Day 45 - Thursday 20 July

It was another sunny day so we walked to the market buildings. The customers were mostly elderly and were not making large puchases. Many of them appear to travel by public transport and only had one or two small bags. The busiest place at the market was a small supermarket.

We caught a local tram to an area with historic wooden buildings. The tram tracks and some of the trams are very old. They have to travel slowly to cope with the cobblestone streets. We were only about 2 km from the city when we left the tram. There were unmade streets and derelict buildings and very few people or cars. The neglect dating back to the Soviet era is very apparent. 

Some of the old timber buildings looked like they should be demolished rather than renovated, but it was apparent many of those are inhabited. There were a few impressive structures such as the one in the photo, but these are interspersed among old concrete apartment blocks.

Latvia benefits from EU funding some of which is applied to heritage projects. There must be more museums in Riga than in all of Australia - many focus on the wars, the German invaders, slaughter of Jews and other minorities, the return of the Russians, the KGB etc. Then there are transport and automobile museums, arts and textiles, design, architecture etc. So far we haven't visited any of them!

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