Since I last wrote a lot has happened! We had our last day at sea, where I won countries of the world trivia with a girl I met on the ship, and mom and dad and I got all but one answer correct on the Disney movie music trivia (we missed the song from Brother Bear). Overall it was a nice and relaxing day. The cruise then sadly came to an end and we disembarked after a little bit of a customs delay. Mom and I went to the airport with dad to get him checked in for his flight back to SFO, and we stored our bag in the lockers at the airport so we didn't have to lug around all of our stuff all day. Sadly I accidentally locked my phone and sunglasses in the locker, and you had to re-pay if you opened the locker, so I was without them. We said goodbye to Dad, and Mom and I headed to Malmö, Sweden for the day.
Getting to Malmö is quite easy on the train from Copenhagen. It's just under 15 minutes and takes you right from the airport to the center of town. We walked around the city a bunch, which was a really lovely city, took a tour by boat around the cities canals, had an amazing lunch of Swedish fish soup and of course Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberries! It was all absolutely amazing and delicious. After lunch we walked around for a while longer and just enjoyed the day. We found an awesome park to stroll along in, and then eventually took the train back to the Copenhagen airport to catch our flight. Oh, and not to be forgotten, I bought some Singoalla cookies while in Sweden of course!
Once back at the Copenhagen airport we got our bags and checked in the suitcases and headed through security. I got held up because of my cheese slicer, but they let me through as soon as they saw what it actually was. I will be checking that on the way back! In the airport we shopped around a bit, but only bought some pringles and waters. The flight from Copenhagen to Riga was about as long as flying to LA or San Diego and was quite easy despite the man next to me who was leaning over the armrest into my seat. Super annoying. It was a prop plane, which my mom wasn't too happy about, but it was just fine. When we arrived in Riga Mom's bag was the first off and mine was the third! It was amazing to get our things so quickly, and the man from the hotel was waiting there for us with a sign to bring us to the hotel in the hotel Mercedes-Benz. The hotel is really nice and the staff is amazing. We had a great nights sleep that prepared us for a wonderful first day in Latvia.
This morning we let ourselves sleep in a bit (at least longer than Dad liked to wake us all up on the ship) and had a lovely breakfast at the included breakfast buffet downstairs. It has many meats and cheeses, and smoked fish, and fruit, and breads, etc. Delicious! We then got ready for the day and headed out to explore. We walked along the river a bit and saw the building made to look like a glass sailboat to symbolized that the people's dreams cannot be destroyed (stems from a story about a wooden sailboat that was the owners dream boat being burned). We saw the House of Blackheads, which is a famous building in Riga, St. Peters Basilica, and the Riga Cathedral. We then met up with a walking tour that took us mostly out of old town to see things like the central market, the train station, some art nouveau buildings, a soviet building made for Stalin's 80th birthday, the spot Riga was founded, some beautiful green spaces, and the freedom monument (with a great story about how they avoided its demolition during the Soviet occupation, saying it stood for the mother Russia and the three baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania instead of Latvia's freedom). The tour was great, and we saw a lot of the city that we would have otherwise missed. After the tour we walked back through old town and had a rest at our hotel.
Once at the hotel we booked a tour for tomorrow, and then headed out to the beach town of Jurmala, which is about 30 minutes outside of Riga by train. We got off the train and walked through the main shopping street for a bit, and then walked for a while along the beach, which was peaceful and beautiful. The forest basically comes right up to the beach and it is super pretty! We eventually decided we needed to get to the restaurant our hotel had made for us and went in search of a cab to the other end of the beach. This proved to be difficult. We walked for a while without any luck, but eventually spotted a cab picking someone up. We asked for his help and he called another cab for us, which was really nice. The man whose home we were in front of was definitely suspicious, and watched us pretty closely since it definitely looked as though we were loitering there, but our cab eventually came and off it was to dinner!
Dinner at 36.Line Grill was amazing! The location is right on the beach overlooking the Baltic Sea, and to the other side you have nothing but beautiful forest. It's just stunning. We ordered two appetizers to share, a mushroom fricassé and a caramelized goat cheese and eggplant dish. Both were amazing, but the caramelized goat cheese especially! For our main courses mom got miso black cod and I had a pearl barley risotto with mushrooms. Also amazingly delicious! Lastly for dessert I had Thai mango with passionfruit and berries, and mom had pavlova with berries and milk ice cream. The sun was also starting to get lower by the end of dinner, so everything was really just perfect. After we finished the restaurant called a cab for us and we headed back to the train station and back to Riga. We had a nice walk back to the hotel and now we are getting ready to sleep! Its been an amazing trip, and I can't believe tomorrow is the last day!
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