Asia/Europe Travels 2008: Kuala Lumpur Thailand Laos Vietnam Germany Austria Prague (Czech Republic)
Poland Vilnius (Lithuania) Riga (Latvia) Berlin London (UK) Amsterdam (Holland) Dublin (Ireland) Hamburg

Riga - (Latvia)

Tuesday 28th October - Riga

We all wandered into town late morning, past St Peters to the tourist bureau. I really wanted to do something exciting today, something adventurous that didn't involve reading about wars or visiting cathedrals. The lady at the tourist bureau was very helpful giving me dozens of pamphlets almost as if I was to spend a week there. There were two things I wanted to do. One was the bobsled where you get to experience riding downhill on a sled at speeds of up to 120km/hr. This was seasonal however and thus closed today. The other thing was some sort of ball where you literally crawl inside a massive inflatable ball and are pushed downhill, over streams etc. This too was closed, and all that remained in the adventure side of things was a kind of tree top adventure course. It had been raining however so would be wet and slippery. I resigned to go and sit in a cafe and work out what to do. After a short while it started pouring down, so my mind was made up. It was going to be more sight seeing today. I met up with the others at the Markets which were housed in the old Zeppelin hangers. Zeppelins I learned today are the large blimps that were used for transport. The band Led Zeppelin was hence named based on an incident where one of these zeppelins fell to the ground like a piece of lead. These markets were huge, and contained all sorts of quirky trinkets and foods. I even spotted a bowl of raw tongues!

Sally and I went on from there to the museum of occupation which was quite interesting. It looked at both world wars and how Latvia eventually claimed its independence. It was donation entry and I think we spent about 2 hours in there so I would highly recommend it. Afterwards we just walked around town past the castle and grabbed a few things from the supermarket.

Wednesday 29th October - Riga to Berlin

Today was our last day in Eastern Europe. We got all our things in order and packed for the flight back to Berlin. We had a few hours to kill before our flight so we wandered around the markets again and grabbed a bite to eat. We then jumped on the bus number 22 which took us past a few stops to the airport. It cost 0.40 each and 0.80 each for our bags, so we used up most of our spare change. At the airport we wanted to get rid of the last of our change so went in search of postcards and badges etc. The shops were about three times the price however so there wasn't too much we could buy. I bought a single postcard with my last 0.70 (like about $2). Our flight back was only an hour and a half or something and I managed to fall asleep most of the way.

Back to Berlin!

Arriving back in Berlin, we were once again on familiar territory. It was a double train stop to our apartment which we are staying for two weeks. It will be a nice chance to catch up on all the things you don't get time to do when away, like washing clothes, writing emails, editing and sorting pictures, sleeping, organising other bits of the trip and reading about places we have been. I was certainly hanging out to get here and thankfully we had finally made it to Berlin (Germany) again.