The Latvian adventure…. ”Riga, to please”!
It’s Thursday June 7th and it’s going to be a
long day!
Latvia is not far west of Moscow and a bit
south-south-west of St. Petersburg. It’s a straight shot south from Helsinki
and… well, you get the general drift. It’s going to be a long day! And
I’ve heard it doesn’t get dark there in the Summer… oh joy.
To get to Riga from Alicante I had to fly
first to Barcelona, one of the cleanest airports in the world but absolutely one
of the most boring!! To make matters worse I had a three-hour layover
there which only magnified the boredom.
The airport in Barcelona is called El Prat
and I’ll let you run with that one but, unless you have lots of money to
squander on incredibly over-priced and largely unnecessary baubles or unless you
want to pay a kings ransom for three-day old coffee…. you are really stuck.
(Actually, you are stuck, regardless of all this!)
They proudly boast that you can’t smoke
anywhere in the airport although, strangely, they make no reference to banning
the use of illegal drugs. So I can do heroin or smoke dope but I can’t have a
cigarette? Huh? Tobacco is legal, governments make billions in tax revenue from
it so I consider blanket bans like this to be nothing more nor less than
arrogant, pompous, hypocritical nonsense. So I went outside and had a fag or
two.
After what seemed like an eternity, they
finally posted the flight to Riga, just above the Latvian word for “delayed”…
told you this was gonna be a long day….. but it wasn’t too bad, a mere 30-40
minutes ain’t much in the grand scheme of things.
So here I am in seat 10F, by the window, from
which I can see clouds that closely resemble the last lot of clouds I saw from a
plane window. And it’s 11:00 pm… why isn’t it dark? Soon, I pray, we’ll be
there and I’ll be smoking again, charging my computer battery and reporting to
you on the joys of visiting a new place for the first time… one of the great
thrills of being a touring musician.
From the airport to the restaurant where the
band was just finishing dinner and time for a couple of glasses of wine and a
bit of catching up. The hotel was a welcome sight and I was looking
forward to a good night sleep. Safe, sound and comfortable….
Sure do
miss my home, Monica and our family though!
