On my second day in Riga, I decided to check out the free walking
tour. I wasn't sure what part of St. Peter's Cathedral the meeting spot
was, so I actually ended up walking around the whole thing and arrived 2
minutes late. I came to realize that the group of people who showed up
for the walk was so huge, that they separated it into 2 groups. The
group I was in was enormous for a walking tour! We walked to an area
where the Buddy Bears were. It was so cool for me to see them again,
because the last time I saw them was 3 years ago, when I was living in
Santiago, Chile. The bear from the Czech Republic looked pretty cool,
but the bear from Japan was too simplistic and a bit of a
disappointment. From the tour I thought 2 stories were interesting.
First, there was a tower that some college students wanted to use for
their group headquarters. The community told them they could use it,
but they would need to fix it up. When they looked into the tower they
found piles and piles of bird poop, 200 years worth of bird poop. The
students ended up selling the bird poop as fertilizer and with the money
they earned, they were able to fix up the tower and use it. Second
story is of a bronze cat statue of top of a building. The owner of the
building didn't like how there was a German headquarter across from his
building so he made a bronze cat and had the cat's butt face the German
headquarters. Of course the people didn't like it and took the guy to
court about taking off the cat. However, the person with the cat on the
building was an influential person so he fought to keep the cat and in
the end they had an agreement that he could keep the cat on the building
as long as he turned it around and the butt wasn't facing the
headquarters. I thought I might go on the Alternative tour, but I had
to meet my friend at 1pm, so I didn't have time to check it out. I
actually first met my friend in Tokyo, Japan last year and I never
thought that I would meet up with her in her home country. It was great
to catch up. The weather wasn't the best so we went into the National
Library and enjoyed the exhibitions. It was a nice day.
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| listening to a little history about the Riga |
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| beautiful building |
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| telling us some more information |
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| cute statue |
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| buddy bears |
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| Malaysia |
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| so many buddy bears |
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| super old buildings, the doorway was from another structure though |
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| bird sh*t tower |
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| Lithuania |
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| gold statue |
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| Taiwan |
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| Russia |
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| USA 9080 |
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| cat tower |
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| nice street art |
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| made from straw |
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| old storage place |
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| Fiji |
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| Singapore |
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| Singapore 9083 |
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| thought i was gonna join the second tour |
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| glasses on a mannequin |
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| chilling |
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| from Tokyo to Riga! |
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| nicely painted egg |
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| national library |
