It was raining when we left the hotel, and it rained a couple more times during the day. In between the rain, the sun shone and it was warm and humid. We walked around Old Town for a while, then went to the newer part of the city and wandered across the river to look at the magnificent new National Library of Latvia. It’s not finished yet, but from the outside it’s a very impressive building. I had known about the city’s central market, but wasn’t sure where it was, so it was a nice surprise to find it back on the city side of the river. It’s huge! We went into the wet market first, with a whole hall full of fresh, smoked and dried seafood, then into the meat and smallgoods hall, a partly empty fruit and vegetable section, then outside to see lots more fresh food stalls. So many stalls, so much excellent produce at really cheap prices. We only had enough cash to get us back out to the airport on the local bus, so we couldn’t buy anything … which was probably just as well.

We headed to a large shopping centre to find some lunch at a sit-down restaurant that took credit cards – the above-mentioned no-cash problem, and we wanted to kill some time. The shopping centre was mostly full of womens’ clothes shops (just like at home), but we found an Italian restaurant and settled in for the afternoon. Even so, we got out to the airport either way too early or in plenty of time, depending on how much pre-flight time your internal clock needs before boarding a plane.

It was a good day,and probably a good buffer for us to start making the transition from friendly, English-speaking Sweden to mildly scary non-English speaking St Petersburg, which I’ll write about soon.