With only one full day in Riga I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to see everything. I had marked off the points of interest on my map but they all seemed pretty far away from each other. Spoiler alert: they weren't. To make sure that I got the most out of the day I opted to take the sightseeing tour bus. It was just me and a bunch of old (65+) people but I didn't mind. The entire city tour took just under two hours. While pretty there just isn't much going on or remarkably unique.
I took the whole bus tour, both routes, and opted to just get off where I had gotten on and see where wandering would take me. Sometimes the best experience comes from just picking a path and following it until you reach a new one and repeating until you're tired or lost. I happened to see all the same things I saw on the bus more or less just up close. It was nice to have context for these landmarks and they looked much better in person then through the filmy window of a bus. I took lots of pictures, stopped to get some chocolate to bring back to my co-workers, and did some window shopping.
Before I knew it it was 4pm and my stomach was growling. I realized then that I hadn't eaten since the night before. I thought that a burger would be great and went wandering through the streets in search of something that would satiate my hunger. I didn't want to go anywhere too fancy or get anything too big since I had plans to check out Easy Wine, the sister location to Easy Beer, for dinner. Eventually I reached the point where I was so hungry I couldn't think and didn't want to move any more, so I settled on getting shawarma which is incredibly common in the area - little kebab shops dot the cobblestone streets up and down the city.
I spent the remainder of the daylight packing my bag for my early morning flight, updating the blog, downloading photos, catching up with my folks, and before I knew it it was time to head out into the night for dinner. I had already decided to go to Easy Wine. After the life changing experience I had at Easy Beer and mentioning a wine version to my friends I was compelled to at least see what it was. The menu was very similar and I got the fish again (with pureed cauliflower, it was AMAZING!) and set off to explore the wines. Typically I'm not much for wine, I find most of the ones I come across to not fit my palate. They're usually too bitter or taste like dirty socks or like you're drinking water made from an oak plank. I expected, with 60 wines on tap, to find at least one if not a dozen that I hated but 5 small glasses of wine later I simply couldn't find a loser. My only complaint about the place was the seating was all high-top seats - definitely not comfortable enough to stay until they closed.
So instead of sitting and drinking wine until 11pm, I headed back to my hostel (The Naughty Squirrel) instead. I dropped off my things in my room and headed to the common area. I was worried for a moment that I had gotten there too early or that I would be the only one but when I walked in there was last night's crowd again, plus some new faces. As one of the guys aptly said later that evening, it's rare to find a group of people in the hostel that you have such a good time with. Usually it's one or two people and you tolerate or ignore the rest, but in this case it was about twelve of us who all got along like we had been the oldest of friends. I realized that that's what happens when most of the people you're with also have a passion and understand what it is to travel (and will be writing a post about that later).
The whole Naughty Squirrel crew (sans my Scottish friend James from the previous two nights) ended up at the Fox bar again. This time it was very crowded. The receptionist at the hostel had described Riga nightlife as starting on a Wednesday, she said they call it "Little Friday," treat Thursday like Friday and then continue on with Sunday and Monday being the only quiet nights. If Wednesday is Little Friday then Tuesday must be Little Thursday because that is how crowded things were. The original plan was to wait there until some of Gabe's Latvian friends came by and brought us to a second location but for most of us it didn't happen. I heard later from Kali that they did in fact go somewhere else that night but she didn't say where. Eventually we all went back, one by one, to the hostel. I ended up back in bed around 2am, pretty early by Riga standards, and went to sleep thinking of all the new friends I had made, how much I would miss Tallinn, and the long road home.
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