Again, a beautiful city but it was hot - 31c

To sum it up - cheap food, great beer and lovely lively squares, Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) and an earlier medieval area including a cathedral from the 1200s. Riga is a UNESCO World Heritage site and they say this:

“Riga was a major centre of the Hanseatic League, deriving its prosperity in the 13th–15th centuries from the trade with central and eastern Europe. It is generally recognized that Riga has the finest collection of art nouveau buildings in Europe.”

We explored the art nouveau district first. The apartment buildings were impressive and we skipped from shade tree to shade tree to admire them! At our morning coffee break in the art nouveau area, Richard tried coffee with black balsam. Strong flavour!

The old part of Riga is colourful with narrow streets - one street has been used in several films. There are several museums but we decided just to stroll and admire.  After going to a currency exchange bureau to swap a small euro note for Lati, we had lunch at a typical local place (a cafeteria with woody rustic interior) and shared a pork dish with a sauerkraut layer and a side of a dish like ratatouille for about 7$. Beer was a two bucks for .33 cl for the best local brand.

Easy free wifi here so we had another video chat (Facetime) with Mary.

When we got back to the ship, we ordered a pot of coffee from room service instead of going to afternoon tea. Okay, I guess I can tell you - we bought pastries with the last of our Latvian cash. I had a rhubarb tart (word is almost the same in Latvian and English) and Richard had a poppyseed cake.  Anyhow room service coffee was very relaxing and it was finally warm enough to sit on our veranda!