Latvia

I really only went to one place in Latvia, which was the capital Riga.

 

It's a beautiful city with lots of old buildings in different architectural styles that I don't know the names of...

 

but, for me at the moment, in the words of Paul Kelly, "Every fucking city feels the same"

 

I got out of the city for a day to visit a place called Sgiulda which had an old castle there which was ok but nothing extraordinary.

 

On another note: Riga is the British stags/bucks night capital of the world. It's worse than Temple Bar in Dublin. With that in mind I would recommend that if you ever come to Riga don't be there on a Friday or Saturday night.

 

I had the questionable pleasure of having a group of them stay in my dorm room. And then, to top it off, the next night I had a bunch of arrogant Americans whose only topic on conversation was how much they were going to drink and how many chicks they were going to fuck.

 

After listening to these two groups (and I only heard what they were saying while they were still sober) I fully understand why locals are sometimes pissed off with tourists coming into their town for a couple of days, treating it like shit and then leaving again.

 

Latvia is the only country I'm come across where the currency is stronger than the euro. For one euro you only get 0.67 Lats (which is about the same as the British Pound). Most of the countries I've been to the exchange rate is between 2 and 4.But in Hungary, for one euro you get 250 Forints which makes you feel really really rich!