On our second day in lovely Riga, we continued to have a minor challenge with the weather—blustery skies and horizontal rain showers. Nevertheless, the guests and staff made the most of our last morning. Many guests walked into the old city on individual self-guided tours, looking at the medieval churches, specialty Baltic food markets, and upscale linen and jewelry shops. A large segment of the passengers joined a canal cruise along the waterway made from the site of the former medieval walls of the city, and took in the boundary between the 19th century and medieval sections of Riga by small-scale and very human-sized rivercraft.
After embarking and leaving Riga at 1:00 p.m., our guests were presented two lectures by our onboard cultural specialists. Anne Wilson gave a fascinating overview of art nouveau design and its links to 19th and 20th century romantic nationalism in Europe. Her accompanying photos of related art, design, architecture, and church structures was captivating and very relevant to what we had seen in Estonia and Latvia. Eric Benjaminson then presented a talk on the tribulations and triumphs of Latvia in the 20th century, weaving throughout the story the micro-history of his Latvian-Jewish father’s family which intersected at major points with the sweeping developments in Latvia and, by extension, in Lithuania.
Tomorrow afternoon we arrive in Klaipeda, Lithuania (formerly known as the city of Memel) which has a long history as part of the area of the Teutonic Knights, German barons, Polish kings, Czarist Russian rulers, and most recently the independent nation of Lithuania.
