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March 20, 2005
Jen and Lisa's Baltic Adventure - Day Six
Today was devoted to walking around and exploring Old Riga. It's a surprisingly small town, and the "old town" self-guided walk takes less than an hour.
Thankfully, the weather was beautifully clear, so that when we went up to the top of St. Peter's church, we got a great panorama of the city. The secret (or so the elevator operator told us) was the north wind--it clears out all the clouds but also makes it unbearably cold. My fingers were too frozen to manipulate the camera after the first couple shots.
After getting a good glimpse of the main buildings, we had lunch at a Double Coffee (it's a chain!!) a couple blocks from our hotel. Then we shopped around for a bit (although most of the good shops were closed because it was Sunday), and ended up back at the hotel for a rest.
Tonight we heard the Riga Technical University Men's Choir (sounds ba-a-a-d, but it was actually quite good) sing at St. John's church. The church was freezing, and we didn't understand anything (the singing was Latvian), but I had a good time nonetheless. I daydreamed about various things, always coming back to one of the guys in the choir, who reminded me of a more exotic version of an old boyfriend.
The concert ended a little after 8 p.m., by which time I was frozen solid--despite wearing my fluffy down coat the whole time, which rustled ominously every time I shifted a muscle. We had surreptitiously moved up from our second-to-last row seats to the front of the church at the beginning of the concert, and so had to plough through throngs of people to get outside.
We had a lovely dinner at a local place just around the corner called the Black Monks (well, that's the English translation anyway) that served fantastic food. I had the salmon corn chowder and a chicken salad with mango dressing. For dessert, Lisa and I shared chocolate creme brulee and crepes with ice cream and maple syprup.
Yum, yum, yum.
Of course, the dinner took nearly three hours, so now that we're back in our hotel room, there's not much to do but go to sleep. We attempted to find something on TV, but after discovering that the world championship of curling was the best thing on, we've given up.
