Bastejkalna Park Riga

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Bastejkalna Park Riga

Bastejkalna (Bastion Hill) Park is probably my favorite part of Riga. There's lots to love around here but the park along the canal is a wonderful place for a walk. It has the National Opera on one end, the Freedom Monument, an awesome water feature, and lots of other stuff to see as you stroll along winding paths under the trees. There's many more nice parks around the city but we're really fortunate to have this particular park so close to home.

Bastion Hill is one of the most romantic places in central Riga, as it features narrow paths, alleys of trees, stone garden, water cascade... The park right next to the Freedom Monument has been a delight to an eye and soul for more than a century.

Artificial waterfalls, colourful flowers, several sculptures, and benches to take a rest. Pay attention to the small bridges; the just married have left their padlocks here, which, according to belief, brings a long life and happiness. - from LiveRiga

This will be another picture overload since this is my digital age scrapbook to look back upon. I'll look at it when blogs are about as modern as hardwired rotary phones, VHS, or a cassette tape player. Wow, remember back in the day when people bothered with blogs... man, I feel a little old.

I love this waterfall that comes down Bastion Hill, under the path in several spots, and eventually to the pool down by the lock bridge. There's a small waterfall feature letting the water back into the canal. I'd love to have this at our house! We have a hill leading down to the lake so it would be possible to make something like this. Maybe someday...

this is where it goes under the path

this is the top of the water cascade

the area on top of Bastion Hill

I walked all the way to the other part of the canal and back with that bird still sitting up there. I wanted a picture without the bird but it had other plans. Well, at least that gives me a little something to comment on when I don't always provide commentary. I'm only commenting because the bird was annoying. Now it'll be annoying me forever whenever I look at this again. Maybe it isn't a good idea to take a picture of an annoying thing...

This is a great tea house with second floor seating on cushions sitting on the floor in a circle around a central circular staircase. You lounge with your drinks close to these big windows looking out at the park. This makes for a great place in the winter too because you can keep warm while enjoying the scenery outside.

That's a weird waterspout cage thing. It's fun to end on an odd note but I'll put the detailed Freedom Monument pictures here at the end just to mix things up.

These are from my first walk past it with the bird at the top. This is when I had hope the bird would fly away. The bird did not and my hope gradually faded. The second pass did have some nice clouds in the sky though this completely clear sky is cool to see.

I really dislike that bird even though our interaction wasn't a close one and it was generally unevental. Now the bird is forever laughing at me in these pictures as it is now immortalized in these digital files of 1s and 0s. I'd tag that bit of the pictures as "stupid bird" if a program asked me who that is.