Our last full day. Today is the day for doing the things that we hadn’t got round to up to now, that we want to get done before we leave. Departure is earlyish tomorrow so doesn’t count for the ability to ‘do stuff’ The flight probably leaves half an hour after the incoming early bird flight from Weeze.

Surviving all the occupations, the Freedom Monument stands tall and proud in the centre of Riga, and we visited today to see the changing of the guard. We missed it, and did not want to wait around for another hour for the next one. I was struck by the fact that people come and lay fresh flowers (presumably that the changing guard have to march around) in honour of their freedom, and the lives that were lost to achieve it. Stirring stuff.

The Book recommended pancakes for lunch, in a self service cafeteria selling just pancakes. The whole thing cost roughly 3 Euros for both of us, but was pretty rubbish (with the exception of the apple pancake rolls, which were delicious). Again, the place was full of locals, although I suspect in the summer they would have been fighting for seats with penny-conscious backpackers courtesy of Lonely Planet.

It’s a bit of a shame really that this newly purchased new edition of the LP to Eastern Europe includes all the Balkan countries they covered in the Western Balkans book. This means that the EE book is huge but only has a few pages for each country. At least we will be able to use the same one for Slovakia in October (and Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Estonia…).

We did the second of the walking tours in the map from the Tourist Information office. This one took us through the area of town containing the foreign Embassies – most of which were fondant fancies of buildings in an area stuffed with amazing architecture punctuated with Soviet concrete monstrosities. An interesting (and unfortunate) mix of the overtly beautiful and downright ugly.

The Central Market was the next marvel on the city walk – an eclectic mix of randomness where the ladies behind the meat, fish and cheese counters were wearing doily’s on their heads, and just about everything you can think of was for sale in either the indoor bit (which was in a few disused zeppelin hangars!) or the overflow spilling outdoors – making this the largest market in the Baltics. The market was packed with people – and virtually silent. Of the hundreds of stalls, only one outside was playing music. Everyone else was just calmly going about the business of buying whatever it was they were looking for (and more besides no doubt).

On the way back to the hostel, walking through the park, we noticed that the bridges had padlocks attached to them – they are ‘love padlocks’ fixed to the bridge and the key thrown into the river on a wedding day to demonstrate commitment to each other. Each was engraved with the names of couples and a date and usually some hearts, doves or flowers. How wonderful, charming and clearly thought of as a menace by the city councillors as it’s an old tradition but we couldn’t find a padlock dating before 2008 – presumably they cut them off; hopefully to make way for more, but essentially breaking the symbolic permanency of the padlocks.

Riga has been a delight. An absolutely fab weekend. No sight nor sound of hen or stag parties. We might yet come back – as you can get to Estonia AND Lithuania by bus from Riga in about 4 hours 🙂