There and Back Again, a Latvian Tale

So yesterday I went to Liepaja, Latvia. I got a call from Regis and Ruta asking 'want to go to Latvia? bring your passport, we'll be there in 3 minutes' - so naturally I jumped up, grabbed my passport and threw on a coat. How could I pass up two more stamps on the pages of my passport? It took about a little over an hour to get there, we passed through customs and into Latvia...and I learned so much more about the difference between a study abroad's experience on a tour bus going to pre-determined places with money and what not and going with spontaneous Lithuanians in a car to a smaller city...

After we started driving in Liepaja, we thought we'd stop for tea at a pub somewhere...then we thought 'wait, we're in a different country, how are we going to pay for stuff?' - then we thought 'wait, chelsea has credit cards, perfect!' - so we stopped at kind of a rip-off of Hard Rock Cafe, where we had to pay .10 Latvian cents to use the restroom (that's $0.17) and extra for ketchup for our french fries, which took forever to come. All was well though, as the fries were good. We walked around a square with a church in it for a bit taking some pictures, and got back into the car cause it was freezing.

It was funny to read the signs, because some of it is familiar to me because of the similarity to Lithuanian words and so I was able to make some of them out. When we started driving home we discovered Latvians like their roads to turn right, and right only. I got to learn the meanings of the area's road signs though, so it was semi-helpful because they are different than the States' signs in visual appearance, but mean the same things. Overall, the trip was really fun because of the randomness and good company :)