The sun tried very hard to stay out today.

First thing this morning after breakfast, we headed to the markets and bought some food for lunch. I also bought a few interesting-looking biscuits for our bus trip tomorrow. You can buy individual biscuits over here, even in large supermarkets. Beats me how they don’t go stale just sitting in the open.

I’d read that this tour guide (Toms) was excellent, so we gathered around for his free 1.5 hour walking tour with about 40 other people, including some Aussies. One of the Australians knew Mick’s brother Steve from his teaching time in Wagga Wagga.

Toms took us to streets I’d missed on my walk on Sunday and pointed out some interesting features of his city. He had so much information about Riga and Latvia to share.

The story about this cat, and its mate, on top of this building was fun. A disgruntled Latvian who wanted to join the German-only Merchants Guild way back when, was denied, so built this impressive home across the road and had the cats’ bottoms face the Merchants Guild in protest.

It did rain during the tour, but no one complained. Can you spot Mick?

But not in this next one.

Behind me is the Powder Tower – built around 1330 as part of Riga’s city wall and fortification towers. It now houses the Latvian War Museum.

At the end of the 2.5 hour (yes an hour longer than we all thought) tour, which was less than a 2 km stroll, we were taken into a warm cozy restaurant / bar to finish off the tour and for Toms to get his “donation”. We gave him €20 which seemed most others were paying but resisted the temptation to stay for anything to eat as Mick was cooking Atlantic Salmon for lunch and I’d bought some pickled cabbage and seaweed salad.

Way too much by the way, even though I paid less than €2. The price of the salmon though was similar to Australian prices at €24/kg. Mick also shouted himself one, approximately 15cm long, smoked herring, which the lady thought was odd. For 15 cents it was a bargain. Mick was sorry he did not by more.

Today we also ventured to the top of St Peter’s Church. It cost €9 each for the privilege, and when we compared that to the price we paid for Toms’ tour, it was not worth it. The very slow lift took us almost to the top of the spire where we did get some wonderful views of the city.

You can see the Zeppelin hangers in the middle of the photo. They house the markets and are about 800m from where we’re staying.

This photo shows some of the new city across the Daugava River.

Finally, this photo shows approximately where we are staying.

And the answer to yesterday’s question is Latvian garlic bread is better. Neither of us woke up smelling too badly of garlic.

But, if there is Lithuania garlic bread, we will have to try it.

Tonight we are off to the Folkklubs Ala again for entertainment and dinner. It will be a late night for us, but we want to make sure we experience as much of Latvia’s culture as we can.

We can highly recommend a stay in Riga.