moment to highlight the Cat House in Riga, it's the best story of revenge ever -

Once upon a time there was a man who lived in this house, he was a merchant and wanted to become part of the German merchants Guild next door, unfortunately they told him they didn't want him to be a member. Distraught the man ordered two cat sculptures to be made that he could mount on the roof of his house - just so he could have their butts facing the Guild. THEIR BUTTS. No better revenge than that. The best part of the story is that there ended up being a lawsuit over the whole ordeal because the Guild was really offended by the cat butts and the man ended up being allowed into the Guild so long as he turned the cats around.

The oldest Latvian crest was moved here after the old weigh-house was destroyed in WWII

The Three Brothers are the oldest residential buildings in Riga.

Home of the first Riga Executioner

We really loved being shown around by Alisa and hearing the stories about the city and the different buildings, she also took us to go eat some traditional Latvian food! It was so amazing and we were definitely blessed to have that experience. (If only we could have had it last weekend when the light festival was in Riga, dang it!)

After Alisa had to go to work we went back to exploring and souvenir shopping, we had such a great second day in Riga, we were all pretty sad to be leaving it so early the next day, it was so pretty and we hung our heads out our hostel room window for a large majority of the night just admiring it (and also trying to get people to look up and wave at us)

The next morning we made our way to the bus station and said goodbye to Riga at 9 am, we didn't end up getting back to St. Petersburg until about 9:30 pm so it was a long day riding buses and that definitely wears on us, luckily we don't have to spend hours going through border control again or riding in those crazy buses.

We do have one more vacation planned and that will be this weekend. (We're traveling all over the place in November!) Really glad to be flying as well, our next adventure is Moscow!