Places I’ll Never Forget (Hopefully !) #2

Bay of Riga

This was taken on the Bay of Riga near Apšuciems, (a place I have great deal of difficulty in pronouncing correctly) After a hot day it’ was lovely to walk along the beach and feel the soft cooling breeze.

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5 Days of Grey

That’s the BBC weather forecast for my part of the UK, so I thought I would cheer myself up by posting some photographs from summer 2016 in Latvia.

Lying On The Beach And Looking Up

Olympus EPL1

Beach Bums

Olympus EPL1

Flower Boot

Olympus XA – Ilford HP5+

Hopefully I will be going back to Latvia in June to visit my lovely relatives.

Thursday’s Door

01-12-16

For Norm 2.0 Thursday Doors

Riga Latvia. So many amazing doors, could have spent the whole holiday searching out and photographing them.

Last few from Latvia visit

I was hoping to post some images from my replacement Olympus OM40 that I bought a couple of months ago, I scanned the negs and when I opened them in Photoshop there were dust specs all over them. I am a man of patience but… so I will re-scan them later in the week.

So here are the last images from my Latvia visit.

Wild flowers at the family cemetery.

Grandfather, Grandmother and my Mum

Half of my Mums ashes are buried in Latvia the other half in the UK.

Three Trees

On the family farmland, one tree planted for each of my Mums brothers.

Sigulda National Park from Turaida Castle

Sigulda is a beautiful park, looking forward to visiting it again.

River Gauja

We stopped off here early evening on the way back to Riga, it’s a popular swimming and fishing spot.

Russian Orthodox Nativity Cathedral (recently restored)

Latvian Freedom Monument

Can’t wait for my next visit.

Latvian Ethnographic Open Air Museum

Just on the edge of Riga is the Ethnographic Museum, I first visited the site in 1993, at that time it was just getting started so it was really good to go back and see how it has come along. They have lots of exhibitions, festivals, and craft fairs throughout the year, not to mention an excellent shop/cafe that sells lovely food and Latvian beer.

Here are a few photographs from the museum site, as usual could have spent a lot longer looking around.

Old Wooden Mill

Roof Detail

Bee Hive

Mossy roof on this old farm building

While we were waiting for my relatives at the end of our visit this lovely affectionate cat came and sat by us demanding lots of fuss, a great way to end our day.

Latvia – Wildflowers

Sorting wildflowers for St John’s day garlands.

Riga – St Peter’s Church

While we were in Riga Old Town we visited St Peter’s church and took a trip to the top of the tower, fortunately there was a lift !

St Peter’s Church

Interior

The Latvian youth orchestra were rehearsing, I could have stayed and listened all afternoon.

Part of the old town and the River Daugava

Old town and Market

The first time I visited Riga I thought the market was the railway station, it was the canopied roofs that fooled me. The tower top right is the TV and Radio transmitter.

Riga Rooftops

National Library of Latvia

This striking looking library building was completed in 2014
For the last two shots above I used my old Helios 58mm lens on the Olympus EPL1 to give me a short telephoto.

One from the Olympus XA

I just grabbed this shot, the Dove caught my eye.

 

Riga Balconies and Rooftops

I’ve been to Latvia 6 times now since 1993 to visit my lovely relatives, but this was the first time I spent most of the holiday in Riga. I really got to like Riga, needless to say the time passed too quickly and I need to go back again to take more photographs and eat more (saldējums) Latvian ice cream !

Flight booked

The flight is booked to Latvia for June. It will be really good to see my relatives again and wander around Riga and the Latvian countryside. Here are couple of photographs from my first trip to Latvia in June 1993. They were taken on my Olympus OM2n, Zuiko 24mm lens, and Kodak Ektachrome 200 asa.

1950’s GAZ M20 – Riga 

Big Red Train –  Kandava Municipality

Grey Day

I was going to take a walk into town with my camera today but it was so dark and grey I decided to give it a miss. Fortunately I have built up good supplies of cat food !!!! So to keep my self busy I scanned in a few old slides from Latvia that I took in 1992.

You can get some amazing skies in Latvia.

This lake (ezers) was hidden away in a forest.

This old barn was near to my mums farm. I’ve never been able to get a good scan of this slide as it is very dark, so I combined two scans, one set for the highlights the other for the shadows and processed them in EasyHDR.

Olympus OM2n -24mm Zuiko 2.8 – Kodak Ektachrome 200 asa.