Riga - Don't waste your time

Tuesday 13 February 2007
After much effort in convincing our Project Manager to approve our project close dinner at Babylon at The Roof Gardens, we finally got to reap the rewards of our hard work this evening. A three course set dinner, which was nice (nothing fantastic...but can't complain when you are not paying!) and heaps of drinks...the guys were going crazy ordering double Jack Daniels and Coke...so a fellow female colleague and I decided to order a glass of Dom Perignon each (aah...the business expense account!). Close to 12, we headed to a club nearby called Dunes where one of the guys had organised a separate area for us. Free drinks continued with one of the project consultants putting it on his expense account. I ended up getting home around 3am, so you can imagine not many of us made it to work on time the next day!

Wednesday 14 February 2007 - Happy Valentines Day!
Yang and I had a few errands to run around South London and the West End so by the time we were ready to head home for dinner it was quite late, so we decided to eat in town. Unfortunately, being Valentine's Day (a day which I refuse to celebrate due to its totally commercial nature), we couldn't get into our original restaurant of choice, Vasco & Piero's for some hearty Italian food, so we had korean BBQ at Ran instead. Thankfully not a cheesy over-priced Valentine's Day dinner!

Friday 16 February 2007
I had drinks with work colleagues at Waterloo before meeting Yang for dinner at the Amphitheatre Restaurant in the Royal Opera House as we were watching Swan Lake that evening. The ballet was enjoyable (although I did almost fall asleep at times...it was a tiring week at work!). There are several endings to Swan Lake, Yang and I were hoping for the 'Disney' version, i.e. the prince and princess kill the evil Von Rothbart and live happily ever after, but we got the 'princess commits suicide, prince commits suicide and they live happily ever after in heaven' ending...

Saturday 17 February 2007
We flew to Riga this morning for a quick tour of its Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its Art Nouveau/Jugendstil architecture:

1) St Peter's - where we took the lift up to the top of the spire for its views over Riga...it was so cold, but the views were worth it. Notice that the river was totally frozen over...people were actually walking on the frozen river when we drove across the bridge from the Airport.

2) House of Blackheads - famous for its gothic and Dutch Renaissance facade






3) Great and Small Guild Halls
4) Dome Cathedral - the largest Church in the Baltics
5) Three Brothers - the oldest Stone Residential buildings in the city (unfortunately Yang's lens could only fit two of the three brothers in!)








6) Riga Castle - now used as the Presidential Office
7) Old City Walls and Swedish Gates - the oldest remaining portion of the Old Town fortifications





8) Gun Powder Tower

After our leisurely walk around the Old Town, we headed for dinner at Vincents, apparently the "best" restaurant in Riga based on the number of dignatories and celebrities that have graced its doors, including Prince Charles and Prince Andrew, George W Bush (although if I had known he had been there I would have thought twice about going), Jose Carreras, and Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands. My choice of courses could not have been better (usually Yang always makes the better choices)...especially the speciality of the restaurant...marinated eel with pan fried foie gras...it was absolutely divine and now tops the steak and foie gras from Le Gavroche that I use to rave about...even Yang thought it was okay and he hates foie gras. It was a very unusual choice of cuisine, given it was Chinese New Year's Eve, but this was due to poor planning on my part given I totally forgot about Chinese New Year when I booked this weekend away.

Sunday 18 February 2007
We woke up late (Riga is 2 hours ahead after all) and after breakfast at the hotel, we headed to the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, which has various exhibits on the atrocities commited against Latvians by Soviet occupation, the Nazi occupation (during WWII) and the Soviet re-occupation, which spans the period from 1940 to 1991. If you think of the cruelty to which the Nazi's inflicted on Jews during WWII, imagine this by the Soviets as well, and then imagine all this for a period of over 50 years.

We then quickly strolled through the central market, mostly a produce market (which was really cheap, a pain-au-chocolat was the equivalent of £0.06) and Stockmanns (a upmarket German Department Store) before walking to the Freedom Monument and back to the hotel to grab our taxi back to the airport.

Given we completed our 2 day itinerary in one hour and the fact that the people there were unpleasant, I would summarise that Riga is a waste of time and that if you were planning to go there, your time and money could be spent better elsewhere.

We got back to London after 6pm and headed straight out again with my brother for Chinese New Year dinner at Kai Mayfair. I chose this restaurant as the chef is Singaporean so I knew they would do Yee Sang the proper way (and then rang to confirm!)...it's surprising that with the number of Chinese restaurants in London, very few restaurants know how to do Yee Sang (most probably because it is more of a Singaporean/Malaysian tradition than Mainland Chinese). The food was much better than anything in Chinatown but at 5 times the price (+ the Yee Sang was £15 per person...very ouch), it damn well should be. As entertainment for that evening, they had a Chinese Astrologer. Most of the stuff she said was pretty generalistic. However, she told me that I had a good upbringing, but later told Sean that he had a hard upbringing...I had half a mind to tell her afterwards that we were from the same family and that she should get a new job!

So, on that note ... GONG XI FA CAI ... hope you all have a very prosperous year of the Pig. According to Yang's mum, it's the Golden Year of the Pig, which only comes every 60 years, so it's a good year to have babies (and apparently the hospitals in China are preparing for an influx of births)...not that this is enough to persuade me!