Saturday
Boarding our luxury RyanAir flight FR9607 at the ungodly early hours of the morning, memories are a little hazy of the early moments of our Latvian adventure. Let us introduce the protagonists of our little Baltic tale (in alphabetical order): Catherine – the soon-to-be 22 year old whose birthday this trip was masqueraded (and who was on a quest to find her Eastern European roots), Martina – a giddy already 22 year old who was soon to be sick all over the RyanAir upholstery, Paddy – a man so bold he wore two pairs of trousers every day and Sarah – a big-eyed, buxom blonde fresh from the pages of the Daily Star.
The bus journey from the airport was our official introduction to Latvian life, and the notorious beauties that the country cultivates. Our first specimen was an ‘efficient’ bus conductor who poked the bus fare out of every traveller with a big pointy finger. No woman in Latvia has natural colour hair – it’s obviously a weakness to let your true colours shine. Aforementioned pokey woman then proceeded to use Sarah’s head as a leaning post for her clipboard whilst the latter was being embraced by a large Russian man.
The bus driver, whilst being under the impression that the bus was some sort of ‘Transportation Tardis’ continued to cram as many fur-coated and fur-hatted grim looking Latvians onto the bus as possible. This left Paddy on his tiptoes, clinging onto his adidas holdall for dear life.
Fun Friendly Franks, an incongruous looking hostel had a narrow, rickety two flights upto the reception; luckily, on the way a hero in the shape of Matt helped us with our bags – little did we know what a role this young man was going to make in our holiday… Greeted officially by Ana with a welcoming smile and a beer, she gave us the low-down on Riga’s must-see sights and warned us about the dangers of so-called ‘free bars’, designed to lure the unsuspecting drunken tourist into a trap of Latvian vice and destitution. However these warnings were lost on Martina who had more pressing matters on her mind – trying not to chunder on our new Latvian friend Ana. As we could not get into our room immediately, Martina had to settle for a nausea-abating nap in the hostel’s smoking room. The other three bravely stepped up, drank her free beer and ordered another round. Her nap did not just provide much-needed respite, it also aroused Martina to the worrying bird flu developments back in Blighty.
With a beer or two in our bellies, we set off to find much needed sustenance. Our aimless wanderings led us into a dimension we thought we had left behind in 1989. We had stumbled into the Central Markets where we mingled with ‘creatively’ dressed women skulking around ‘one of the city’s most exciting cultural treasures.’ Fruit, fish, cassettes, fake label bags – you name it, it had it. We were in our element. Alas, they didn’t have any restaurants, and after deciding that the train station would perhaps not be the nicest setting for our first Latvian meal, we continued our quest …although we had not found food, it had not been a fruitless walk as we had learnt to count to four in, you guessed it, Latvian.
Our foray into Latvian cuisine was momentarily thrown into confusion by a bizarre practise known as ‘plate-weighing’ whereby the aim of the game to point at what you wanted, which was then weighed and then would be placed in the world’s lowest wattage microwave. Beer and food was cheap, but full of surprises – as evidenced by Sarah and Paddy’s devastatingly mislead meal of cheese-coated pineapple chicken with a healthy side of cheesy slimey salad.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in a variety of watering holes. First up was like Liberace had been to Ikea where we supped cocktails and munched cake, and Martina pondered over the potential lesbian sexuality of what transpired to be an eight-year old boy sat innocently at the bar.
Next up was Irish bar, Paddy Whelans, where our visit coincided with the England vs. Scotland rugby game. A few pints later and an England victory under their belts, the gang trotted to Amsterdama where the afternoon’s drinking began to have its effect. 
We merrily sat chuckling in the window whilst making observations about Latvian culture. We had noticed that whenever paying for goods, the server would always put change flat on the counter, rather than into our upturned palms. This upset us. Was their something wrong with our sweaty touristy hands? Luckily for us, help with this conundrum was at hand as our friendly fellow hostel dweller, Matt, at that very moment, trundled by the window waving manically. After inviting himself in to join our party and pulling up a chair, he too said that he was confused by this cultural difference. In jest, we dropped into conversation that our trip to Riga was a stag party celebration for Paddy; unknowingly for us, Matt did not seem to think that it was at all strange for three girls to solely accompany a young bloke for a raucous weekend, and let the comments lie. He tried to convince us to go to La Rocca with the ‘lads’ from the hostel. A club playing RnB and Baltic house, complete with go-go dancers and strippers didn’t sound like a top night to us, so we politely declined.
Hunger had firmly struck, so on our way to our next drink we stopped by what we thought was a take-away, hoping for chips. Foiled by Latvian cuisine, we were in yet another plate-weighing emporium. Paddy tucked into a big plate of lukewarm pasta and the girls ate a selection of warm, pink sausage surprises. Slightly more satisfied, we ploughed on to what we had heard called a ‘bohemian’ and ‘alternative’ nightclub called Nobody Writes to the Colonel or Pulkvedin Neviens Neraksta. We danced like it was going out of fashion, as did some of the body-poppin’, breakdancin’ other residents of the disco. The club had two floors, dodgy locals and pear cider – what more you want? The night would have been complete with a post-club pizza, alas Riga hasn’t cottoned onto the take-away phenomenon in the same way as in Britain, so we went to bed hungry.
