Monday, April 26, 2010

Dome Square (99/100)


The additional photography didn't happen, but we did get a couple pictures this weekend of the place yr humble correspondent will probably miss most about Riga: Drinking a cool beer on a sunny day in Dome Square is pretty hard to beat.

There are two bars that share the square, and they each have live music during the summer. At the (superior despite the silly name) No Problem bar, a different band plays every night, ranging from Spanish guitar to rockabilly. Next door, Mitroshkin's Master Band plays the exact same Santana and Rolling Stones covers every night from the top of the antique fire truck (below). They cleverly alternate sets, so one can sit out in the late, late Baltic sunshine on a June night, enjoying a delicious local Tervetes beer with live music basically non-stop for hours on end. Maybe I'm just nostalgic already, but I have not run into a similar combination of fantastic atmosphere and very good beer and consistently good-enough music in any other locale, and I've lived in a fair number of cities in the United States of America.


So, basically, if you, dear reader, have not had a chance to visit Latvia and for some reason are here in the Summer, the no-question recommendation is to show up at No Problem at about 4:59 PM, grab a table, and hold down the fort for as long as your liver will allow.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wait - packout? Packout as in - leaving? And going somewhere else?

Where have I been that I missed this? Where are you going - have you said and I missed it?

Rita Johnson said...

Loved the pics of the beer garden. It reminded me of the Piaza's we enjoyed in Italy only with wine instead of beer.

Are you going to get to Colorado between assignments? We would love to see you so let us know if you are in the area.