Riga: The blue city.

Coming off about two weeks in the company of others, Riga was a good first stop. Quiet avenues intermixed with busy streets, aqua and royal streetcars, art deco facades, pink yogurt soup, compact and simple for walking, and a welcoming hostel all made it an easy transition to solo travels. Last time I met up with Carrie for a month in SE Asia, it took me about two weeks to recover, but then I think that I was more isolated there because the lodging was often single rooms. Dorms are much better for my mental health as a solo traveler.

I’ve been spending the last few days also researching the Belarus visa, which appears to be a scheme to extract as much money as possible from people wishing to enter their country. That combined with the bureaucracy causes me to entertain skipping the country all together, but today I will see the people in Vilnius about the visa and make a decision. Really, transport-wise, it makes more sense to go through Belarus. And I am intrigued by Minsk.

(parks everywhere and no garbage anywhere)

(city hall)

(had a delightful salad here)

(I love cute old ladies with white fuzzy hair drinking milkshakes)

(the freedom monument)

(fresh clothes, hand washed)

(I have a love affair with hanging laundry- it looks so pretty and feels so good)

(there's a wheelchair next to that girl that she was sitting in for a while and I was wondering if she was really handicapped, but she wasn't)

(old city walls)

(how I looked when I couldn't find my lunch)

(this was the secret hideout restaurant that I accidentally found in the basement of a nondescript building, with only Latvians and the lady only spoke Latvian as well)

(best soup ever- beets, radishes, cukes, spring onions, yogurt, and it's flaming pink!)

(the lady on the left had lived in the states for a while and started talking to me and thought I was a long way from home to be alone)

(this is the front of the restaurant. guardian angels must have directed me there because I was getting desperate to eat)

(central market, dead animals. gross.)

(my fav colors)

(one of the first wheelchair ramps)

(I have no idea what this is about)

(artist rendering of the a crumbling wall to represent the Jews who pushed back to save fellow Jews sometimes with success sometimes without)

I LOVED RIGA.