After a BBQ of every available meat and a late night game of cards we spent the next better half of the morning tired (and more to the point hungover) traveling back to London and meeting up with the wonderful Lucy! A quick nap and we were raring to go. Hyde park!!!! Thousands of people, a bit of pushing and shoving and we were front crowd centre in a surprisingly peaceful crowd of eager fans of all ages.
I am not going to even attempt to describe the concert, except to say that I do not believe I will ever experience as amazing of a line up as that.
The low point of the day was finding out that Paul and I, dummies that we are, did not adequately prepare for the trip back with £0 left on our oyster cards we were forced to ask people on the street for change, asking people to donate 20p only to find out we needed 40. Eventually walking the 10 blocks to a tube station that was not "closed for scheduled works", witnessing an attempted robbery and finally getting back to Lucys apartment.
Keeping with the theme of our disorganization we did a bit of scrambling to print our boarding pass finally deciding just to take the iPad and therefore being forced to pay the £80 just for Ryanair to print it for us.
Latvia is two hours ahead of London and in the summer hardly gets dark. As soon as we had dropped our bags off in our room we made some friends in the hostel and got a night tour of Riga and the bars. Rock band bars, "moon safari" bar, a 30 minute wait for a sugary mojito, a punch bowl of assorted fruit and alcohol with 6 straws...made a friend with a Latvian girl who danced with me, gave me drinks, told me I was fun (man I am so naive). She left and we were to go meet her at a bar when I passed her making out with another girl on the street....hmmm did I just get hit on? Interesting experience or narrow escape?
In the day, Riga has an old European feel. Cobblestone streets lead to huge churches, replicas of original Latvian buildings torn down during the soviet oppression, beer gardens and markets. Art Nouveau buildings (more than any city in Europe I hear) are everywhere in central Riga, gargoyles, peacocks, and goblins, Oh My!
Traditional Latvian cuisine for dinner with some hostelers!
No comments:
Post a Comment