Riga was a very interesting place to visit! Again we weren't there for long but it was enough to get a good look around the central areas.

As soon as we arrived it was absolutely freezing and there was so much snow! Maybe even more than what we saw in Vilnius! It felt quite weird at first though. I had no ground to think it, but my first impression was that maybe Riga isn't the safest place in Europe. It felt really dark and no one seemed to really talk much to each other

We saw a lot of cool things. For example there is a large wooden church that has lots of stories about it! It has been burnt down three times. One of the reasons was that Napoleon was apparently headed towards the city so quickly they burnt the church and suburbs so that when he arrived there was nothing for him resource wise so he would be stranded in the middle of no where! Although he only made it to Vilnius and therefore the areas were burnt for no reason! But the Latvians didn't want Napoleon to conquer them.

Also there was a building very, very similar to the palace of science and culture in Warsaw! It had the same architecture etc but it wasn't as tall!

There were heaaaaps of Christmas markets in the old town during the night time. Seriously we kept bumping in to them and it was so exciting I love Christmasy stuff! All the tasty treats (I enjoyed the toffee lollypops) and pretty lights everywhere!

Another observation I made is that the traffic lights are the best I've seen so far in Europe I think! Like they actually have a countdown timer and make a noise!

There is harbour by the city centre too which has a hugeeee market attached that sells heaps of things produced in Latvia! Ranging from fish to fruit to souvenirs and so on! Our tour guide showed us through.

After the tour we ended up having a quiet lunch with the tour guide at his favourite local cafe. This cafe was cooool because the market is just behind them so everyday they go and buy all their produce from there! I had a potato and root vegetable gratine with creamy mushrooms and mushroom sauce :) it was super tasty!

The hostel however was super nice. We got free unlimited breakfast, free wifi etc and it was nice and warm! There's also a lot of common areas which was good for me to squeeze in an hour or so of study (since I have an exam as soon as I get back!)

....

Dammit I stopped writing this entry half way and now a few days later I'm coming back to it! So I'm probably going to be lame and forget things since I left riga on Sunday and it's now Thursday but life is crazy and sometimes sitting down to write is a bit of a challenge :)

Basically our time in Riga consisted of lots of walking, including a walking tour, eating out and learning about the history of the city. We did a cool free walking tour on the Sunday. I love doing these things because it's so cheap and the tour guides are always awesome! We started off in the old town but because the old town in Riga is relatively small we left quite quickly and spent a lot of our time in little Moscow and the more businessy area.