Day 99 - Saturday 10 August - Riga

Saturday 10 August

We started the day with a 'free' guided walking tour of the old city, which started at 10:00 at St Peter's church. 

The city of Bremen was another member of the Hanseatic League, and gifted this statue to Riga.

The 100 tourists who turned up were shared between 3 guys, and we got Edvards, who was very knowledgeable and clearly spoken. For 90mins he led us around the town, stopping every so often to point out a building and tell its history, or a story about it. As with most of these free guides, he was well worth his tip.

Riga claim to have had the first decorated Christmas tree, in 1510.  They don't know what sort of decorations it had, so they haven't put any on their memorial.  Tallinn reckon they had the first tree, but theirs wasn't decorated.  But they probably both got the idea from Germany.

 2 of the '3 brothers' similar buildings but of different centuries.

 Narrow streets

 The Riga footprints for the Baltic Way, near the Freedom Monument.

 While we were at the footprints, the navy came marching through.  The band played at the Freedom monument for about 30mins.

We retraced out steps to call back to some churches and souvenir shops I thought might be able to help my quest, but no. Edvards did say this morning that Latvia is No#8 on the world scale of atheist countries, so I'm not surprised there is very little around. 

Sit at the bar and pedal.  Then the whole bike thing moves forward.

 We called in at the minimarket and got some lunch which we had at home, and after a rest we headed off on a long walk to find another shop which appears to have moved. We got a tram back across the city, then walked across their big bridge to a small museum built to honour a "Righteous Among the Nations" family. Then we got a bus back. David retook some photos from this morning when the light was not right, we found the big supermarket and came home.

 

Lots of people were going through the Navy's gate.  This morning's march must have had something to do with their open day.

An interesting old house.

The Janis Lipke museum.  He and his family saved 40-60 Jews by hiding them initially in a cellar dug underneath their wood shed.  This was about 1/5 of the total of Latvian Jews saved.

Janis and Johanne Lipke.