Arsenāls Art Museum

Arsenāls is a large exhibition hall for art and another part of the Latvian National Museum of Art. They don't have permanent exhibits in this building. The more modern years of the Latvian portraits exhibit are currently on display. It's a great space and I like how the overall art museum is broken up into more manageable chunks in different parts of town. They do charge for each chunk so it may not be so convenient for tourists, but we bought the yearly pass to all of them. We can come and go as we please throughout the year as exhibits change. Here's a look at what's in this one now.

Rīgas Birža Art Museum

We went to the Rīgas Birža art museum yesterday which is a part of the Latvian National Museum of Art. It's a nicely restored old building in the middle of old town with a good permanent collection and temporary exhibits with a variety of art. Riga has a lot to offer and we're fortunate to live here!

WinterCon in Riga

We went to WinterCon here in Riga presented by UniCon. It was an interesting break from the winter outside but not as good as other Comic Cons for me since it was too focused on anime and K-Pop dance. I'm not into those things at all. There wasn't enough of the things I like but it was still interesting.

2018 Travels

2018 Travels

Winter Solstice at Ethnographic Museum

We went to the Ethnographic Museum (Latvijas Etnogrāfiskais brīvdabas muzejs) to celebrate the Winter Solstice and the longer daylight growing on the way to the Summer Solstice. These seasonal changes are felt much more distinctly further north. It was an overcast day but there's an almost glowing beauty with the unspoiled snow in the woods. The lake at this open-air museum park was a snow covered frozen which made it look like a huge empty field.

Burning Yule Logs in Old Riga

Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year. Riga's sunset was 3:43PM and it rises at 9:00AM. It was snowing and 22F (-5C) but we had a great time celebrating local ancient traditions. There was the dragging of the yule log to gather last year's problems. We walked around town and through two of the Christmas Markets. Then we burned the logs and all of our problems with them. I made some videos this time which are at the bottom of this post.

Riga Christmas Markets

Christmas Markets started in Riga yesterday. We wandered around to three of them in the afternoon. It was below freezing with sunrise around 8:30am and sunset a bit before 4pm as the days get shorter. The bottom pics are in the dark but it was around 5pm. It's good to have the Christmas lights up to help brighten the afternoon.