City of contrasts and a nice park...

Riga is such a city of jumbled and contrasting architecture: medieval, wooden slat buidlings, art nouveau (Jugendstil), Soviet block styles, and so on. Today I started out taking a walk from the B&B towards old town and found a few interesting contrasts.







Love the gargoyles and other sweet faces:





Hey Liz: they even have a street for you!



Then I got distracted by the loveliness of a soothing park. Actually I really needed some green and to feel the tranquility of a park. I felt a little down yesterday (weather, grey buildings, noisy streets, etc.) so today I made an effort to look for prettier things.







Beautiful churches (more on these later)...


And when I got to Old Town it started to rain... no more light sprinkles -- the skies burst and everyone was scrambling for shelter. After an hour or so in a cafe I gave up and got myself thoroughly soaked as I made my way back to the B&B.

Spent the afternoon listening to the rain and catching up on some blogs and other online goodies I have let pile up. Finally around 6 it got nicer again but I think I will just stay in and continue my relaxed evening. (I know, I know -- Rhonda you have probably thousands of photos by now, why are you so slow getting more onto Flickr? Guess I will do some of that this evening too!)