Riga, Latvia

Or, "How Chris Learned About Exchange Rates"

$10 worth of fun!!!

 So to be honest, Riga wasn't really an important part of the things I wanted to accomplish on this trip. It started out as the way I'd get to Stockholm. By the end of my time in Riga, I was glad I went.

I arrived in Riga somewhat late; I had just enough time to find the hostel before it got dark out. The hostel I stayed at was 9 euros a night, which was a pretty good deal. Again with the slow off season tourism, I only had one roommate. He was a Frechman by the name of *insert something French here*. I don't remember. Either way, he also spoke Basque which we talked about for quite some time. If you didn't know, Basque shows up regularly in linguistic coursework. For dinner, I found some Bacon Ramen in a grocery store. Sounds like the most amazing food on the planet, right? Wrong. It was gray water with funky noodles. Poor Form, Latvia, Poor form.

The next day, I woke up bright and early. By the way, for some reason I completely forgot that it was Christmas day and it took me by total surprise that the streets were empty for the better part of the day. There's something fantastic about walking around in empty streets. It felt as though the city were mine. I could move around the streets without paying attention to traffic lights or crowds.
I found my skyscraper, the Latvian Academy of Sciences, and after that I made my closer to the center. The map I printed out had a few sites marked on it, but I definitely didn't research enough. Unfortunately, because it was Xmas, the ONE museum I wanted to see was closed. I, however, would get a chance to visit the Occupation Museum later in my trip.

Fish, mayo, potatoes, cheese, apple, beets...YUM

I managed to visit all the marked sites within a couple hours, leaving me the rest of the day to do whatever. This early on in the trip, I was still strictly budgeting. The thing about Latvia is that the Lat is one of the worlds most highly valued currencies. It's pegged somewhere around .53 lats to the dollar. So when you walk past a McDonald's and see what looks to be a $4 Big&Tasty (sadly, my favorite McDonald's sandwich), it's not really a $4 sandwich--it's an almost $8 sandwich. Sad Day. Around lunch time I felt the need to find an open grocery store. I managed to find one on the other side of the river and there I had a glorious lunch of white chocolate, bread, and a tub of Herring in a Fur Coat, my favorite salad. And all of that cost just $3!


You should know that I also collect coins, usually 1 of each type from each place I have been. With Latvia, there was no problem finding all the coins, The problem from how much money it was. Every coin amounts to almost $9! That, and as I was boarding the boat, I noticed that I had a lot of extra change left. I figured out that one of the more fun things to do was to see if I could spend all of whatever remaining change there was. Didn't matter on what, just so that I didn't have anything I didn't need. That's how the Lion Bar happened. A lion bar is the love-child of a Kit-Kat and Paula Dean. Take a kit-kat, roll it in caramel, toss it in puffed rice, add more caramel, then chocolate and you've got it.