Day 8 September 15th Riga and towards Tallin



river with fountain

We had in Riga by the time we surfaced and so we quickly

Orthodox Church

had breakfast and geared ourselves up for what looked like another showery day.  We had been to an introductory lecture and had a town map and so had roughly worked out an itinerary for what looked like an interesting destination.  The boat docked near the centre of the city and we were able to 

freedom monument

walk to the old town.  We initially walked along a path by a river 

cobbled streets on old town

with fountains and eventually came to the freedom monument.  From there we went further inland to see the orthodox church and then crossed the river into the old town.  It began to rain as we walked down the lovely cobbled streets and decided to have a break at a Costa Coffee shop.
We then looked at St Peter's Church, some more interesting streets, a little market and the Blackheads buildings (read about it!) before coming to the 

more cobbled streets

Dome Cathedral which was shut.


the dome cathedral

Our route back to the boat took us past the Riga Castle which is now the official home of the president.
I will now try and post this with the remainder of the day being posted hopefully tomorrow when we are in Tallin.

We are now in Tallin, Estonia and to complete yesterday's post all I have to add is that we were required to be back on the boat by 1330 and sailed from the port at 1400.  We spent some time in the cabin, me updating the blog and Christine reorganising things and finally finding her knitting pattern which she knew she had packed somewhere!  We had afternoon tea and watched out of our window as we left the port and headed into the gulf of Finland.  We relaxed, read and eventually went to dinner.  We meet the same people at our dinner table each evening and friendships develop.  During our Italian themed meal we were offered limoncelli in glasses we were allowed to keep and this we have done.  After the meal we returned to our cabin and read until it was time for lights out.