I opted to go a day early so I could do a little winter sightseeing in Riga. The trip over was uneventful. I was able to snag a business class seat to Frankfurt and even had the extra luck of having the seat next to me open, so I had plenty of room to spread out.
We arrived into Frankfurt on time and I made my way over to Air Baltic and checked in for my flight to Riga. That flight was also wide open and I had a whole row to myself and slept most of the way. I knew the weather was going to be cold, but I had no idea how much snow was on the ground until we started descending into Riga for landing. Even looking at the pictures now makes me shiver.
Because Latvia is so far north, by 4:30, the sun was already starting to set. I arrived at the hotel a little after 5pm and it was already dark. I stayed at a hotel on the banks of the Daugava River and my room had a wonderful view across the river of Old Town Riga.
I watched a little television that night before turning in. Sadly, the news was just breaking about the school shooting in Newtown, CT, as it was Friday morning back home. We didn't know of the full scale of the tragedy at that time, and I remember hoping everyone would be ok, as I drifted off to sleep. Only when I woke up the next morning did I learn of the full scale of the tragedy.
Of course I was glued to the television the next morning, but finally after several hours of watching the coverage, I decided I needed to turn off the television and head in to town. There were several Christmas markets going on and I wanted to visit the Dome Cathedral since the last time I was in Riga, the other escort that was with me was bossy and wouldn't let me go because she said I had made her visit too many churches already. It was only snowing lightly, but the wind was so strong, that it made the 9 degree weather feel much much colder.
I could have taken a tram over the bridge, but by the time I would have got to the tram stop and waited, it was just easier to walk over the bridge. I had layer upon layer of clothing and a wool coat and wool socks, so I thought I was prepared, but that wind was harsh.
I made my way into old town. I had a general idea where the markets were, but I didn't know for sure so I just wandered around in the cold.
I was almost completely frozen by the time I discovered the markets, but I was rejuvenated by the Christmas spirit.
And the four glasses of hot blackberry wine weren't too shabby either!
At noon, I walked over the the Dome Cathedral and purchased a seat for their mid day Organ Recital. Afterwards, I stayed on for a short Lutheran service in partially in English.
I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around old town and visiting a few of the other markets. Here's a shot of two multi colored snow man who also encouraged recycling.
For the right price, one could ride a pony.
I stopped for a minute and listened to these wonderful musicians playing jazz music. They were really good, but for some reason they were on a quiet side street instead of a main street so they didn't get much traffic. I gave them a few Lats and I felt sorry for them.
Of course I had to pay a visit to the "Cat House" again. The story goes that a merchant was denied entry into an exclusive guild, so he constructed a building adjacent to the guild hall with a cat on the spire. He had the cat turned so that it was mooning the hall. Once he was finally accepted into the guild, he turned the cat around.
When I could take no more of the cold, I called it a day and made my way back over the river and to the warmth of my hotel. I had an early night since I was going to need to be at the airport at 4:00am the next morning.
All the kids and chaperones were wearing red shirts so they could be easily identifiable. There was actually a larger group that was traveling on a nonstop flight later that day. I was only traveling with thirty kids and two chaperones. We got everyone checked in for our Lufthansa flight and made our way thru security easy enough.
I think most of the plane slept on the two hour flight from Riga. We had a few hours in Frankfurt to make our connection. My favorite child on the trip was little Jurijs (pronounced Yuris). He's been to the states twice already and spoke a little bit of English. The same family has hosted him each time and hopefully will be able to officially adopt him soon.
Trying to make the connection in Frankfurt was crazy. They had two agents doing security questioning, so I had to pull my "ugly American" card and push us all to the front of the line. I don't think the chaperones would have managed that.... the size of the Frankfurt airport had them shell shocked. We finally made it thru all the lines and got to our gate. The agents were kind enough to let us board first and the cabin crew couldn't have been nicer as they helped us get to our seats. The kids were seated all over the place but we finally got everyone seated where they needed to be.
After the meal service, I spent about an hour filling out 33 customs forms, which was a nice change from the 87 customs and 87 immigration forms I had to fill out when I was traveling with the group from Ukraine last December! We arrived in Chicago to a long immigration line. I asked for special assistance from the airport services folks, but they said they could not help me, so we queued up in line and waited our turn. I managed to send a clandestine text to Cathy, another flight attendant and Airline Ambassador volunteer waiting for us outside the Customs Hall, and she got the Lufthansa folks to come to our rescue and get us thru the line, because now our first group of kids going to Denver and RDU were looking at a misconnection. The Immigration Officer was totally unhelpful and accused me of being a human trafficker of children, even though I had all the documentation and appropriate paperwork. A supervisor finally let us thru, but not before they sent us all to agricultural inspection!
Once outside Customs, we were met by the other Flight Attendant escorts and the one family that was hosting kids locally. The flight attendants had prepared Christmas goody bags for the kids and we took care of the formalities of signing off on passports and verifying who was going with who, before everyone made their way to their next set of flights.
Miraculously, everyone made their connections (the first time that has happened in the three trips I have done for New Horizons) and I caught my flight home to Dallas with a few minutes to spare!
So now the kids are happily spending the holidays with their host families. On January 13th, I will fly back to Chicago and we will all regroup and they will head back home.
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