This morning we took a run to the Riga Radio Tower, which is on a small island in the Daugava River. It was a 6 mile run across the river and down the island. The radio tower looks impressive from around the city, but we found out that a lot of locas don't like it because it was created during the Soviet occupation. Understandable.
After cleaning up we decided to have lunch at the McDonalds across from the train station. We don't usually ever eat out at home, especially fast food, but we like to try American restaurants, specifically McDonalds, while traveling abroad. There is usually something strange on the menu that caters to regional tastes. For instance, in Thailand there was fried chicken and rice bowls, and in Bulgaria there were shrimp burgers. To our surprise, there was nothing exotic at the Latvian McDonald's. We were expecting a salted fish on a bun or something. I would like to report though that the Big and Tasty burger is alive and well overseas. For some reason the USA restaurants took them off the menu. We have seen them at every non-US Micky D's.
Our evening was once again spent watching World Cup. It was a rough night for USA soccer fans. We were defeated by Belgium 2-1 in overtime after a brutal match. There was a large group of Dutch students in the hostel that night which made for a little USA bashing. Even weirder was the man that sat next to me. He was a little Latvian guy that kept staring me in the eyes asking odd USA questions, and putting in anti USA jabs. I didn't like him, but was pleasant. I think it annoyed him that we didn't take the bait.
Thank goodness our Austrian friend Rupert was there amongst the enemy. He is a quiet guy, very polite, and took a while to get conversation going. One we started talking though, he was a great companion to watch the soccer matches with.
All in all it was a good day, even with the rain. We said goodbye to Chris from Singapore and will be following him on his Facebook travel blog.
Now, we have to get the bags ready to go in the morning.
It's off to Estonia on the Lux Express bus line!
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