[The tourist information]

Our high quality hostel room has windows which don't close, curtains which cover half the window, and a bed shaped like a tent. We get up and graze on our supplies for breakfast (there's nothing provided by the hostel).

We walk into the market and buy bananas which Cathy raves about, then head to Old Riga. We're visiting the far end today. The first stop is the tourist information in the old town square. Then, once we're informed, we visit the Occupation Museum next door.

[Occupation Museum]

[Occupation Museum]

It has a different style to Tallinn museum, focused on people with text and exhibits rather than video. It sometimes feels a little disjointed, it's not always easy to understand the order of events.

[Rigan church.]

[...wander through the streets.]

[Cathedral Square.]

It's approaching lunchtime so Cathy goes wrong again. We wander through the streets and accidentally find a vegetarian Indian restaurant. Their apple curry is nice enough, but suffers from the lack of proper food. And there's no beer.

[A Brother]

[City wall]

[City wall]

[Powder Tower]

And then we continue exploring. Riga Castle is the residence of the President. As ever, it's protected by guards doing silly walks. As we head on through town, we see the "three brothers" (the oldest houses in Latvia) and bits of the city wall including the "Powder Tower" with Russian cannonballs sticking out of it.

[Bastejkalns Park]

Our route then takes us into the Bastejkalns Park, a thin belt of green between the old city and the new. The park contains memorials to people who died in the fight for independence in 1991, including a film crew.

[Freedom monument]

[Freedom monument]

Further along is the freedom monument built in 1935 to commemorate Latvia's brief independence between the two World Wars, which appears to be rather more effectively guarded than the Riga Castle.

After that, tiredness catches up with us and we walk back to the hostel and sleep.

And that's it for the day. It's raining fairly heavily in the afternoon and we decide not to sacrifice a change of clothes. We stay in the hostel and kill time with cards, backgammon and diary writing.