Day 13: Sailing and Wandering Riga

This is our last day in Riga.  We have had a wonderful time here.  We started with a boat ride through the city canal and the Daugava river.

There are so many parks and they are planted with lots of flowers.

From the boat we got to see old and new Riga.

This is the new library.

The Monument of Freedom was pretty spectacular.

The art museum was a great find.  These are all Latvian artists.

Dzemma Skulme, Women of Nice, 1960

Gederts Eliass, Karija with a black cat, 1918

Miervaldis Polis, Reverie, 1982

You can really tell the soviet Socialist Realism on this one.  Edgars Iltners, Masters of the Land, 1960

Janis Liepin, Violin Playere, 1920

We walked from the art museum to the Russian Orthodox Church.

Then I visited the only standing Synagogue in Riga.  What's amazing is that like so many of the buildings, it is in Art Nouveau style.

We ended the day with a concert in the Dome Church that was mostly Bach and Wagner.

I guess I didn't realize how different Riga would be from Vilnius.  There are some similarities but very different cultures.  When we drove here from Vilnius our driver was Lithuanian and we picked up our Riga guide who was Latvian.  They spoke to each other in Russian.