Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Riga

  • Riga – Skonto Hall and Skonto Stadium

    I don’t know many people who watch Eurovision, but for anyone who does, this is where it was held in 2003   🙂   The result was probably quite exciting, Turkey got 167 points, Belgium got 165 points and Russia got 164 points.

    Next to Skonto Hall is Skonto Stadium, which has been the home of the Latvian national football team since 2000. It was also home to Skonto FC, but they went bust in 2016, despite it being a substantial football club.

    The biggest crowd the stadium has ever obtained is 9,000 people back in 2003, so it’s not exactly Wembley. But I’m sure it is a location of great national pride, and I might have even gone to watch a match there if one was on. But there isn’t, so I won’t.

  • Riga – Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation

    Another day, another museum!

    This is the wreck of a single-masted ship, sunk in the old Riga port. It dates to around the thirteenth century.

    Wooden anchors from around the same period.

    This is dross. I never knew that this word derived from the residue left from metal working (or more precisely from melting iron).

    Bits of stone from the city’s original cathedral, these date from the thirteenth century.

    St. Christopher.

    One for all the civil engineers out there… It’s a wooden pile from one of the city towers, around 800 years old.

    One of the twenty military drummers ordered by the town council in 1688. When someone approached it the whole thing would move, which is a bit of early technology…

    A set of keys to the city gates of Riga, where were ceremoniously presented to Catherine II, Empress of Russia, when she visited the city in 1764. History doesn’t report whether she sneaked into Riga and gave them a try.

    There’s a long story to this exhibit, which is the wooden sculpture of Madonna on a Crescent Moon dating to the late fifteenth century. It is thought that this was originally placed in Mary’s Altar under the bell tower of St. Peter’s Church in the city. It is an enormously important object to the city and in 1930 it was given state protection, which recognised the relevance of the sculpture and it prevented it being damaged or moved outside of the country.

    Although efforts were made to keep the sculpture in Riga, it was stolen by the Germans in 1944 and went on show at the Lübeck Museum in St. Anne’s Priory. It remained there until a forward thinking German museum representative pro-actively arranged for it to be returned to Riga, where it is safely back on display.

    The former lock and key to the Bishop’s Palace.

    This is a bit controversial, which the museum recognises, and is said to be one of the earliest Christmas decorations in existence. Riga has a particular claim to this, as the first decorated Christmas tree in the world was placed up in the city by merchants in 1510. It’s really a stone ball from around the seventeenth century, likely originally a ball used in a game which was then drilled through.

    I’m not sure whether Liam will show this to Dylan, but it’s the rather, er, unique exhibit of two hands that were cut off money forgers in the sixteenth century.

    This photo is taken from the gallery of the former city library, given to the museum in the early twentieth century.

    And this photo is of the ground floor where there were once thousands of books.

    This is a fantastic museum and I spent over two hours here quite happily. There are English translations available for nearly everything and the building itself is interesting as it was originally part of the Bishop’s Palace and parts were then later used as a library.

    I also liked how there’s a book showing how the museum used to look, and how things used to be displayed. This is a clever idea, and the displays of the past were very different to today, with less information being provided to visitors. The museum is also one of the oldest in Europe (it dates back to 1773), despite losing a part of its collection during the Second World War.

    There are also two rooms dedicated to the sea and navigation, although by the time I got to those I felt I had seen more than enough. The entrance fee was €5, which seems very reasonable given the size of the museum. I also liked how easy the museum was to navigate, although they gave visitors a map anyway, just to make it easy.

  • Riga – Street Art

    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.

  • 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….

  • Riga – Resting Bird

    What a lovely place to sit and watch the world go by…..

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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…..

  • 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.