Wednesday 19 July 2006
Highlights: Museum of Occupation, Walking next to the black Baltic Sea

We started the day with a tour of Riga.   I found that our local guide actually lost control of the group at one stage asking if people wanted to just get a coffee (not good).   It was interesting to see a protest called ‘No Pride’ which was against the proposed Gay Pride march.   The cartoon picture representing the anti-gay message was a classic, was struggling not to laugh at this anti-gay protesters 🙂

In the afternoon I had some free time so I visited the Museum of Occupation.   This museum covered the period from the start of the Russian occupation at the start of WWII, then onto German occupation until 1944 and back to the Russians.   The underground resistance moment from 1945-1958 was fascinating, I had no idea how hard these people fought for their freedom.

It almost goes without saying that the locals for the most part don’t like Russia. I also walked for awhile along the Baltic Sea; which is very black in appearance.   The wind coming of the water made it seem colder then it probably was.   The first day in quite a while that I wish I still had my jumper.