Riga, Latvia: Chilling

I've just spent a day wandering and chilling in Riga. I was contemplating dashing off on one of those day trips to some nearby place, but to be fair I couldn't be bothered. Just enjoying the city and stuff like that.

This morning I went down to the markets which were an amazing venue for people watching (a passionate pursuit of mine). The fruit and vegetables were amazingly fresh and I could smell the sweet juicyness of the strawberries (wow that sentence is slightly ponographic)...

The meats and bakery products were sold inside these massive old Soviet aircraft hangers. I got many a chuckle out of watching the meat handling... women putting raw chicken in to bags with their bare hands... dead animal carcasses soon to be chopped in to more manigible portions strewn out on dirty old trolleys sitting in the middle of the market where anyone could cough or sneeze all over it. Very humorous... until one thinks that is probably where all the meat I have been eating is coming from!

I wanted to buy some strawberries but the stallholders didn't speak English and for some reason wouldn't serve me... they were talking in Latvian and laughing amongst themselves and eventually I gave up. I tried at another stall, but there she didn't understand that I didn't want one kilogram of them, just a small bag. So I left strawberry-less. I bought a belasi though, which is some kind of bread meat parcel thing that is reasonably tasty.

Then I wandered for a while, bought some postcards and sat in the park and wrote on them, and just generally chilled... walked some more, I'm very tempted by all the amber stalls, but I think it was cheaper in Lithuania so I will hold out until I am back there. An amber necklace or bracelet can be my one souvenier from the Baltic.

Tomorrow I'm heading back to Lithuania, to check out the capital Vilnius.