Wait... you liked who more?

Didn't get much sleep last night. No idea why, though I did spend an inordinate amount of time reading The Shining (I can't believe I hadn't before). I had just downloaded the sequel and figured I should read the first one. Stephen King sure can suck you into a book. I stayed up late reading, but when I tried to go to sleep - it just wasn't happening. Part of it was a damn mosquito that had managed to get into the room. I would be about to fall asleep when the damn tell tale buzzing would erupt near my ear and I would try to swat it instinctively. Rinse and repeat until almost 5am. When I did get to sleep I ended up waking around 10am when someone was fixing something in the hotel. <sigh>

So I managed to get out of the door and headed down towards the starting point for the hop on/off bus tour. I like taking them all the way around to give me an idea on places to check out later on. I hit a cheap coffee place for some solyanka, a latte, and a couple eggs with bacon. Then hit the bus.

A rooster on a cat on a dog on a donkey. Stick em between two slices of bread and I'm good.

There were two bus lines, green and blue, and I decided to take both of them one after another. I asked for the 48 hour bus tour, so that I could use the bus tomorrow to get to some cool places I want to check out. I liked the bus tours and they had an audio guide that described the various places. I figured out that I want to hit the giant TV tower, the Central Market, and the Art Nouveau area where all the embassies were located. Apparently, there are over 700 buildings in that style in Riga.

This made sense as every time I wandered around Riga, I found more really cool architecture to see. Riga is starting to top the Golden Bend in Amsterdam in terms of really cool buildings all placed next to each other. We also headed across the river to check out the other side of the city with some of the buildings set around there. All in all the tour was pretty cool.

Disco Buddha chick? Oh 80s, you are so silly.

After I got done with that, I took in the Occupation Museum next to the area where the bus starts. It takes into account the period of history from 1918 or so until 1991 when Latvia was released from Russian rule. It started out being Russian from the 1700s, then it Germans occupied it in WWI. After which it became independent. Until the Russians took it over prior to WWII. Then the Nazis rolled in and took it over. After the war, it was declared part of Russia during the aftermath. The tour guide that lead me, some English, and some Germans sounded somewhat miffed and felt that the Western powers didn't push Russia to get the Baltic states their independence. This kind of confused me - my first thought was "dude, we play in too many of other's peoples sandboxes". It seems a no win situation. If we get involved - we're assholes for manipulating another country's politics. If we don't get involved - we're assholes for not supporting democracy in other countries and we're letting down their people. At the time, I'm pretty sure no one in their right mind wanted to see the US and Russia declare war on each other at the point - right after nukes started coming into the picture.

Anyway, Latvia finally got their independence after a bloodless revolution when the Soviet Union was dissolving. It was weird hearing of all the nasty things both the Germans and Russians did to the Latvians. They were basically a middle ground between the two. What especially surprised me was that the Latvians looked forward to the Nazis invading as they though it would be better than the treatment they had from Russians hands. Even after the Holocaust, the Latvians STILL felt that the Nazis were marginally better than the Russians (sorry Natalia, it wasn't me saying this!). Wow. I really felt for them. The choice was between the Holocaust and Russian gulags. That's pretty harsh. (Sooooo, how would you like to die horribly - door number one or door number two?)

Kind of a buzz kill, but it was a fascinating museum with a lot of memorabilia from 1918 to 1991. The ways that the Latvians tried to live in both concentration camps and in gulags were strikingly similar. Hand drawn artwork and written names on cloth napkins, cleverly hidden to prevent their destruction. Side by side the collections were no different. But even then the Russian occupation HELPED Latvia by somewhat lifting them out of dismal abject poverty that they faced in the early 1930s, when the death toll from starvation was between 50 to 80 percent - depending upon the village.

Damn. And here get bummed when I run out of microwave burritos. That was a big reality check.

They closed up at 5, so I headed out to walk around Old Town.

Y'know, I could spend hours just walking around and finding all the cool little hidden niches.

The cool angular buildings.

The awesome artwork on them.

And the way cool sheer beauty of the place. Its no wonder the EU declared it as a top cultural city.

I eventually made my way back to the hotel to drop off my stuff, then I headed out again to find some munchies and something alcoholic. I walked up and down the main street dividing Old Town (Kalku) but didn't see anything appealing. It was nighttime though and it was cool checking out all the clubs and people walking about.

I ended up at Mallone's. A quasi Irish pub that served English and American food. It had a burger that I found lacking (NEVER put Thousand Island dressing on a burger - its just WRONG), onion rings, fires, and an English cider. The people seemed friendly and cool, but they just didn't speak English very well and my Latvian is on par with my Russian (which is to say, I can say the phrase "please put the banana in the washroom" - but only when I'm actually asking where the restroom is located). Some hockey was playing on the TV and it seemed like a nice locals type joint nestled in the midst of bars competing for tourist business. The guys in the red jerseys were beating the crap out of the guys in the white jerseys. Every once in a while they would put some American guy on that was playing for one of the teams and he would have a deer-in-the-headlights look as he described whatever the sportscaster wanted of him. I'm pretty sure he didn't speak a lick of Latvian and being imported to play where he understood only to get the puck into someone else's net was confusing to him. 

At least the girls in the audience were hot Eastern block gals. So when they hollered at him, he could look confused and wave a lot.