This will probably be of little interest to most, but first I'll write about wandering around Riga. Arrived at 9 o'clock. Bought a map to see where the bike shops were, having dropped their addresses into my Sony Reader beforehand. The map was barely needed, because I somehow naturally gravitated toward the part of Riga I know best, meaning down Brivibas street towards the Teika neighborhood. As a result, I hit 7 shops and made it almost all the way to my old dorm.
The shops mainly sell Merida. I don't know why that is. The Trek store (aka www.veloserviss.lv) on Brivibas was a pleasant surprise -
right there at the entrance stands a bike like this, totally rideable.
Penny-farthing , aka ordinary bicycle
Inside, the selection is pretty good too, mostly Trek and Giant, and the salespeople are cheerful. The prices, though, are so-so, not exactly thrilling.
Right next door there's also a V-Sports shop, which sells only German Focus bikes, and I actually really liked one of them, but I somehow didn't jot down the model. I'll have to call. True, it costs 390 Ls - Focus doesn't make cheap bikes.
It was really interesting to check out the Elkor Plaza shopping complex on Brivibas. Huge halls filled with all sorts of goods and bored salespeople. Not surprising, really - the prices are 30-40% higher than in online stores. Quite the margin. But the selection is very, very decent - checked out LCD and plasma TVs, for instance.
Anyway, back to our bicycles. Elkor is the main distributor of Czech Author bikes. Unfortunately, Elkor's inflated prices apply to the bikes too. A nice Author Airline hybrid looked quite good to me, which you can't say about the price tag of 560! LS, meaning it's $300 more expensive than in Russia.
Curiously enough, Elkor had Author Synergy and Giant Cypress LX bikes from previous years on super-sale, meaning at prices close to reality. It's just a pity that I didn't like the look of either one at all. In short, things got a bit clearer with the bicycles, but not entirely (yeah, I'm stubborn).
In the second half of the day I went with a female friend (well, I don't know the right way to call girl-friends) to Lido.(It's a sort of buffet in a log cabin, except you have to pay for each plate. Must visit for tourists.). We checked out a micro cat exhibition there. The beasts sit in cages, plus the stress from the visitors; you feel sorry for the little animals. It would be better if such exhibitions didn't exist at all.