Latvia!

We arrived in Riga, Latvia, late on Thursday night. We met our son Garrett at the airport and rented a car, then found our Airbnb. The next morning we met Garrett's family in the city and enjoyed seeing some of the city, including taking a boat ride through the canals. We enjoyed reconnecting with our family members, especially our two grandchildren!

This is the lock bridge where people frequently get married and then commemorate their marriage with a lock that has their names on it. It's located in a nice park that we enjoyed walking through. That's also where we got on the boat ride.

We also saw the Freedom statue nearby. It honors the soldiers killed in the Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920). Latvia did not enjoy much freedom and independence in the 20th century until 1990.

 We decided to take a canal boat tour like we enjoyed in Copenhagen. This was also a nice tour of the city. We started and ended in the canal but went out into the very large main river called the Daugava for part of the time.

We saw the musicians of Bremen statue so, of course, we had to tell the story:

The iconic cat symbol of Riga:

We had lunch at a traditional Latvian restaurant. It was a cafeteria-style buffet. Scott got a very large serving of sauerkraut which he described as dumping a Costco-size jar of sauerkraut on his plate. It wasn't as sour as what we get here. He did his best but didn't quite finish.

This is a very Latvian dish with potatoes on the bottom, beets, onions, and other ingredients:

After lunch, we headed for Liepaja in our rental car. It was very crowded in the back with two car seats and Garrett sitting in the middle for the 3-hour journey, but it worked out. AnnaSue took the train home after doing some shopping. We went to the grocery store that night to buy some food for our stay and had a little trouble finding the right milk. We mistakenly bought some buttermilk for our cereal which Scott heroically ate. We actually bought 2 liters and gave one to Garrett's family.

On Saturday, we visited some forts that the Russians built in 1899 and then blew up about 10 years later when they decided the forts were a strategic mistake and they didn't want other people to use them. We also tried to visit a WWII memorial but it was under construction:

These next two pictures of the destroyed forts were taken from a military heritage website:

After having some lunch, we did some swimming in the Baltic Sea, or rather, the kids did some swimming. It was a very calm day and the waves were non-existent.

That night we had dinner at a restaurant in Liepaja. I was a little disappointed with the small serving of noodles I got although it tasted quite good. There's actually more than it looks like because it's a kind of bowl in the middle. Garrett's and AnnaSue's dinner portions were more generous.

On Sunday, we attended church with Garrett's family. I enjoyed meeting members of the branch. We were asked to speak and had translators. I spoke about how 12 years earlier, our older son was a missionary in that very branch. Our son Garrett was also a speaker that day. It's a small congregation and Garrett's family contributes a lot. Garrett is the EQ president and AnnaSue is the Primary president. She taught a lesson about baptism to the whole Primary (about 10 children) in the baptismal font room, then we moved to the chapel for a few songs. Scott attended EQ with a few missionaries, Garrett, and one Latvian man. They talked about getting along with other members in your congregation and how sometimes you have to forgive them for unkind things that happen. Sadly, I did not get pictures of the church or the people but I found these on the internet:

After church, a friend of the family came over and brought us these beautiful wool socks she had knit for us. It was extremely kind of her. Unfortunately we couldn't speak directly to her because we don't speak Latvian but we tried to convey our thanks. Her name is Jenya and she was baptized when AnnaSue was a missionary here.

Scott collected these rocks at the beach:

That evening, I took a picture of the night sky outside of our Airbnb. It was on the 5th floor. It stays light very late at the end of May.

With being on the 5th floor, facing west, and the weather being quite warm with no air conditioning or black-out blinds, the Airbnb got toasty. We were over-prepared for cooler weather and under-prepared for warm weather and the beach so we had few clothes for warm weather.

On Monday, we took a walk out to a lake near Garrett's house (the lake is on one side and the beach is on the other side). It has a boardwalk through the swampy areas and an observation tower. There are a lot of birds and would be a great place to bring binoculars.

That afternoon, we went to the beach with Garrett and his children.

The sea is very shallow for a long way out. Scott went way out in his regular clothes and didn't seem to mind getting almost completely soaked. I personally was not that interested in getting wet so I refrained.😃

We ate a good dinner prepared by Garrett, said goodbye, and then got in the car and drove to Riga to spend the night before an early flight. We enjoyed our visit to Latvia!