We have visited our 2nd Baltic country – Latvia, and it was very similar to the first. Latvia and Estonia are both relatively new countries but have beautiful capital cities with amazing old town architecture and cobblestone streets. We spent our first day in Riga on our “free” walking tour being wowed by all the Art Nouveau buildings. A lot of pictures were taken. We also were looking forward to several days of sitting in a European cafe on the square slowly drinking a spritz.
We were joined in Latvia by several other nomad couples. We are often just missing our friends in Europe but that was not the case this week. Riga was the town that was full of nomads. We had a fun brewery pub crawl where we shared our plans for seeing Riga and the rest of the Baltic countries. We are probably going to overlap with some of these folks in other towns in the next couple of weeks.
What did we do in Riga. We had 6 nights here so we took things slow and just did one or two things each day. It gave us time to do what we were really here for… cafe sitting and cobblestone path strolling. We saw the National Museum of art which was a pretty good collection of Latvian art in an impressive palace. We took the train to the beach which was nice but the Latvian weather is not going to make a beach comparable to some of the warmer climates we visit. We did a canal boat tour which is something that we rarely do. It was a cheap one hour loop around old town in a boat that was actually pretty enjoyable. We also did a tour of the KGB prison in Riga. It was a intense tour of Soviet terrors during the occupation. The best part was the super somber guide that explained Latvian intellectual purge during the Stalin years. Sometimes a sad tour is necessary.
Riga was a big bigger than Tallinn but it still had the same old town vibes that make it another UNESCO heritage site. We really liked the amount of parks to go along with the Art Nouveau architecture. As usual in Europe, there were a few fancy churches. We liked the Russian Orthodox ones with the big gold domes but we didn’t spend much time looking around inside of them. We did a lot of walking even though we weren’t fans of their rather large cobblestone streets. It is Riga’s 825th birthday and we just arrived after a big weekend celebration. There was still a festive attitude in the streets that were filled with a lot of summer tourists.
All of the Baltic states are still very freaked out about the Russia attack on Ukraine. Ukrainian flags are everywhere and many people feel that Russia will attack the Baltics if they can somehow defeat Ukraine. I am not sure that will happen because these countries are now part of NATO and any attack would cause a much bigger response that what happened in Ukraine. There are a lot of Russian speakers still in Latvia and it is interesting the push to force everyone to learn Latvian in schools in hopes that will help assimilation of the former immigrants from the Soviet Union. The dislike for Putin is strong. They renamed the street with the Russian embassy to “Independent Ukraine street” and hung a huge ugly poster of a Putin skeleton face right across the street.
We did eat a lot of good food in Riga. Our favorite was the fried rye bread with garlic dipping sauce – they call it garlic bread. We tried it several times but never developed a favorite. We liked them all. Their specialty here is a cold beet soup that is bright pink. We tried it but I think it is an acquired taste. I don’t need to acquire it…. (M liked it, beets are yummy!). We had a lot of meat and potatoes that kind of reminded us of German and Austrian food. One of our favorite spots was a super cheap cafeteria type restaurant called Lido. It has tons of options and you just take a tray and grab what you want just like a school cafeteria.
On a rainy day, this is what we do….
It is now time to move on tour our last Baltic country to complete the Trifecta. We are heading to Lithuania!!!