The Wandering Chocoholic

Saturday morning, I dragged my groggy self out of bed after a fitful night of tossing and turning. Lina served up eggs with tomato and cucumber for breakfast, and everyone at the hostel saw me off and wished me well. I was only there for a few days, but the place really felt like home already and I was sad to leave, especially under the circumstances.

My bus ride to Riga took about four hours. It was a well appointed coach with WiFi, reclining seats and — best of all — air conditioning. A good thing, too, since today was another scorcher, with the mercury hitting 34 degrees. The ride took us through the Lithuanian and Latvian countrysides. We actually had our passports inspected at the Latvian border — a rarity for Europe, but Latvia is in the Eurozone and Lithuania isn’t yet, so I suppose that’s why. I dozed on and off, watched the scenery, jotted down some notes and thoughts for when I get home, and basically tried to hold it together as best as I could.

We pulled into the central bus station in Riga at around 2pm, and I grabbed my bags and walked over to my hostel, a few minutes away in the Old Town. The hostel was much bigger than the one in Vilnius, but seemed friendly enough and had funky decor. At any rate, I was only staying for one night, so it didn’t matter much. I was greeted at reception with a shot of Riga Black Balsam, the local liqueur. It’s sort of sickly-sweet and very strong, not altogether pleasant, but the tourist shops seem to do a bustling trade in it.

I’d intended to be in Riga for a few days, and to visit the surrounding towns and national parks and see more of Latvia. Unfortunately, circumstances being what they were, I only had about twelve hours to see the city. So, tired as I was, I decided to make the most of it and set out to explore.

Riga’s Old Town is actually very nice. It’s bigger than Vilnius, but still pretty compact and can be walked from one end to the other in about fifteen or twenty minutes. It being Saturday, there were tons of people out and about walking around. There are tons of Art Nouveau buildings everywhere, many of them original or expertly-done restorations. Of course, there are lots of churches. And Riga, unlike Vilnius, feels like it’s on its way to being thoroughly Americanized — the giant McDonald’s, Burger King, TGI Fridays and Irish pubs all testified to that. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), Riga has earned itself a bit of a reputation in the past number of years as a city for Brits and Western Europeans to come to drink heavily, party hard, and go home happy. I must have counted at least a half-dozen stag and hen parties.

I walked around for a while, saw some nice looking architecture and whatnot, and then went to seek out an air conditioned haven from the heat. I found one in the shape of another chocolate shop (yes, it’s a talent of mine) but this one was medieval themed. It was set up to look like a dungeon, especially the downstairs section. Old books, typewriters and apothecary type implements lined the walls; chandeliers hung from the ceilings, each table had a candle lit, and the staff walked around in costume. Yes, an incredibly touristy place, but also really kind of awesome. I pumped some more caffeine in my system to make up for the lack of sleep and set out again.

Just next to the Freedom Monument, there was a giant festival area set up, with loud music, big crowds and lots of cheering. Turns out it was an international 3×3 basketball tournament being played right there in the square. I watched as the women’s teams from Estonia and Ireland faced off against each other with some pretty snazzy moves.

At that point, I met a guy called Simon from London, who I’d noticed stopping at all the same sites and snapping all the same photos as me. After about the third or fourth time of us nodding to each other, we made introductions and ended up wandering around the city together, photographing and chatting. He’s an interesting guy, a freelance locksmith who studied furniture restoration and who was on a three month motorcycle trip around Eastern Europe. We walked around exploring the Old Town for a while, and then grabbed dinner and drinks and had some really good conversation about travel and politics and philosophy that was the perfect distraction that I needed right then.

By then, it was quite late, and my original plan of getting to sleep early was out the window. It didn’t matter; the town was loud and hopping as only a party town on a Saturday night could be, so trying to sleep in that cacophony would’ve been futile. Oh well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. , Simon and I ended up going on a bit of a self-directed impromptu pub crawl, including stops at an Australian pub where the drinks were served out of a carved-out VW van, and in a sort of weirdly goth / biker bar full of local Latvian kids who really, really wanted to drunkenly practice their English on us. It oddly, unexpectedly turned into a really great night, of the sort that you can have sometimes on the road and really only on the road.

At a really ridiculously small hour of the morning, I dragged myself back to my hostel to wait for my taxi to the airport. Riga, I’m sorry I didn’t get to spend more time here, ’cause you’re kinda great. I’ll hopefully be back one day.