Saturday 18th May Riga, Latvia

 After our wonderful excursion yesterday, we had decided to explore the city of Riga on our own. We weren’t in too much of a hurry so we had a late breakfast and disembarked. We took the cruise shuttle bus into the main part of the city which was not really that far from the port where the cruise ship was docked. Although we had maps etc. we decided to purchase a ticket for the “Hop-on Hop-off” bus just to get a feel of the city. It was another warm day, in fact close to being hot and being a Saturday, it was very busy with a few thousand people from Riga out and about, competing in a fun run, through the city.  Anyway Rob and I sat in the lower section of the bus and did a complete circuit of the city. The audio was a bit difficult to hear but we saw most of the points of interest and some buildings of the “Old City” and some of the many, beautiful “Art Nouveau” buildings. It seems that Riga and Latvia’s political history is much like that of Lithuania. In the city of Riga, 42% of the population are Latvian and 41% are Russian but generally for the rest of Latvia it is more like 80% Latvian to 20% Russian. There are many buildings that have been restored and retained but it also it has quite a lot of modern architecture mixed in with it. Rob and I departed the bus at one point and went for a walk in a beautiful park that bordered the banks of the canal. Riga has many parks and gardens filled with shady trees and gorgeous flower beds everywhere. From here went ventured into the oldest part of Riga and saw the powder tower, the market square, very old churches etc. Many of the narrow cobbled stone streets had been converted into pedestrian walkways and they were filled with people sitting outside of different establishments, enjoying a drink or some lunch.  We returned to the spot where we were to catch the shuttle bus back to the ship but realised we had just missed one so we decided to go around again of the Hop-on, Hop-off bus. We decided to sit up the top this time so we could see more of the buildings and to our surprised we met our friends Trudy and Rob. Initially, they had thought they would stay on the ship for the day but after catching up on things decided to go into the city. Anyway we enjoyed another trip around and this time had a better view and better commentary. We returned to the ship and after dinner enjoyed another fantastic show in the theatre. This time it was a British performer from the West End, called Rob McVeigh. He had a wonderful voice and sang many big numbers from the well-known musicals as well as songs from people like Elton John, Frankie Vali and Tom Jones etc.  


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