Today we woke up early as Artjoms had to go to work, however before he did he dropped us off at the Latvian Ethnographic Museum, a few kilometres out of the centre. We thought it opened at 9am, but unfortunately we had to wait another hour before we could enter. Mari was a total zombie though, so at least it gave her the opportunity to catch up on some sleep courtesy of a nearby bench.

The ethnographic museum was a large park made to showcase the traditional Latvian lifestyle, which was the experience for the majority of Latvians until the Soviet occupations changed everything. It was also divided into four different sections to show the four historical subregions of Latvia, between which existed some different linguistic and cultural traditions. Virtually all the old houses - and even churches - were made if wood, some of which had been moved to the site from other areas of the country. We spent a good 3-4 hours at the museum, because on top of being historically interesting, it was a pretty area and made for a good walk, with the exception of the mosquitos that had really taken a liking to Mari. No problems for me though!

After a bus ride back into the city, we had a bit of lunch and then headed towards an old reminder of communist-era Latvia - the old academy of sciences building, colloquially known as 'Stalin's Cake'. The building was a classic example of the architecture style popularised by the Soviet Union, and a favourite of Josef Stalin in particular. He had four of these buildings built in different capitals of the Soviet republics (also in Moscow, Warsaw and one other place), and they all looked exactly the same - not very aesthetically pleasing, but very symmetrical and modernist.
Later in the afternoon we walked up Freedom Avenue, and stopped by the big orthodox church with its impressive golden domes.

Eventually It got to the point where Artjoms had finished work for the day, so we met up with him again by Riga's traditional meeting point - a little clock tower constructed by a local chocolate company for the city many years ago. He took us to a traditional Latvian pub/restaurant situated under the ground on the edge of the old town which turned out to be pretty fantastic. It was at this point that we were introduced to Baltic-style garlic bread, which in my opinion is better than the more common Italian style - heavy dark bread, with the garlic steamed into it to give the flavour. As well as this we had some excellent honey beer that Mari would end up searching for in most other places we went, but to no avail.

Heading back to Artjoms' house after a big meal, he decided that it wasn't time to stop the eating process, and started making pancakes. We were pretty stuffed but since he was the one making them and also using stuff he'd brought back from his country house the previous night, we couldn't exactly say no. They tasted excellent as well, so we stuffed a couple in our gobs and saved the rest for the morning. With so much food ingested, we didn't last much longer.