We had a slow, lazy start to our day. We’re staying in a very newly renovated, 2-bedroom, centrally-located Airbnb that is costing us $100/night. The disparity in costs between different countries is vast. We put on laundry and they even have a dryer which is verrrrrry rare in Europe.

We experimented with a new approach to avoid being asked for snacks every 30 seconds: Fanny snack pack.

Nick planned a walking tour of Riga. It started at the “House of Black Heads” which sounds either racist or like a skincare disaster (turned out to be more of the former than latter)

We walked on to St. Peter’s church. It cost €10 to enter. Because we are so cheap, we opted to send only Nick and Millie (free) in first to see if it was worth buying the second ticket. I didn’t mind waiting quietly in the lobby.

We then walked on to the Riga market which was multiple large warehouse buildings selling all sorts of things: smoked fish, fresh fish, caviar, meat, honey, pies, Latvian liquor, farm vegetables, candies, etc. Adding to the retirement bucket list: travel around the world to these types of markets and spend enough time in each place to cook meals consisting of all the local ingredients.

We bought some Latvian dumplings, candies, and beer and found a table in the busy food court to taste our goods. The dumplings were delicious. My Baltic porter, which I had to order because we’re in the Baltics, was made with herbs and was SO weird (bad weird). It tasted like potpourri.

As we left the market it started drizzling. We continued our walking tour to various old buildings, including this one of all the Latvian coats of arms.

Latvia was recently in the news because of the Oscar-winning animated movie, Flow, which is about cats. There is cat imagery everywhere here. I don’t know if the cats came first or the movie. We didn’t see a single living cat, just paintings and sculptures.

We marveled at the cool architecture but it started raining pretty hard. We headed home and allowed a rare Monday movie (Toy Story 4). We broke into the yesterday’s Lithuanian farmhouse beers. No one complained about the chill afternoon.

We headed out to an early dinner at an underground medieval restaurant that has apparently been open since the 1200s. I can’t quite tell what the gimmick-to-awesome ratio is, but we loved it regardless. It was all candlelit and connected by tunnels. The waiters were dressed like they worked at Disneyland.

The food was surprisingly good. We had sweet chewy rye bread with a garlic sauce, duck wings with an apple cabbage sauce that tasted like Christmas, and tender lamb shanks with lentils.

Millie drew some ideas for coats of arms for our family by candlelight of things we like: teeth (?), fancy ladies, and traveling.

It was a good day with minimal whining and no meltdowns. I’m loving the Baltics.