Free Walking Tour (Riga, Latvia)

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. 

listening to a little history about the Riga

beautiful building

telling us some more information

cute statue

buddy bears

Malaysia

so many buddy bears

super old buildings, the doorway was from another structure though

bird sh*t tower

Lithuania

gold statue

Taiwan

Russia

USA  9080

cat tower

nice street art

made from straw

old storage place

Fiji

Singapore

Singapore   9083

thought i was gonna join the second tour

glasses on a mannequin

chilling

from Tokyo to Riga!

nicely painted egg

national library