The High Life and Back Streets of Riga

Staying at the quaint but contemporary B&B Riga
Cocktails on the 26th floor at the Reval Hotel Skyline Bar
Walking tour around old Riga and checking out the romance bridges at Bastejkalns
Trying a tasting board of beers with a pot of peas and gravy along Torna Iela

Quick Tips:

Be careful with valuables when walking around the Central Market and bus station area. We almost had our digital camera stolen there. The market is definitely worth visiting, as the old zeppelin hangars and the produce selections are impressive, but keep an eye out for pickpockets!

Familiarize yourself with the local currency – the Latvian LAT – and exchange rates. Many costs are quoted in Euros but you can’t pay with Euros. Also don’t bother with travelers cheques, it took us an hour to change some, not worth the bother! Credit cards and ATMs are definitely the way to go.

English is widely spoken and written here so don’t worry if you haven’t been practicing your Latvian recently. We shamefully didn’t learn a word of Latvian before our visit but managed fine.

Best Way To Get Around:

Riga is easily walkable, with some nice wide shopping streets and narrow, winding cobbled alleyways that are often pedestrian only. We didn’t actually use the trams but they seemed to be running regularly and run into and around the heart of the city.

We arrived into a quiet Riga airport around lunchtime, and our hotel-arranged transfer ($30 one way) was there to meet us and drive us the 11km to the quaint B&B Riga on Gertrudes Street. You enter the diminutive check-in area from a central courtyard. It’s somewhat of a challenge to get big bags and suitcases up and down the narrow staircases to reach the reception and then your room, but for the urban coziness and proximity to Riga’s city centre, these hurdles are decidedly minor.

We were led across the rundown courtyard and up a dark and dusty staircase to our room. Whilst it was compact, the space had been put to excellent use, and by contrast to the hallways and buildings facade, the room and adjoining bathroom was bright, modern, and clean, and packed with handy amenities. These included towels, hairdryer, soap and shampoo, and cable TV. In addition, the kitchenette came stocked with (complimentary) refrigerated bottled water, as well as tea and coffee.

There is no breakfast service at the B&B itself; instead they provide you with coupons when you check in which can be redeemed at the Martin Café bakery directly opposite. The coupons ensure that you can happily overdose on pastries, with enough cash leftover for a coffee or juice to wash it all down.

The real advantage of staying at the B&B Riga is that it is set back from the main road, so we enjoyed comfortable and quiet sleep every night. Then every day we were able to walk into the centre of Riga in about 10 minutes, which was great for sightseeing and meant we had a quick walk back from the bars and restaurants in the evening.

Most of the staff speak good English and were very helpful, allowing us to leave our luggage in the office after we checked out and booking a taxi to take us to the bus station on our final day.

Email: home@bb-riga.lv
Website: www.bb-riga.lv

A few doors down from Rigas Balzams on Torna Iela, near the Powder Tower, is the unpronounceable-named Cegs Krogs Pie Dzintara Cela. Like many of the taverns tucked below this street, it’s dark, cosy, and candlelit.

I tried a tasting board, which included four clay mugs of different kinds of Latvia beers. A couple were quite dark and a little hard to stomach, but it was nice to sip on them over the course of an hour. The board also came with some local bread and cheeses and a pot of bacon and peas in some kind of gravy—a local delicacy. As weird as it sounds it was actually very tasty and went perfectly with the beers. To finish up with, I tried a mixed hot soup, which was a little like minestrone. Whilst we were pretty lucky with the weather, it’s nice to duck into the taverns along Torna to warm up with a beer or two.

Tucked away in one of the many alleyways close to the cathedral is Café Sirdsmila. The location is hard to find and harder to remember! From the outside it looks like another cosy tavern but once you get inside, you realize that it lacks the charm of other nearby cafes and bars. The main reason for this is the tacked-on conservatory behind the bar, which makes up most the restaurant area. It lends itself more to a family-style buffet bar than a quaint backstreet eatery.

We stopped in for lunch and had two soups, Caesar and chicken salads, fruit juice and cappuccinos. Our bill came to just under $30. The food was fairly good but the service was painfully slow so we wouldn’t recommend eating here if you’re in a hurry!

After spending half a day trying to guide ourselves around Riga, we opted to do a paid guided walking tour of the city. They run a few times each day and are offered in various languages and last about 2 hours. The English-language tour we took at 3pm consisted of the very small party of just my husband and myself.

Our guide was extremely enthusiastic, so much so that he got started as soon as we arrived (and we were fifteen minutes early). After a quick history of the main square’s buildings, he pointed out that the many new and expensive cars in the city belong to private investors who come over from Sweden. This lead to a rundown of Latvia’s past occupants, namely the Swedes, Germans, and most recently, Russians. Not surprisingly, there’s not too much affection for the past Communist regime. Our guide told us that the current economic climate is difficult for Latvians but there are signs of improvement. Latvia received 2 million foreign tourists last year.

Despite being somewhat mechanical in his delivery, our tour guide – a history student at the local university – was extremely knowledgeable, and navigated his way around many hidden alleyways and backstreets that probably go unnoticed by many tourists. He also talked about past uses of many of the buildings, including a house that used to belong to the local hangman. As we wound our way around the narrow cobbled streets our guide also explained the local opinion that Riga’s many medieval restaurants use candlelight not for authenticity, but so that the tourists can’t see the inflated prices they’re paying for their meals.

We finished the tour at the Bastejkalns park, where our guide explained the significance of the many padlocks on the bridges in the park. Marrying couples come here to seal a padlock on the bridge to symbolise the eternity of their love. They attach smaller padlocks to their own when the marriage bears children. (There was no mention of padlock removal in the event of divorce). The "romance" bridges certainly seemed to attract young couples. One particularly ardent couple insisted on kissing for the best part of ten minutes, not caring that we were trying to get a photograph of the bridge (with them not in it).

We discovered that the Hotel Latvija’s Skyline Bar was reopening for business by happy accident. It wasn’t mentioned in our guidebook but a local English language publication had interviewed a Riga resident and he mentioned it as one of his favourite weekend haunts, and after one visit you can understand why. Not only does the Skyline Bar afford some of the best views over the city, it also has a very extensive and attractive list of cocktails for you to work your way through as you look down over the roofs and spires of old Riga.

We tried a piña colada along with a Latvia mojito, which includes a splash of the locally-produced Balsams. It’s an acquired taste! They also do a good rioja if you don’t fancy mixing your cocktails although we would definitely not recommend their tapas plate, which was a paltry assortment of sweaty meats and cheeses.

The Skyline Bar is a good place to relax in the early evening and a good spot for watching the sun set. It’s also a place to be seen, and the modern, trendy furniture and décor suggests that there’s a level of exclusivity to this place, especially on the weekend when, I imagine, this place really comes alive.

For one of the best views, check out the women’s toilets. It has a corner window and the panoramic view from this room is quite stunning. Another good viewpoint is from the glass lift as you go up, or come down from the bar.

For an alternative view across town, you can take a lift up the tower of St. Peters Church (by the main square) for a dollar. Since its inception in 1491, the tower has been rebuilt a few times due to a couple of impromptu collapses, and some German shelling in World War Two. It gets a bit chilly walking around the exterior gallery, but you get a nice view over the Central Market zeppelin hangars and the river Daugava.