On boarding the flight to RIX everyone had to get on via the back stairs, my seat at the front of the bus was actually going to see me last off. The cabin crew sit on a jump seat that is in front of the door to go from the main cabin to the cargo section that lies between there and the pilots cabin, there is no front entrance. It all feels a little third world.



When deplaning I ordered a Bolt taxi. It was my first ever Bolt and it turns out that the cards that I want to use with it aren't working, so I end up using Google Pay with the Amex which isn't ideal, but at least it got me there. By the time I had exited the airport, the driver was waiting in the car park just across from the entrance, so that was pretty smooth.
During the journey to downtown I start to doubt my clothing choices. It is hailing and I have come out without a coat or umbrella because it's roasting in the UK and Finland. But the weather across the Baltic is decidedly more unsettled. The surroundings on the car ride seem to show a mixture of modern European strip malls and as we get closer to the centre also quite a few Soviet style housing blocks. Then eventually we cross the river and get to the cobbled streets of the old town where my hotel is located. I had emailed the hotel to ask them what my options were if my flight got cancelled. Since it didn't I hadn't seen their reply which was basically no dice. At checkin it turns out that although I have booked direct with the hotel on a prepaid rate, they never took payment, so my reservation was a bit dicey anyway. Luckily it was all okay as I paid with one of the cards that had failed in Bolt (the first one I tried failed again, so I am patting myself on the back for remembering to take lots of different payment methods). Turns out the hotel is overbooked and there are three people on the waiting list for rooms for tonight. There seems to be a large number of people who have flown in for a wedding in the Church across the street (Our Lady of Sorrows) that is happening on the Saturday.
As you can tell, I enjoy the travel part almost as much as the destinations, hence the long description of it above and the innordinate amount of time I spend on Flyertalk.