Riga, Latvia, Europe

Today was a good day of travelling. I left United Hostel at about 9am and got on my bus for Riga at 10am. It was a really nice 4.5 hour drive with Lux Simple Express. It was a nice new bus with A/C, power ports on each seat, and wifi on board. Unfortunately, I didn’t have wifi at the back of the bus, but it still went by pretty quickly. This was the first border crossing I’ve gone through on this whole trip where we haven’t even had to stop at the border.

When I got off the bus at Riga bus station I met a girl named Hannah from England who was also heading to Central Hostel. We checked into the hostel and then walked into town. Riga is a nice old town. It’s similar to Tallinn, but definitely bigger. We spent a while just checking out the small side streets in the town and then ended up having a drink in a beer garden just west of the old town.

Dean (from Israel) was in town so we met up with him for dinner at Ala restaurant. It served traditional Latvian food so Dean and I had the meatballs and Hannah had the beef shank. Everything was really good, and relatively cheap.

After dinner we found a sports bar that was showing the European basketball championships to watch Tel Aviv play against Real Madrid. It was an incredibly exciting game and Tel Aviv managed to pull out the victory in overtime. It was pretty exciting for Dean, and cool for us to celebrate with him.

Hannah and I headed back to the hostel and before midnight we already have three people in our room asleep. This is just one of the things you run into in a dorm. It’s more difficult getting ready for bed in the dark when everything is still in your bag, but that’s what we all sign up for. I’m all done now and heading to bed so tomorrow I can check out the free walking tour of Riga. I hope it’s nice weather again. Today was beautiful!