Today is our city tour where we will be immersed in some of the over 800 art nouveau buildings here in Riga, then move onto the old town to finish our tour before lunch with the rest of the day on our own. 

We start out on the bus, passing the beautiful Latvia National Museum of Art and art academy, then onto Albert Street (art deco) and the beginning of our walking tour which begins an incredible journey of just unimaginably beautiful art deco style buildings. 45 minutes of pure photo taking joy.

One fun story from the art deco walk (the one I can remember – there were tons more) is that of the lions on the house below. Originally, the lions at the top of the building were together, as one statue. But then the designer cut the lions in two. People at the time thought it looked like the lions were prancing and snubbing everyone. They said that fit the designer’s personality!   

This part of our walk finished up near the Russian Embassy, where across the street, on the side of the Medicine history museum was this amazing poster protesting against Russia and Putin. And right across the main street, on the grounds of the Congress Center, were tons more Ukrainian support and Russian protest signs,

Back on the bus we took a nice drive down by the river, getting out to stretch our legs and take some panorama shots….

…then back to the House of Blackheads to complete our tour in the old town, stopping at the Riga Cathedral, the Art Museum, with the intriguing sculpture hanging in the lobby, for a rest stop, then onto to the Three Brothers houses, the oldest structures in Riga, past St. Jacob Catholic Cathedral with the impressive spire towering over everything,

Our walk continued past the Reveal Riga museum building with the impressive wench at the apex of the roof that was used to lift grain and other material up into the building in centuries past. Then it was onto the Swedish gate which was used as an entrance to old military barracks, past a statue of the ghost of Riga as well as the Powder Tower, used as part of the defensive systems of the old town.

Finally onto one of our favorite stories, the Black cat house. There are 2 cats on the top of the roofline, and when built, the cat on the left was originally facing the other way, making it look like it was raising its tail to the Guild house across from it. The people of the town were aghast and wanted the removed. But, a compromise was made and the owners turned the cat to face the other direction. 

With that, we walk past the actual Guild building and are released on our on recognizance! It’s still early, only a little after 11, so we head off into the old town in search of The Museum of the Popular Front, near the farmer’s market, that we wanted to visit. It’s a lovely walk through a bright sunny day, where we enjoy people watching, architecture viewing and restaurant menu scoping!

The museum turns out to be free, but also full of students on a class trip. Yikes. Well, masks on, we bravely scoot out of the first floor where they all are listening to a lecture and make our way up to the 2nd and 3rd floor for interesting exhibits on the timeline of the 1990 declaration of Independence of Latvia. Lots of good reading, as well as recreations of period offices, equipment and machinery used during the Popular Front years. There is also a kitchen set up, that was designed to be used for guests of the PFL, but the china was never used because it was so expensive to purchase, they wanted to save it.

There is also an excellent map of the Living Chain of the Baltic Way, the peaceful protest against the illegal Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. On August 23, 1989, over 2 million people came together and held hands, forming a 675 km distance through the 3 Baltic countries, making the act one of the earliest and longest unbroken chains of humans ever recorded.

Now that the students are ascending the stairs to these floors, we make our escape, stopping on the first floor for the explanatory exhibits, but quickly heading outside into the fresh air. There was allegedly a photography museum very close to this museum, but we never found it. The maps showed it as right on the corner, but neither GPS was accurate, and we finally gave up in dismay and headed out to lunch, settling on a cute restaurant we had passed earlier called Friends Cafe. Here we spent a pleasant time snacking on chicken Caesar salad, a burger and wine and beer, of course!

To walk off our lunch, we headed back over to the Art Deco Street to spend more time admiring the buildings and of course taking more photos. We had originally wanted to visit the Art Nouveau Center museum, but unfortunately it was closed. So, we simply amused ourselves with the buildings and headed back to the hotel, stopping on the way to make reservations at a seafood restaurant we wanted to try this evening.

Later we again had drinks in the sky bar, took more pictures, spent some nice time with a couple of others in our tour group, then made our way back out to Zivju Lete, the restaurant for this evening where we feasted on a wonderful meal of smoked tuna dip (complimentary), tuna tartare, fried squid rings and grilled octopus. Lovely.

Then back out into the lovely evening, more photos then a relaxing evening in the room, packing and getting ready for our long drive to Lithuania tomorrow.