Riga - the first weekend

[June 17 - 19]

All of our fans in Riga are eagerly waiting for a Latvia post, so I´m just going to write a quick one about our first weekend in Riga.

We made our way to Aaron´s apartment, who had invited us to stay at his place for the weekend. He had mandatory vacation for this week before the summer solstice (called John´s Day here), so it was perfect timing. Plus, his flatmate Martins was leaving for the weekend so we could have a real bed.

We´d only seen Aaron one time (several years ago) since he had graduated from the UW and left for a journalist job in Riga with the Baltic Times. If you want to read some of his articles, just do a Google Search on Aaron Eglitis.


The Aaron and Dean reading club

Aaron has lots of good books and magazine lying around, so we had some fun getting our fill of new material. He also had internet so we hogged that too. I´ll mention that it was customary to take off your shoes in his place, but the floor was really filthy, probably because their only mop was broken. Note the dirty feet in the picture above.

Among our other activities, we visited the large Lido restaurant. It is a short bus ride away, but well worth the travel. Here, an overwhelming maze of Latvian buffet dishes await. Outside, they have a large activity center for children and a few landscaping elements. Everyone seemed to want their picture by this waterfall, so we followed suit. (As an inside joke from another friend´s blog, this is one of the "dope waterfalls" on the site.)


Waterfall at Lido

Sampling the Latvian food also requires a sample of the local non-alcoholic health drink, Kvass. Personally, I didn´t like the stuff, but Aaron and Dean had a try at the central market and I thought that this batch was okay.

On our first night in town, Aaron took us to a party that his friends were holding. Before the party, I had a nice long nap while Aaron and Dean finished off a bottle of wine. So by the time we got to the party, they were already way ahead of me.

We were greated with welcome shots of vodka followed by welcome shots of tequila. We met a lot of nice people and Dean had the first chance to impress people with his Latvian phrases. I taught him one that roughly translates into, "I am a dude, super cool!" Raimonds, one of Aaron´s friends, thought it was so funny. Raimonds was also obsessed with taking digital photos and wanted to this flattering chin shot of everyone.


Raimonds, Daniela, Marita, Aaron, Dean at party

But at some point, poor Dean couldn´t keep up with the Latvians and I nearly had to carry him home. To make it worse, I got a bit lost on the mile long hike back to the apartment. But we had survived our first night in Riga.

On another night, we met some more people in the park for some beers and snacks. It was already 11 pm but twilight was still hanging around. The long days made it quite easy to stay up late.


Marita and Raimonds


Aaron, Marita, Dean, Joel