Riga

Horrid night sleep hahahahaha 🔫🔫
It was so hot. We tossed and turned the whole night. We finally left the hostel around 12:30.
Our original plan was to go to some neighbourhood that was suggested on our map and a cat cafe. I looked up the cat cafe and it had been permanently closed down 😭😭😭 so our other idea for scrapped too because I felt let down by the map hahah. It was also 3km away and the pictures from my google search weren't very exciting.
Our first task of the day was food.
We OBVIOUSLY must try as many foreign Big Macs as possible so maccas it was.
Will got a grand big Mac and it was friggen ginormous.
The maccas was sweltering so we sat in a nearby park.
The park was so pretty!!!! It has a waterfall, love lock bridge, flowers and was just maintained really well!
We made a scene by feeding some birds some chips. 50 more came to join us lols
We went for a quick walk around the park which also had little canal boat things and then headed towards the Riga Ghetto and Latvian holocaust museum.

We had to walk through markets to get there. Goodness they sell some random crap. Some look more like pawn stores and Vinnies shops.

I didn't have it loaded on my maccas so I only knew the general area it was going to be in. I was getting a little worried but we got there eventually :)
It was free and actually very good. Wills favourite free one so far.
The first room was an exhibition for the Armenian genocide where over 1.5 million died.
I had never heard of it before which is shocking. The shit they chose to teach in school...
that's a lot of people...
they didn't hold back on the photos. Dead people eveeywhere.
I need to go and research more in my own time because I should learn more.

The second room was for the WW2 victims. The warehouses we were in and the ones around us where the original sort of holding sheds for Jews coming from Prague and other area who were then sorting into usable/non useful workers and then sent of the several camps including aushwits **
It was a display with big cubes covered in information and pictures hanging from the ceiling; maybe 100+ of them.
Because we couldn't read the Latvian, before we figured out what it was, we were hypothesizing if there had been a concentration camp in Latvia or if these people had been sent here and saved.
We figured it out when most people's death date was 1942/43.
The next room had another good display with a name of each victim with Jewish roots that went from Bremen to Theresienstadt and did not return. It represented the one way journey to the train station.

Outside there was carriage with trees in it where it talked about "useful workers"
There was also a alley fenced with barbed wire with all the names of the victims. a daunting amount. And realistically only still a very small section of the overall extermination of WW2.

As I said The whole thing was in the place they were held. It still has some original doors and things that were completely rusted through.

We then walked back through the markets. They have different berries.
We walked home and I booked accommodation for Poland so everything is now booked except for our first 4 days in London :)
Feeling organised.

We then just went walking.
Loving Latvia! The buildings are really cool. It doesn't feel as old as Tallinn nor as fantasy land but still, brilliant.
Baltics are kicking ass.
Had a look at magnets - they all had a black cat but i don't know its significance 🤔
I got a photo with a big cat we found though :)
It's not as touristy here and I like it.

We went to the Aussie pub and they didn't have a single Aussie beer and out of the 4 that they do sometimes sell - I only recognized James Boarg*
Crap.
Will was devo, he was so excited lol.
We walked past some nice churches and through different areas like a shopping district and an artsy vibing district.
Apparently Riga is hosting the choir games 2017 👍🏼
Riga city hall was really pretty.
We had dinner at TGIFridays- the menu was different so I got a bruschetta- delish.
We then went home, downloaded game of thrones then headed to the cinema to watch planet of the apes.
it was pretty good.
We made a realllly big boo boo though.
We asked if it was in English which it was so we were like ok cool.
We forgot however that the monkeys sign half the movie. The subtitles were of course in Latvian....
we just guessed what they were saying the whole time
How Dumb and funny.

We walked home, watched game of thrones and now it's time for bed. 👍🏼Read more