Joan picked us up from the airport and we piled into a taxi for a short drive to her flat in the Art Nouveau district in Riga. Joan's apartment is in one of the many beautiful apartments in the district. Greg and I stayed in the Joan's London apartment in 2015 and were impressed with the elegance of her renovations to a small flat that made it open and light. Her apartment in Riga has blown us away, it's absolutely beautiful, making the most of the soaring ceilings and large widows and original fittings.

Joan took us for a short reconnoitre around the area, showing us the closest supermarket and pubic transport. It was the end of a long day and I said how about we take you to dinner. I could see that there was an Italian restaurant Porto Fino, not far from Joan's apartment. We were seated outside; to make the most of the short summer there is a lot of outside dining in Riga. I was very impressed with the menu; I had a lovely duck breast with poached pears, Joan had Saltimbocca and Greg seafood and pasta, followed by chocolate pudding. This is another Italian restaurant which has impressed us.

The next day Joan met us to take us in our special personalised tour of the area. We started with a ride on the tram to one of Joan's favourites breakfast spots, a little cafe called Innocents. Listen up Darlington readers, if you lived in Riga we'd be having our coffees here. All the cool people are here; young parents with bubs, and groovy old folks like us. The cafe has an all you can eat buffet breakfast on Sunday for six euros. A wide choice of fresh salads with cold meat and pastries to follow as well as great coffee, hallelujah.

Next a walk to the old town square of Riga which is called Vecrīga. The walk was a good opportunity to see some of the beautiful art nouveau buildings on the way. Art Nouveau architecture in Riga makes up roughly a third of all buildings in the centre of Riga, making it the highest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture anywhere in the world. They were built during a short period of rapid economic boom, from 1900 to 1914. I'll be sharing more on these building tomorrow when we intend to see more of the area.

Back to our tour of the old town which consists of the historic city limits before the city was greatly expanded in the late 19th century. Joan is a wonderful guide and provides great background to the city. Our first stop was the Peitav Synagogue which is only synagogue to survive the holocaust, every other synagogue was burnt down. The reason this synagogue survived was that it is closely surrounded by the other buildings.

We walked up and down narrow winding cobbled streets, full of buildings hundreds of years old. Joan suggested that we might enjoy the Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation, which is located in the old town. It's a funny place, rambling over many floors and buildings describing Riga history from ancient times. The navigation part of the museum consisted of a room full of mostly Soviet era model ships, with no descriptions about them. I see this lack of description as an opportunity just to make things up.

By pure coincidence there happened to be an exhibition of clocks and watches. I looked on as Greg and Joan peered through the glass cabinets and discussed the movements and the missing parts of the watches on display. The museum had very limited descriptions on the exhibits; Greg and Joan more than made up for that with their shared knowledge of watches. We spent about two hours walking through the museum.

We finished up with a coffee in the old square near an imposing Soviet statue to the world War Two Latvian Riflemen which, after Latvian independence in the 1991, has been reattributed to the Latvian Riflemen of World War One, just slipped back a war.

We were all pretty tired after a day of walking but still full from breakfast. So back to the flat something light for dinner and nice red.