Baltics24: Day 10 – Riga
Our first full day in Riga and, well, it’s closed for Jani Day, their midsummer public holiday.
It turns out that in these parts, the pagan cosplay also involves staying up until dawn, screaming at the dawn, then going to bed. So we missed out on the majority of the celebration, but I’m okay with that, it’s cool that we are here at the right time but the Latvians have been through enough in their lifetimes, they don’t need a few extra tourists bumbling through their traditions and celebrations. While I’m sure we’d have been welcomed, from all we’ve seen Latvians are a friendly, hospitable people, but being real, we’re entering into an age (or is it an era, isn’t everything an era these days?) where sometimes tourists need to just let the people who live there do their thing.
So we did ours, had a slow morning before wandering down to the Riga Central Markets in the vague belief they’d be open (google was showing activity there, if less busy than usual). Turns out google was probably picking up the activity at the supermarket on the edge of the markets, as everything else was shut up. So I’ll save the whole market description ex-Zeppelin hangar stuff until tomorrow, when we go back.
The Riga Stockmann was open, so we had a wander in, grabbed a few interesting bits, and checked out all the wondrous foods that Latvia has on offer. It’s always interesting to see the different types of meat, fish, cheese and vegetables on offer, definitely much more than our supermarkets back home.
Our lunch plan was to check out Burzma, “I am the food hall” however today it was the food hall that was closed, so we headed for one of the many squares in Riga and the Belgium-themed Colonel Brew Pub and Kitchen. L went for the mussels, while I had a very decent burger with their house lager, which was decent, full bodied, and with a hint of fruit. We followed this with a couple of small glasses of Latvian Black Balsam spirit, an alcoholic herbal drink that is basically essential for all travellers here to try. The waiter recommended the blackcurrent variety for L (“No no too strong, perhaps for the man, but this one is better”) while me, “the man”, went with original (“this used to have over 20 herbs, and was medicinal, it now has 11 and is still slightly medicinal”). Years ago there was a chemist-only expectorant cough mixture, I can’t remember the name, in a brown glass bottle, and the black balsam tasted kind of like that, if it then had an alcohol boost. I believe that the black balsam is only 20-25% abv, but it sure packs a punch with that; I’ve had 60% whiskies that were smoother. I read a review that said this spirit was “smoother than jagermeister” and that’s quite possibly true, then again the cobblestones beneath our feet in the old town are also smoother than the j-stuff. There will be people who will love Black Balsam, and good luck to them. Given the number of travesties that Australia has produced in the name of drink (Australian lager, Bundy, various whiskies, and quinoa whisky) I’ve got no grounds for going after this rather “interesting” spirit.
Our wanderings through Riga took in pretty much all of the interesting sites: the cat statues on the roof; the House of the Black Heads; the riflemen monument; Big Christopher; the national library (also called the Castle of Light); the Remembrance Memorial to the Victims of the Soviet Occupation; the marker for Riga’s first public Christmas Tree (in 1510, Tallinn claims they were first in 1441, I wasn’t invited to either party); the big round tower; and the castle. All the sights.
We also took an hour boat right through the main Riga canal, which was very relaxing, just needed to believe that the boat would squeeze under all of the low bridges.
After a rest back at the hotel (post climbing all 97 steps) we headed out to a nearby restaurant for dinner. O’paps, which sounds like an irish pub, and has plenty of Guinness paraphernalia, but the menu and tap beers certainly weren’t. I went for the garlic bread, as I really wanted to check out how well dark rich rye bread would work (it works wonderfully), and the beef tongue with horseradish sauce (came out as cold slices that were tasty, not strong flavoured, firm texture but not at all chewy). With this I tried the house lager (decent, full bodied), then a couple of dark beers with names and breweries I hadn’t heard of (Valmiermuizas Tumsais and Brengulu Tumsais, both full bodied, malty, with the Brengulu a little sweeter; my quick google seems to equate tumsais to a dunkel).
Tomorrow’s the aviation museum, the markets, and some shopping, now that all the locals have finished yelling at the dawn and got their beauty sleep (I’m not being facetious, apparently part of the stuff that folks can do on midsummer is designed to give them beauty, google it).