Got into Riga pretty late at night, only to find that I couldn’t get money out of the ATM because I was over limit (inexplicably), and once at the hotel I couldn’t open my luggage because my combination lock suddenly had a new combination. Commence extreme frustration and aggravation, trying to call Samsonite (on hold for $3.00/min no thank you), texting Cassie to try to call them, and google searches – finally I found a page which had email instructions from Samsonite on how to figure out the combination. So I now know how to get by Samsonite combination locks.
Our hotel was in a good location in Riga’s Old Town, which was not quite as nice and quaint as Tallinn, in my opinion. They allow car traffic on all the streets, which is not as nice haha. Again it was alot of walking around to see the area, once I was able to get out money from an ATM we visited St Peter’s church and went up the bell tower for a nice view of the city. Near by was the “House of Blackheads”, which I didn’t realize was a museum, so we only saw outside. Next to that was the Latvian Occupation Museum, which was free but took donations. It was much bigger and well done than I was expecting for free. It was pretty moving, as I didn’t realize how badly the Baltic states were treated by the Soviets, and Nazis, and then Soviets again. And it’s hard to imagine it all, being an American and in no danger of being invaded and occupied by another country (although if Canada decided to get greedy, I’d probably be in trouble here in WNY haha).
Grabbed a cab and went to the Riga Motor Museum, which has a pretty decent collection of Soviet made cars, or Soviet used cars (like cars given to Soviets from foreign diplomats like Nixon), including Stalin’s limo, and Breshnev’s crashed Rolls Royce. I don’t know alot about cars, but it was interesting to see. There were wax statues of Stalin and Breshnev in their cars, and I think Khruschev.
That night we got some dinner, hung around a bit, and then headed out for some drinks. Riga has gotten a bad reputation as being full of bars that will scam tourists. There was a list on wikitravel, and on the US Embassy’s website, and again in the “what to do” books we picked up so we had a list to check against to be safe. I had wanted to go to Leningrad, which was Soviet themed, and looked cool from reviews and their website – but was not what was expected so we didn’t even go in. Instead we went to the Transilvania Horror Rock Cafe, which we had found earlier in the day, and is apparently owned by Marilyn Manson’s drummer, Umberto Ferri (but I don’t know who he is). It was a goth-y bar, as expected, with open coffins with skeletons inside for tables, church-y looking furniture, and scary decorations. We tried the national drink, Riga Black Balsam, which is an herbal liquor, very strong and interesting, but I didn’t think it was that bad. We moved on from there, trying to find a few other bars, and bars with people in them, but again, we were out on a Tuesday…no one else was. So the final stop was at Mad House, with only a few others, and then we turned in.
Our 2nd day we pretty much only saw the Zoo. It was small as expected, but it’s always interesting to see animals other than cats and dogs. Grabbed lunch at a place next to the zoo, which turned out to be a pizzeria, then back to hang out before dinner. Spent the night in, since I had to get up at 4am to go to the airport and go home. I had thought about going to a KHL game, the Riga Dinamo were playing, but I couldn’t find out how to get tickets, or the costs (I didn’t want to scalp, surefire way to get screwed), and the timing didn’t work out in the end. Ah well. Next time haha.
All that was left was the long route home, Riga to Berlin (where again, I had passport issues – my passport was stamped in Riga, arriving from Kiev, but not when arriving or leaving Tallinn, and not when arriving in Riga from Tallinn, or leaving Riga to Berlin, and again not stamped when arriving in Berlin. So when in line to check in for my flight to Newark, the lady is looking for the Berlin stamp, and I came out and told her, I came from Riga and no one asked to see it or stamp it…she had a weird reaction to that and I’m just like, this is YOUR airport, you should know what is going on, but she didn’t make a big deal of it after that. Then I had luggage issues, as in Riga they routed my bag right to Newark, and Berlin didn’t like that and rerouted it to Buffalo, but had to go find my bag and retag it, so I was fully expecting it not to show up), Berlin to Newark and Newark to Buffalo. I had a bottle of fanta in my bag from Riga, which I had to get rid of in a bomb proof container, and then get explosive residue tested (where I suddenly got nervous that they could tell I was radioactive haha), but I was clean, duh. 9 hour flight to Newark, cleared customs, but was delayed going home so the layover was about 4 hours.
Home again, unpacking to find my shampoo exploded, and my souvenir for Aunt Carol broke (souvenir bummer #3). It was a great and smooth trip, with no real problems. I have probably 7gb of photos to go through, yikes!!! That’s gonna take a while 🙂 I think I covered everything, had fun but glad to be home with kitty in my comfy bed again.