We are definitely doing this trip the right way round the world, as adjusting to the new time zones is proving easier than first anticipated. Hong Kong was only 4 hours behind New Zealand, and Riga (our destination for today) is only 5 hours behind Hong Kong. Frankfurt and Amsterdam are only a further 1 hour behind Riga. The biggest test will be when we get to Mexico, as that will likely be a bigger jump in time zones.
The flight to Riga was swift (only 1 ½ hours) and did not require us to go through any passport control - evidently because we were already in Europe, our passport is not required, which is going to seriously cut down the amount of stamps we will get. Arriving in Riga was the simplest process so far, we simply collected our baggage and left - no immigration, no customs (what is with these places? It is no wonder that so many people get caught in Australia and New Zealand trying to bring in illegal things).
Tessa and Dave picked us up from the airport, and getting a bit lost on the way back gave us a chance to see some of the outskirts of Riga, which involved a lot or very poor areas with beat up windowless houses. Our apartment was in Riga Old Town, which is quite magnificent. It has very old style buildings and streets made of cobble, which when walking down makes you feel like you are living several hundred years ago. Some parts of the Old Town reminded us of Christchurch, with nice parks and a good sized river running through the middle. The streets were very quiet in Old Town, both pedestrians and cars. Despite this, walking on the streets you never really felt safe, particularly after several people had warned us how closely you must guard your wallet.
We went to the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, which was interesting. We also spent a bit of time walking the streets and happened to catch a routine by uniformed soldiers at the Freedom Monument. There was also a market of locally produced goods (mostly honey and well decorated gingerbread biscuits) with traditional song and dance for some festival that was going on. We had dinner at a traditional Latvian restaurant, where you help yourself to whatever you want (including pouring your own beer for tap) and taking it to the cashier to calculate the cost of your meal. Beer is the one this here that seems to be cheap. All the food they served was the usual stuff, salad, chicken, fish, pork etc, the main novelty was the selection of differently cooked potatoes. After dinner we went to catch up with everyone else (Patrick, Sonita, Donovan, Melissa etc) at the local Sports Bar, which was playing the ICC World 20/20 semi-final live between Sri Lanka and West Indies.
It was around 11:00pm when we went to bed (big day tomorrow!) and the sky was still light. We have also heard that it gets light very early (from around 4:00am) so will be interesting to know how many hours of darkness there actually are.
Finally a big thanks to Tessa and Dave for taking such good care of us while here in Latvia.
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