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Two Nights in Riga, Latvia

Latvia, New Years 2018-19 3 Responses »

Jan 192019

After landing, I discovered the first unpleasant fact about Riga: no Uber. This meant getting semi-fleeced by an airport taxi on the ride into town, but end of the day it was vacation, and I made a point not to stress about it. The first time I was in Latvia on my every country in the world quest my flight was delayed by 12 hours, meaning that I lost all my time in Latvia, and immediately upon landing the airline had to drive me to Vilnius. I wanted to see more than I did, so was really excited to be coming back for a bit longer!

Hotel was the Radisson Blu Elizabete, which overall was very solid. Nice big rooms, helpful, but not overly warm staff. Overall I’d definitely stay there again because it was a nice location out of the Old Town, but a nice easy walk to it, so overall it was exactly what I expected.

It was already getting a little late, so immediately after checking into my hotel I made a beeline walk into the Old Town of Riga to get some dinner at Folkklubs Ala Pagrabs…partly because they claimed to have a good craft beer list, and partly because on many sites I had seen it was described as a really fun mix of tourists and locals.

What I didn’t expect was just how crowded it would be. The restaurant was several large underground rooms, and was super crowded and noisy – boring it wasn’t! Found a seat at the bar right away, and asked the bartender what she recommended to eat, and the Royal Stroganoff got her nod…it was pretty tasty:

I was super exhausted at this point, and all the travel of the past two months was really taking a toll on me, so it was back to the hotel and early to bed. I wanted to hit the Riga Free Walking Tour the next morning, so in bed by 11 and I thought I’d have no trouble since it didn’t start until 2pm. I chose the “alternative tour” instead of the old town tour, figuring I could always walk the old town myself, but seeing more residential parts was more difficult.

…except breakfast at the hotel ended at 11am, and I woke up at 10:55 haha. Quick breakfast and and getting ready, and figuring out where the tour actually started from, and finally made it just in time to meet up with the tour. Crossing the picturesque river on the way to the walk:

Amazingly, over 100 people showed up for the tour, but fortunately there were two guides, and I decided to go with Kaspars, who just seemed to be really energetic and a fun guide. Off we go, with the first stop being the central market:

The fish section of the market:

Caviar….this is how I knew I was in the right place!

After continuing on, we walked through some much more residential areas, which was cool. I always enjoy getting out of touristy areas and more into areas where people actually live life on a day to day basis. In the short time I’d been in Riga, one thing that had bothered me was just how overrun the old town was with tourists, so I was enjoying getting out of that area. Unfortunately after the market our first major site was a rather somber Holocaust memorial:

The other site of the memorial. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, there was really no recognition of the Holocaust in Latvia, but very quickly after independence many memorials went up.

Next up, the same building you seem to see in Warsaw and every other former eastern bloc city…this time, it’s now the Latvian National Academy of Sciences:

Cool Orthodox church right across the street:

We continued on to the train station, where we took a short break for people to warm up. I really liked the tower with a clock on the front of the station:

After the tour eventually ended, I wandered back to where we started at Saint Peter’s Church for this Brother’s Grimm sculpture:

After a long walk, I was hungry and ready for some dinner, so was off to a place called “Easy Beer” for dinner and some beers. Very ominously named beer called “Do I Have a Contact in Moscow?”

As our president says….

There was a venison burger on the menu, so I had to give it a try when I was told it was good. It certainly looked tasty:

Ok, I totally don’t get this, but just like in Kiev the day prior, my burger came with black gloves. Not one to judge, and when in Rome and all that, I decided to give it a go….since when I looked around lots of other people were. Is this a Ukrainian and Latvian thing? I’ve seriously never seen it anywhere else in the world!

Since the evening was already adventurous, I decided to check out a bar called the Armoury, which supposedly had cases full of guns you could play with while enjoying their extensive beer selection. Went in, sat down, ordered a beer, and it definitely did not disappoint. Who knows what this is?

Two beers later, and the real fun came out. Breaking the cardinal rule of “don’t drink and play with MANPADs…” But hey, when in Latvia….nothing says amazing Sunday like beer, rockets, and freedom!

Ok, fine, you talked me into one last drink….but let me put this down first…

So, Riga (especially the Old Town) was cool, buy way too touristy for my tastes. I’m glad I came back, and I’d especially like to come back and see some smaller towns in Latvia, but it was time to get some sleep, I had a very long 12 hour day the next day of going from Riga to Vilnius via a full day tour!

Exploring N’Djamena, Chad

Attractions, Chad, Chad CAR Middle East Mongolia No Responses »

Oct 082015

There was no alarm set this morning. Despite the terrifying bug on the window when we checked in, managed to sleep in a good deal before heading down to breakfast. After a solid meal, we checked with the front desk about the possibility of getting a driver for the day. We had written to several tour companies before leaving, but they all wanted in excess of 200 Euros for a day of touring. No thanks!

Meanwhile, the hotel was willing to provide us a driver for 10,000 CFA an hour, or less than $20. Sold! The only catch was that he would not be available to slightly after lunch. No problem there. Nice morning of relaxing, and we were off to see the city. We had wanted to go out to Lake Chad, but unfortunately, it was closed with military roadblocks thanks to terrorist activity in the area. THANKS BOKO! So, we would have to be content with a tour of N’Djamena. After grabbing lunch at the hotel, we met our driver, complete with air conditioned car, and we were off.

First stop was the National Museum, which was located maybe a five minute drive from the hotel. We pulled into the car park, and everything was suspiciously quiet. As we walked up to the front door, there were a few guys lounging out front just sitting around. Turns out one of them was the museum manager/guide/not sure what he did. This whole thing was seeming very informal. Yes, the museum was open, and we could see it if we wanted.

Went inside, and he had a surprisingly formal receipt book, with all sorts of official stamps. Then, he requested ID to let us visit. We hadn’t brought passports, and I could tell he was debating if it would just be easier to send us on our way so he didn’t have to give a tour. Eventually, I found my PADI scuba certification card in my wallet, and he agreed that was official enough to let us in, hahaha. Receipt stamped, and he started giving us the tour. We started in the main room which was a tour of the history of Chad.

Unfortunately the guide spoke no English, and his French wasn’t fantastic either so we more or less had to go by the signs on the exhibits, which were at least in proper French. One of the first stops was this bird costume used in ceremonial rituals:

Along with a traditional xylophone:

Ancient Islamic prayer mat:

Verses from the Koran sculpted on wood:

After spending a while touring the first floor (along with the guide, we were definitely the only people in the entire museum) he took us upstairs to the exhibit which was the highlight of the museum. The centre of the exhibit was a 6-7 million year old skull which was found in Chad in 2002 and is thought to be the oldest ancestor known of humankind, which has been named Toumaï man. The skull:

Another angle, along with another skull found in the area:

After the museum, we decided we would go see the Central Market/Grand Marché. We’d been highly discouraged from this by several sources, mainly because just a couple months prior Boko Haram had bombed the market, killing dozens. Even our driver wasn’t keen on going into the market, so dropped us off, and told us to come back to the car when done, he would go to the mosque to pray. We wandered for maybe an hour, and other than quite a lot of curious stares, no trouble at all. Perhaps the funniest moment was running into the only other white person in the market, and the WTF are you doing here?! look that he gave us, lol. In fairness, we wondered the same thing about him!

Had to be extremely careful taking pictures, however, because it was banned by the military since the bombing. One decent covert shot:

From the market we headed to the Cathedral of N’djamena, which had clearly seen better days. It was surrounded by a fence, and when we got close to try and take better pictures of it, a group of police/military guys with big guns started yelling at us. We decided it was best to go back to the car and be satisfied with a poor shot/visit:

After that, the next stop was the Place de la Nation monument to the founding of Chad. We wanted to stop and get a proper picture, but it was clearly “inderdit” according to our driver, so instead he drove around the square a few times until I managed to snap a pretty decent covert pic from the car:

After this, we headed to another market on the outskirts of the city where getting photos was a bit easier:

Hauling goods at the market:

Busy market scene:

At the edge of the market:

Really thrilled to get this picture, great example of local transport, local dress, and goats in the background!

…speaking of goats, they were everywhere:

Our final stop on the route back to the hotel was for a haircut, at the world-reknowned “Salon Obama” for men:

After several hours of driving around seeing the few sights N’Djamena had to offer it was back to the hotel just after sunset to relax and get ready to head onward the next day!

33 Hours in South Africa

Attractions, hotels, Restaurants, South Africa, South Africa Milage Run 2013 1 Response »

Apr 192013

We landed at 10am, and immigration was quick without bags, and we were spared the odd questions about why we’d come to Johannesburg for just 33 hours. Fortunate.

I’ve been to South Africa dozens of times, but haven’t actually visited Johannesburg in over 15 years. I flew into JNB two years ago during my round the world 40th birthday trip, but immediately got in a rental car and headed to Lesotho, so I hadn’t properly visited the city in a long time. I was excited to get a small preview of how things had changed.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I did do a similar milage run about 5 years ago, when Lufthansa published a DC to Helsinki fare that allowed Johannesburg in the routing rules. So, yes, I did go DC – Frankfurt – Johannesburg – Frankfurt – Helsinki. It was legal, and only like an extra $10 in taxes, but as it was a connection I only had about 8 hours in Johannesburg. I did manage to get down to Sandton for lunch, but had to take a giant share taxi which was a bit of a pain in the butt.

Why am I going on about this? Because everyone I knew from there had told me how nice the Gautrain was. JNB to Sandton and Rosebank in about 15 minutes. Clean, fast, efficient, and relatively affordable. I was sold! We only had to wait about 10 minutes for a train, and it was actually rather nice!

Short train ride later, we were at the Sandton station, which was located conveniently across the street from our hotel, the Radisson Blu Sandton Gautrain. Check-in was quick and pleasant, and we were “upgraded” to a business floor room. Nothing special about the room, except that Radisson Blu’s business class rooms seem to all have Nespresso machines in them. I was a happy caffeine addict. Perhaps the strangest part was the picture on the wall outside our room:

Yes, that’s the Farragut West metro station in Washington, DC, the same station I get out at most every day to go to the office. Halfway around the world. Go figure. It was if the hotel was taunting us! We took advantage of the Nespresso machine in the room to refuel, and since it was almost noon at this point we headed across the street to Nelson Mandela Square to get some lunch.

We settled on Baglios, mainly because they had a table on the lanai where I could sit and enjoy the 23C sun since it was still cold back in DC. But first, to start lunch off on the right note, I introduced Phil to Savanna Dry cider!