Riga, Latvia: Today we visit Riga, the port which is also the capital of this small Baltic country. It is a very serious port indeed, lots of commercial shipping - both bulk and container. Cruising to our mooring spot from when we passed the breakwater took the better part of an hour.
Later ... We learned Riga proper is some 8-9 miles up the Daugava River from the Baltic Sea, “Daugava” translates as “much water.” That makes it a fresh water port, one supposes.
Remnants of the former Soviet occupation persist in some architecture and many monuments to this or that hero of the Soviet Union. Russians make up 25-30% of the Latvian population of 2 million, but may be a majority of Riga residents. Our guide was anti-Russian but kept it mostly on the downlow.
Like Poland, the poor Latvians have spent most of their history occupied by somebody else, most recently the Soviets. The Germans, Swedes, Poles, and even the French also sat on Latvia for a spell. The Latvians were independent between the World Wars and again since 1990 when the USSR died.
The architecture in Riga is heavily art deco with a lot of decoration on building exteriors. It’s a city of 5 & 6 story faux stone buildings interspersed with 2 story wooden buildings. It is reputed to be the largest city among the three so-called “Baltic republics.”
As we knew, Latvia and Lithuania speak old languages in the Indo-European family, whereas Estonia to the north speaks a Finno-Ugric language distantly related to Modern Turkish. Under Soviet occupation everyone of a certain age learned Russian, today’s young people are more likely to learn English.
