Breakfast in the Hotel Economy was good, boiled egg and a choice of muesli or porridge, black bread (yum) or white toast, ham, cheese, tomatoes, yoghurt. Great! We left the hotel and ventured back into the old city. We headed for the Russian cathedral dedicated to the thirteenth century hero Alexander Nevsky, turned into a saint! The cathedral was not that old, built in the late 19th century, and almost demolished out of pique when Estonia became independent, but saved because it would have cost too much to knock it down!
A burly attendant visually frisked everybody on their way in for cameras, and pointed to the no photographs notice. I can never be bothered with these, and took my photograph anyway, firing from the hip so it wasn't too obvious, and my camera's flash is always switched off anyway.

Then a very pleasant coffee in a cafe in the old town, followed by another wander along its interesting streets. Ju bought herself a T shirt. There were a lot of flags in town, mostly the national flag, but we were amazed to see the saltire flying, and when we investigated it turned out to be outside the Highlander pub, down a steep staircase from the street, empty of people but full of tartan, sporrans, clan cots of arms, and an amazing collection of single malts. We settled for beer, I had a half pint of Belhaven and Ju had a bottle of something else.

Deciding it was lunch time, we found a nice Italian restaurant and ordered pizza, eating half and keeping the other half for lunch on the bus to Riga the next day. We had seen the tour guide's instructions about the journey lasting about 4 and a half hours and wanted to be prepared.
Back to the hotel and a siesta before the meeting at six with the tour guide.

At six we went down to reception and met our fellow travellers. There are fifteen of us, plus Vassily, our guide, who hails from St Petersburg, speaks excellent English, and is an enthusiastic history graduate with a wealth of knowledge about the Balkan States. We are lucky to have him. We completed our paperwork to his satisfaction, listened carefully to his organisational instructions, and went to the restaurant together for dinner, and a chance to get to know other members of the group. There are three Canadians, three Australians, two Irish women, five English people and us. We discovered I am the oldest, by a couple of months, and the youngest looks about 25. We ordered burgers, which arrived on slates with a skewer holding them together, and a pair of black neoprene gloves in ziplock bags arrived on the table with them. Vassily was in mid-flow describing our taxi motorcade in the morning when he and everyone else noticed us putting on these gloves, prior to eating our burgers. It wasn't clear what the point of this was, but it made everybody laugh, quite an icebreaker. We all wondered if this was an old Estonian custom? No idea.

Then off to bed, early start in the morning.

Saturday morning dawned with the alarms on our phones waking us up at seven. Breakfast was a bit more hectic than the day before as there were more people trying to get toast, coffee etc all at once. Nevertheless we all turned up with all our luggage on time, and left the hotel four to a taxi to go to the international bus station.

Our bus was luxurious, with free wifi and screens for every seat, with internet access, streamed films, games all laid on. Coffee was available from a machine in the centre of the bus free at any time, and the was an onboard loo. Our seats were near the front, so we hd a good view of the journey. Most of the road was simple A road, there were only dual carriageways in and near towns. The landscape was very flat, with lots of trees in glorious autumn colours, and the sun shone on us all day. How lucky is that? Weather here is apparently as unpredictable as at home.

Crossing the border into Latvia was seamless, the bus didn't even pause. A bit like the Scotland England border, I thought.

Riga bus station finally appeared, and we walked in crocodile for about fifteen minutes, rolling our luggage, apart from the hardy types with rucksacks, up and down underpasses and across streets with tram tracks, until we arrived at our hotel, opposite the main railway station. Our room is on the sixth floor, where we dumped our stuff and headed back down to reception. Vassily was going to take us to a restaurant for lunch, then a guided walk round old Riga. Ju and I skipped lunch, as we had had pizza. It was quarter to three, anyway. We went for a coffee and a sticky bun instead. Then Vassily took us on an interesting walk explaining buildings, the canal, the river, the national monument, where we happened to be for the changing of the guard. He pointed out the restaurant where he has booked us in tomorrow night, which does traditional Latvian cuisine. Then he left us to our own devices for the day, and we took a long walk along the river, back to the hotel, to rest up for a while before dinner.

More of our Latvian adventures later........