Cabbage and Old Believers

The prettiest church I saw in Riga belonged to the Old Believers. These are the oldest of old school Russians, who are not keen to move on beyond the 1600s.

The inside of the church was fun and colourful.

Russian biblical family portraits get crowded and bumpy because of all the halos.

They like their icon pictures. They like wearing robes and long beards. Speaking of robes, I went to see the old city walls and found this guy, who would be terrifying at night.

The food in Latvia was delicious but not the most photogenic.

Lots of smoked fish and delicious cabbage dishes. You don't wanna see pictures of cabbage.

Smoked fish remoulade. Ugly yums.

Paired with unusual liquor such as this totally cherry bar, which is actually Ukrainian.

For dessert there is lots of halwa in fun flavours

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Riga and the Mushroom of the Year

In March, I went to Riga, Latvia. It looks like this. It's fairy tale grunge chic.

Above are the three brothers: three buildings which flaunt their Gothic, Baroque and Dutch Mannerism architectures. The architecture below is just called tiny.

Even the fences are cool.

This is the best picture I got of the Stalin's birthday cake building, which is now called the Academy of Science. It's 108 meters tall and towers over the otherwise less impressive area.

The other main Soviet artifact is the Latvian Riflemen Monument, which is a tribute to the Riflemen from WW1, especially Lenin's favourites.

The beauteous marvel in Riga is the House of Blackheads, on the right. Notably, the location of the first Christmas tree (awkwardly outside and to the left).

Explained below, this was a merchants' club, and they chose an African head as their, uh, decorative motif.

They advise to take this into historical context and not find it troubling, but I failed.

Excellent and also troubling is the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia.

It's the best museum on horror and death I've ever visited, and these are surprisingly numerous! I learnt about mass deportations, and I later learnt that this lead to multilingual/split families upon repatriation. 

I'm making Riga sound gloomy, which it wasn't at all. To regain your optimism and cheer, please note that the Latvian Mycological Society named the cute little parrot toadstool as the Mushroom of the Year! They love their mushrooms. Singapore (3x bigger) doesn't even have a mycological society.

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Dragons

We saw the Komodo dragons! They have terrible skin: needs exfoliation, which you can see on this lovely lady below.

Here is a better perspective of how close we were.

Luckily, they mostly chill during the day, rather than maim you with these claws. 

And baby kimodos are adorable little creatures that you want to cuddle! But cuteness does NOT stop them from being eaten by their older relatives. They have to use agility and tree climbing for that.

The Komodo lands and sea are also very beautiful.

We climbed to the peak of Padar island to get a picture where we tried to not look sweaty.

After climbing to the peak, we earned a rehydrating pina colada.

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