My Adventures Where in the world is ….

So we were in Riga for the Sabbath day and, as has happened every week we have been here, it was an unusual day.  First, because we traveled on two airplanes to get to Riga and second, because we did not attend our regular meetings.  To compensate for that we decided to visit the beautiful cathedral across from our hotel.  We had a beautiful view of it from our window so we went to see it close.

This is a bird’s eye view of the Cathedral I found on line.

It seemed irreverent to to take pictures inside but I found a few on line that give you a flavor of the cathedral’s beauty. Inside the dome is a gorgeous painting of the Savior – wish I could find a good picture of that. It is truly awe inspiring.

A closer view of the front of the cathedral inside.

Watching the people inside (you can see one of the nuns at the center of the last picture) we felt their reverence and love of the Savior.

It was truly the next best thing to being in our Church meetings on the Sabbath day.

Well, early Sunday morning, January 15 2017, we headed to the airport in Dnepr.  Fortunately, the mission driver was available to take us to the airport.  He is such a good man and takes his job very seriously, including taking our luggage and loading us carefully into the mission van.  At the airport he took us inside and got us up front into the line into the ticket and check in room.  Then he left as he couldn’t go in with us.  Inside we waited in another line (you do a lot of waiting in line here) and finally got our tickets (with our names spelt wrong – oh well) and got in another line to get on the bus to be taken to the plane.

When we finally got on the plane we relaxed a little.  We flew to Kyiv (westerners spell it Kiev but here it is spelled Kyiv and pronounce Keev) and then we had to figure our way around.  They pick you up at the plane and drive you on the bus to the airport where we arrived at baggage claim.  Then we had to figure our way around the three story terminal.  Finally we got in another line to go through security again and then through the passport line again and finally we were in the international terminal nearly running down the hall to get to our gate.  They were calling our names as we arrived and we were on the last bus to our plane.  When we finally got on our plane we really breathed a sigh of relief.  We were so worried we would miss our plane – we almost did.  It takes so long to get from one place to another and then all the security – but we got through it all.  In Riga we had to do it all over again to get yet another stamp on our passports.  They put the stamps wherever – not necessarily together and not on the next page as you might think they would.  But we got our stamps, found a taxi and headed to the hotel.

What we didn’t know is that there are many Radison Blu hotels in Riga.  Fortunately we were dropped at the one just two blocks from where we were actually staying.  So after a short walk we finally were able to check in and go to our room and unwind.  Unfortunately, our one suitcase did not make the transfer in Kyiv.  We finally got it the next day about 8 pm.  That made our morning interesting.  The hotel was very good and gave us a shaving kit (small but adequate) and toothbrush/toothpaste kits (again, small but adequate.  Here a few pictures from our Sunday – yet another unusual Sabbath day.

Here is the hotel we stayed at in downtown Riga – it was a high class hotel. I doubt we would ever have paid to stay here. The restaurant had amazing food. Our stay there included the best breakfast we have ever had in a hotel – you name it they had it and more than that. Amazing.

Out front of the Hotel.

This is the hallway into our room. It actually was quite spacious. Not huge but plenty big for our needs.

Here is the bed in our room with the window that has a great view of the city – especially the old town.

This is the Cathedral of the Nativity which is just across the street from our hotel and where we spent part of our Sabbath day. It is truly amazing inside and out.

I will add more pictures later or tomorrow. Have to get to work.

When we pay our rent we pay with cash.  We thought you might like to see what the wad looks like.  It is 1500 griven – which is actually just $550 in US dollars – so it is not that much.

It looks like more than it actually is. It is all in 200 and 100 griven bills.

Here you can see the stack all those griven make. It took three times at the ATM to get it all out. They limit how much you can take out at one time.

It is hard to see but we woke to a new layer of snow and it is so beautiful.  When we left our apartment there were several inches of snow to get through and you would thing that would be easy but it was hard work to walk through it all.  In some places there was a path in others it was piled up and you just had to try and get through.  Not much there but it took a lot of energy to walk through it.  Thankfully, we could take the tram up the hill but we had to walk around the bottom of the hill to get to the tram, so we walked just as far just not up the hill.  It was a quite walk as not many were out yet.  New fallen snow is the best!

The snow is built up on our air conditioner our our balcon window.

It is kind of dark but maybe you can see the road that has new snow and no one has driven on it yet. It is early morning so it is pretty dark outside.