I rather liked this piece of street art, which is an impressive piece of work with lots of detail. It’s by M-City and was part of the city’s Blank Canvas Festival.
Author: admin
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Riga – Exiting a Tram
This is the list of rules on trams in Riga. I imagine that the bottom image is trying to indicate to passengers not to force their way off the tram, but it looks quite dramatic and exciting….
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Riga – Resting Bird
What a lovely place to sit and watch the world go by…..
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Riga – Big Bad Bagels
The sun was shining rather brightly when I took the photo, although I didn’t realise how washed out it had made the image. Anyway, I haven’t got breakfast included with my hotel rate this week, so I have the opportunity to tour the city finding suitable breakfast eateries.
And this location offers freshly prepared bagels, with a choice of different fillings and five different types of bread. They have about twenty fillings to choose from and they can also mix and match ingredients on request.
Not very busy when I arrived, although it got a little busier. This is pretty much the limit to the seating which is available, but it’s modern and bright, so it was a comfortable environment.
This is freshly prepared orange juice and I’m not quite sure how it ended up not being rather more orange in colour, as I watched them put the oranges in the juicer. It was though delicious, it certainly tasted of orange and was rather moreish.
The bagel was excellent, firm but fresh and I was pleased with the seeded bagel that the staff member recommended for me. The bacon had been cooked to order, so I could smell that the bagel was nearly ready, and it had a really intense flavour. There was also cheese, lettuce and tomato, and it all worked well together.
The bagel exceeded my expectations, there was a focus on good quality ingredients and the efficient and helpful service just added positively to the whole experience. The price was a little expensive, as a bagel and freshly made orange juice was about £6, but the quality justified that price.
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Riga – Index Cafe
After two hours in a museum, I felt that it was time for a little sit down. Since Latvia doesn’t have quite the same pub infra-structure as the UK, I’m resorting to cafes, which is currently no bad thing….
I resisted the temptation of the cakes. I got the service style wrong again, I think it was table service, but I ordered at the counter anyway. It’s quicker that way.
The cafe has a few alcoves which they’ve made into window seats, and I managed to get the last one of those. This gave me excellent views of the pavement, not that I saw anyone walking along it which did rather limit my people watching opportunities.
I went with the Greek salad option, and the olives and feta cheese were the strong points of this, although it was all fresh and of a good quality. The photo also doesn’t do justice to the portion size, it seemed to be about the same size as a small bucket. The latte and salad came to around £6, definitely worth it.
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Riga – Street Burgers
The reviews of this burger restaurant were positive, and the photos on their web-site looked appealing, so I was sold. It doesn’t take much…..
The English version of the menu, with prices that I thought were rather reasonable for central Riga. It’s clearly all about the burger though, they don’t over-complicate the menu by adding excessive options.
The chips arrived first, and they were suitably hot as well as being crispy and appropriately salted.
This is the Ghetto Street Burger, with two burgers, lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickled cucumber, Cheddar cheese, bacon, red jalapeno and a street sauce. It arrived around three minutes after the chips and I liked the presentation. The bacon was crispy, the burgers were cooked medium as requested and everything was at the appropriate hot temperature.
As for the burger itself, it was juicy and there was a depth of flavour to it, which the restaurant puts down to the cows being grass fed. The bacon is what I’d call Canadian style, which makes it more appetising to me, and that added a lot of taste to the whole experience. The red jalapeno was present, although the taste of that was rather lost, and I liked the texture and crunch of the pickled cucumber. All in all, this was one of the better burgers that I’ve had, it exceeded my expectations.
The interior of the restaurant, it’s all very on-trend. The service style isn’t immediately obvious (it never is to me), but it’s take a seat and then order at the counter. The staff member at the counter was enthusiastic and keen to answer questions, so he seemed to reflect the modern style of service the restaurant was aiming for.
Total cost for the meal was around £9, which for a double burger, chips and soft drink is very reasonable given the restaurant’s location. It seems that there are another two restaurants in the city from the same owners, and it looks like they’re trying to franchise the concept. As franchises go, this would seem to be an entirely workable proposition, and I hope that they do well.
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Riga – St. Peter’s Church
Work on the first St. Peter’s Church started in 1209 and its stone construction meant that it survived a fire which destroyed most of the buildings in the city. The church was extended in the fifteenth century, but the Reformation had a big impact on the city and mobs of angry locals damaged the city’s churches. The Lutherans took over the running of St. Peter’s, although by that time the old altarpiece had been destroyed.
Martin Luther, the great religious reformer. Although he said that followers of his beliefs shouldn’t call themselves Lutherans, that remains the name of the church today.
The grand nave. Although the walls survived, the roof was destroyed during the Second World War, so this replacement dates from the 1950s and 1960s.
The altar. One thing that I did like is that they had blocked off access to the rear of the nave by putting seating there, which pushed people around the aisles of the church. This gave the advantage to those who wanted to go and sit in the nave to have a slightly quieter environment, rather than sit by every man and his goat traipsing down the aisle taking photos.
Some of the old stonework. Given the number of collapses the building has suffered, the church probably has rather a lot to choose from.
The church is known for the rooster which tops its tower and the current one is the seventh, with the first having been installed in 1491. This is the sixth rooster, which was in position between 1690 and 1941.
This is the tombstone of Andreas Knopke, who was the first preacher at the church who supported the reformation. Knopke lived from 1468 until 1539 and the tombstone looks a bit black as it was damaged by fire in 1721.
This is the Chapel for the Victims of Repression, with the sculpture, and I quote, “symbolising the unbroken spirit of man tending upwards while the horizontal images represent the road of suffering covered by people”.
Personally, I thought that this art display got in the way of seeing the building’s architecture and it added little of interest to me, although I’m sure that others thought it was intriguing.
I do wonder whether those plugs really need to be there on the left-hand side…. It’s the memorial to Franz Ringenberg (1584-1611) and the relief on the left represents justice and the relief on the right represents finance.
A wooden reconstruction of the cathedral’s spire.
The Roland statue, this one dates from 1894 and is made from sandstone. It’s a sign of the city’s independence and there’s a particularly impressive older Roland statue in Bremen. This statue was mounted in the Town Hall Square in 1896 and it remained there until the middle of the twentieth century, by which time it had become quite worn by the elements.
There was a charge of €3 for entry to the church and a charge of €9 for going to the top of the tower in a lift. I didn’t feel need to spend that much money to look at Riga in the rain, so I just looked around the church. It’s also a ridiculous sum on the grounds that €2.50 is the hourly minimum wage in Latvia, so a local would need to work for over three hours to pay to go to the top of the tower. For a church based on Lutheran principles, it’s perhaps not entirely ideal, especially when considering that there are no doubt many Latvians who would like to take their children to the top of the tower. I think I’m becoming ever more socialist…..
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Riga – George Armitstead Statue
I take these photos of random sculptures and statues as it’s a reminder for me to find out more about the individuals involved with them. The statue is of George and Cecile Armitstead, along with their dog, and it was unveiled in 2006 by HM Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. The Royal couple were on their first state visit to Latvia, and it adds another dimension to the statue for me that they unveiled it.
Armitstead, who was the son of a British MP who later became a Lord, was the Mayor of Riga between 1901 and 1912. Riga was part of Russia at the time and Armitstead was invited by Tsar Nicholas II to become the Mayor of St. Petersburg, although this offer was declined.
Armitstead was seen to have been a successful Mayor, having overseen the development of numerous innovations including the new theatre, art museum, hospital, zoo and the electric tram network. He is also seen as one of the most successful British exports to Riga, and just before his death he was awarded the title of being an honorary citizen of the city.
Armitstead’s dog, very sweet! The statue was designed and produced by Andris Varpa and Kristine Vizina.
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Riga – Latvian War Museum
There’s no admission charge to visit the Latvian War Museum and I had rather taken from that not to get too excited about the experience. However, there was a sign at the entrance saying to leave around two hours for a visit of the entire museum, which made me rather more positive about the whole thing.
The museum has gone to a big effort to make text available in English, although how they’ve done that varies throughout the museum. In the First World War exhibit, which appears to be their latest one, it’s fully integrated into the displays. In some areas they’ve translated it onto a large laminated sheet which hang down from the displays (this is rather fiddly, I’m not sure why they haven’t attached them to the walls) and in other areas they’ve attached the translation to a long chain to stop anyone pinching them. This chain makes a loud clattering noise, so it’s an handy sign to the staff that they’ve got someone English in the museum.
The museum is located in the Powder Tower, which was once part of the city’s fortifications, as well as a much larger neighbouring building which is more modern. The Powder Tower was constructed in 1330 and some of the walls are three metres thick, which incidentally would be useful in today’s constructions to keep out noise.
The museum originally opened in 1921, but the extension to the larger building was completed in 1940, which wasn’t the best of timing all things considered. The Soviets shut down the museum and some of the exhibits managed to disappear during that process.
From 1957 until 1990 the new Soviet influenced Government opened the Latvian SSR Revolution Museum in the building. Some sources say that the museum lost its academic reputation during this time as it was used as a propaganda exercise, although other sources seem to reject this notion. Whichever was true, the museum wasn’t appropriate in its existing form after independence in 1990 and it was remodelled into what it is today.
When doing some restoration to the Powder Tower, this bricked up former defensive window was discovered.
There’s a display about the history of the Powder Tower in the building’s basement.
A model of what the Powder Tower would have looked like.
Guess which helmet comes from which country…. Three of them are German, one is British and one is Belgian.
For those who can’t be bothered to work it out, they’re (from left to right going from top to bottom) Belgian (1917), British (1915), German (1895), German (1915) and German (1918).
I can’t recall seeing a shrapnel shell being cut open before, but they looked devastatingly brutal things.
The document on the left is a mobilisation letter issued in Riga on 1 August 1914. If you were aged between 18 and 43 then you were being called up. I remain very fortunate not to be in a situation where I’m called up, as I’m in that age bracket. I’m also not very brave and would be hopeless in a war situation.
A trench periscope from the First World War.
Identity tags worn by soldiers during the First World War. If you were killed, then at least they could ascertain who you were.
These are bits of tree that were discovered to have bullets and shrapnel stuck in them. They’re from the Machine Gun Hill area and the battle took place in 1917.
The exhibition on the First World War was one of the best I’ve seen, it was well curated, carefully laid out and clearly presented. There wasn’t as much coverage on the Second World War, but it was the Great War that meant that Latvia gained its independence, so it has a different meaning to that in the UK.
The Germans occupied Latvia for under three years, but they devastated the country’s Jewish population in that time. As in other parts of the German Empire the Jews were forced to identify themselves with this yellow badge.
This is a demand which requested the return of Latvian independence, with the intention that they would be circulated around Europe. This particular document was discovered under flooring in 2003.
A slightly macabre exhibit, this is a bullet which was embedded in the heart muscle of Kristaps Zile in 1915. The doctor repaired him, but left the bullet where it was, but it later killed him through a heart attack in 1954. The bullet was given to his son as a memento, which must have been a really lovely thing to be stuck with, and it was given to the museum in 1988.
The museum has a special exhibition on the top floor which show where Latvian soldiers have fought over the last two decades. They’re certainly had a presence in numerous danger zones around the world, although their role has been nearly entirely humanitarian. The museum doesn’t give much coverage to the period from 1945 until 1990 though, although there’s some explanation of the Latvian regiments.
I spent over two hours in the museum in the end, so the guide outside was accurate in that regard. The staff in the museum were varied in terms of their interest, some were busy trying to pro-actively explain information, some were reading their books and didn’t seem to notice visitors. However, given that the museum was free, I’d definitely recommend it. There’s a lot to see from different periods of the country’s military history and I liked how they’d made a real effort to make English translations available.
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Riga – Cake House Amalija
I was walking by and this looked appealing….
The internal decor is a little bit Willy Wonka, but it’s certainly colourful. The cafe was busier than the photos look but it was mostly with children (and mothers), so I carefully avoided getting them in the photos.
The display of cakes, all beautifully presented.
The latte and green eclair, which also had green cream in it. I couldn’t identify a couple of the toppings by taste, but it was fresh and no doubt consisted of a huge amount of calories. The latte was hot, indeed so hot that it took around fifteen minutes to cool down to become drinkable.
Service was efficient and the staff member looked like he was enjoying being there, so perhaps he was an owner. Either way he was friendly and spoke perfect English. The cost of cake and latte was around £4, which for a cafe based in a central park didn’t seem unreasonable.
