European Capital of Culture 2014, Riga

First of all today we reacquainted ourselves with the fabulous Art Nouveau buildings that were all quite close to our hotel.  There had been a lot of restoration activity since we were last here and the pace of regeneration to repair years of neglect was very impressive.

The buildings looked different this time bathed in soft winter sunshine with snow on the roofs and when we had done enough neck craning to peer upwards towards the statues and friezes we left this part of the city and walked once again through the spacious parks towards the city centre.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: UP

Riga from the Church Tower:

Next stop was a trip to the top of a church tower to see the city from an elevated perspective and from here we could better appreciate the patchwork quilt of coloured roofs and pastel facades looking even more attractive under the snowy mantle that decorated them.  Luckily we didn’t have to climb to the top and there was an attended lift that raised us to the summit. 

We had ten minutes at the viewing platform which was about nine more than we really needed considering how cold it was with a bitter wind that felt like icy needles being driven into our faces; so we were careful therefore that we didn’t miss the descent when the lift came back to collect us and return us to the ground floor and back to the street.

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Riga, Winter Snow in the Old Town

In the morning the sun was shining and the roofs of the buildings opposite were still covered by a white blanket of thick snow with a cold frosty sparkle that just shouted out ‘Winter’.   Outside the hotel front door an old lady was efficiently clearing the snow from the taxi rank and the footpaths by scraping away with an oversized plastic shovel that seemed to be difficult work but most effective.

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Tallinn, Estonia

This year we have spent a lot of time in Western Europe and especially Spain but in December it is time to go East and visit a Christmas market and despite being disappointed in previous years on visits to Slovenia and Austria, which had been full of cheap trash from the far east, we remembered that the market in Riga in Latvia had been very good so we chose to return this year to the Baltic.

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