Cruising to Riga!

Monday
Before we could head down to Stockholm to catch our cruise to Riga, Latvia Nick and I had to do some printing, which turned out hard to do because much of the town and university was still on Easter holiday. In Engleska Parken I was able to print our cruise reservation confirmation with the help of a nice Swede. We then got some basic food reserves for the cruise and caught the train down to Stockholm. We were in no hurry and caught the metro to the port before checking into the ship around 4 PM the cruise took off at 5 PM and we started the trip on the top sun deck taking in the once again great weather around 20 degrees C and enjoying the views as the ship passed through the many islands of the Stockholm archipelago.

It cooled off considerably as we got farther out to sea, but it sure was nice being able to be outside during daylight unlike my previous cruise across the Baltic in early February when it was already dark when we boarded the ship, about 0 degrees C, and substantial areas of ice in the sea. The cruise was probably only at 20% of its capacity and Nick and I were from our best estimate the only native English speakers on the entire boat. The cruise line was having a promotion called Carnival Latino so the entertainment for the evening consisted of a rather impressive Spanish cover band who did Latin and American hits and the main show was a band and dancing group from Cuba who were very lively, flamboyantly dressed and fun to watch.

Tuesday
The cruise across the Baltic Sea to Riga took 15 hours and we arrived at 11AM local time. Nick and I headed into the Old Town section of the city. The Old Town area was near the Daugava River and had a great mixture of old buildings and architecture dating back to the 1200s, town squares, many churches, beautiful park areas along a diversion of the river, and some hints of the not so distant Soviet influence on the country.

 Latvia is part of the EU, but has yet to start using the Euro. There currency is the Latvian Lat and its conversion was rather convenient for us, as 1 Lat equals roughly 2 US dollars. We had a burger at a restaurant in a building called the Cat’s House due to two statues of black cats that don the top of the buildings miniature turrets.

There was a carnival in the main park of the downtown area, much like the carnivals that travel around the US and are often seen in mall parking lots in the summer. The carnival was typical tacky rides and games it was a very strange juxtaposition as it was literally only maybe 100 meters from the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the park. I took advantage of some cheaper alcohol and clothing prices to bring back to Sweden and after about 5 hours of exploring the surprisingly nice capital of Latvia we headed back to the boat.

Latvian Monument of Independence 

That evening there were more people on the ship including some English speakers, but still well below half of the ship’s capacity. We watched the cover band and Cuban dancers perform again and both put on different shows than the night before.
Riga Facebook album

Wednesday
The boat docked in Stockholm at 9:30AM and we headed out, caught the metro and then train to Uppsala. I had a brief meeting with my group for the final assignment in Climate Change Leadership. At night I was one of the few people to go to Sustainable Design to have a seminar on the class literature, which much of the class hadn’t read much of. I went to sleep a little early and set my alarm to wake up at 5AM and catch the second half of the Nuggets Game 5 against the Thunder. Unfortunately the Nuggets gave up another late lead and lost the game and the series, hopefully they can come back next year with a solid group and now my attention is on the Rockies who have had a great start to the season to lead the NL West.

Wooden horse we found in Riga