Riga (Latvia)

...flight/hotel combination for within that. Riga was decided on by vote, purely for the reason that it was only really opening up as a destination and had that 'kudos' factor that all new things seem to have.

Most of our group flew out of Dublin with Ryanair, though there are other routes available from England and one of our party flew with Ryanair out of Stansted. Flights will obviously vary in price, depending on who you're flying ...
...and the fifteen-minute ride into Riga cost us 8 Lats. I'd recommend arriving with some local currency, but if that's not possible, there is a cash machine at the entrance/exit of the airport and all cash machines in the city support all the major cards (Visa, Mastercard, Cirrus, Maestro etc.) The first thing that surprised me was the amount of money that seemed to be put into Riga. Even on the short taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, I saw ... more

Latvia is not somewhere that would immediately spring to mind when deciding on a city break, but when we researched a possible weekend away for between four and six people (all male) within our budget (£200), there was no clear cut winner. Riga, Berlin, Prague and Barcelona were all able to offer a flight/hotel combination for within that. Riga was decided on by vote, purely for the reason that it was only really opening up as a destination and had that 'kudos' factor that all new things seem to have.

Most of our group flew out of Dublin with Ryanair, though there are other routes available from England and one of our party flew with Ryanair out of Stansted. Flights will obviously vary in price, depending on who you're flying with, when you're flying and how far in advance you book. Booking tickets with Ryanair at Christmas for an end of February trip cost us €80 (£60) return, each. I did hear of a group of lads who paid €200 for the same flights, though. The hotel was also booked at this time, approximately 8 weeks in advance.

From Dublin, it's practically a three-hour flight. The flight's scheduled at two hours and fifty minutes, to be precise but it took us an extra twenty minutes. The flight from Stansted is approximately half an hour less.

On arrival at Riga, I couldn't help but notice how modern the airport was. It's not a big airport, but it certainly puts a lot of others I've seen to shame. We were quickly through passport control and after meeting up with our other companions, left the airport.

Taxis were plentiful outside of the terminal and the fifteen-minute ride into Riga cost us 8 Lats. I'd recommend arriving with some local currency, but if that's not possible, there is a cash machine at the entrance/exit of the airport and all cash machines in the city support all the major cards (Visa, Mastercard, Cirrus, Maestro etc.) The first thing that surprised me was the amount of money that seemed to be put into Riga. Even on the short taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, I saw an awful lot of new buildings including high-rise banking headquarters, huge shopping malls and plenty of construction work. I was also surprised by the standard of cars on the roads. Most cars seemed to be quite new (within the two or three years old at most) and some of them were very expensive.

Our hotel of choice was the Reval Latvia. At four stars, this was already one of the best hotels in the city and is currently being refurbished further. It has a panoramic bar (open to everyone, not just residents) on the 26th floor although this was sadly being renovated during our stay. The rooms are fine and spacious with comfortable beds and very secure with key card access to each corridor. Food is very reasonable with bar meals at around 4L and beers at 1.5L per 0.5 litre. Breakfast was included in our rate and the only one of our party, who happened to arrive back at the hotel at the right time, reliably informs me that it was to a good standard. Most of us barely saw the morning side of midday, never mind breakfast. The basement houses a nightclub called Voodoo (open until around 6 am) and casino (open 24 hours, apparently), both of which are also rated amongst the best in town.

The hotel was great and reasonably cheap (£130 per person for three nights) and about a 10-minute leisurely walk from Old Town itself. We did splash out on the hotel somewhat though and you could find cheaper with a little research (try www.bookings.nl).

Eating out is generally inexpensive with meals starting from around 3L upwards. The quality is good and variety is generally westernised. There were plenty of places to eat, drink and dance, though we saw a very small amount of them (having been impressed with the half dozen or so bars in 'Old Town' we found, there was no need to look any further). I liked De Lacy's Irish Bar for food, and found the staff to be very friendly with excellent standards of English (my Latvian consisted of about three words for 15 minutes). Over the course of a few visits, I had a burger and an enchilada and both meals were huge and tasty, priced at around 4L each. Some of the others found their Shepherds Pie on the second visit to be a bit greasy (perhaps as a result of their hangovers), but the side orders were cheap and plentiful. The only real downside about De Lacy's was the fact that there were only two unisex toilets which, while clean enough, often had queues at busy times.

There were two other ex-pat bars in Old Riga, Dickens (a British/English pub) and Paddy Whelan's, another Irish bar. Both served a good variety of beers, though for those interested in sport, Paddy Whelan's had plenty of TVs meaning everyone can see the action. Paddy Whelan's also showed live Premiership football. A few of us watched the Blackburn vs. Arsenal match from that weekend.

Melnais Kaķis (The Black Cat) is located on the north side of Livs' Square in Old Riga and we found it a good place to chill out and have a couple of drinks. They have a few pool tables in here with an assortment of other pub games - darts, air hockey, pinball etc. It stays open until the early hours and although I left around 4 am both nights, I was certainly not the last to leave. The staff were friendly and helpful when it came to problems with the tables etc., although the pool was quite expensive (comparatively) at 1L per game.

Jack Daniels Bar is located in a small side street off the south-east side of the square to Melnais Kaķis. The busiest we saw this bar was the Saturday night where most of the seating was taken, though it's not a large bar. The service and food was average, the menu was fairly extensive and prices were comparable to anywhere else we had been that weekend, though the atmosphere was sadly lacking.

None of these bars in Old Riga were busy, at least by UK standards. The ex-pat bars seemed the busiest, but apart from de Lacy's, these were quite lacking in atmosphere though if you want to catch some UK sport then these are your best bets (however none of the bars could pick up any of the BBC channels). We found that The Black Cat would attract other travellers and during the weekend we managed to strike up conversations with Scandinavians and Finnish tourists over a game of pool or two.

The standard for the weekend was simply to order a 'beer' (or "five beers" to be more accurate), so apart from tell you that we drank the local stuff, there's not much to say. It's a decent enough beer and we paid between £1 and £1.50, depending on where we were. You can order the brand names (Carlsberg, Heineken etc.) if you want, though these are slightly more expensive. Most people we encountered spoke excellent English, so there were no real language problems.

The Reval Latvia Lobby bar is also open to all, and we used this as our gathering spot. It was interesting to see the various groups of people who would meet here during the day. Business meetings were prevalent during the day while the late morning and early afternoon saw an influx of what we suspected to be prostitutes, while at night, these seemed to disappear and it would become a proper nightspot until it closed at around 2am. There was a good, if slightly laid back vibe to it at night, but the food was excellent and the service was up to the standards of the rest of the hotel.

Voodoo is the name of the nightclub in the basement of the Reval Latvia, beside the casino. It's open until the early hours of the morning and I really enjoyed it down there, though the music wasn't exactly to my taste. You get a good mix of hotel and Riga residents in a lively atmosphere for a 7L entrance fee.

Weather at this time of year is very cold (we saw -10 and below during the early hours of the morning, but it had been much colder in January and apparently this was the coldest winter for nearly 100 years). The temperature rises into the mid-twenties in summer (comparable to the UK). You are much more likely to see snow than rain during the winter months, unsurprisingly. The Daugava River (roughly the same width of the Thames at Tower Bridge) was frozen, much to our amusement and populated daily by ice-fishermen. Not everyone was comfortable taking a stroll on the frozen river, but it was very solid underfoot and we were careful about our footing. Despite the freezing temperatures, it didn't feel as cold as you might expect, presumably due to the dry air.

Just by strolling around there are plenty of sights to see. We avoided museums and the like, concentrating on monuments and simply seeing the city. Old Riga is worth seeing and there are plenty of little churches and narrow cobbled alleyways to see. Riga's Freedom Monument sits just outside Old Riga and soldiers can regularly be seen marching around it during the day. St Peter's Church, for example, is rather striking and open from 10 am to 5pm with free admission, supposedly on Tuesday to Sunday, but when we visited it on the Sunday in the hope of talking some pictures from the steeple, it was closed.

Entering Old Riga at night is safe as there is a good police presence, though you may still attract the attention of some of the touts who are out to get you into one of the few strip bars that seem to exist around Livs' Square. They are not too pushy and a firm "no" will send them on their way. It's still wise to be on your guard in general, mind you.

On the Sunday, our guide (a local friend of a friend) took us on a tour of the city. Not only were we taken to some of the more obvious sights (Sergei Eisenstein, who directed The Battleship Potemkin, was the son of an architect and his striking work can still be seen in Riga), but to some of our guide's more personal favourites such as the old cobbled streets filled with original wooden buildings.

What did become obvious when we crossed the river to the south of the city was that there is a lot of poverty in Riga (and Latvia in general, I was informed) that's not immediately obvious. There are small, shantytown like areas literally a stone's throw from the more affluent areas of the site and given that we visited in the middle of winter with a good six inches of snow on the ground, made us pause for thought more than once. That never really manifested itself in the more touristy areas though and the amount of street peddlers or beggars was probably comparable to an typical UK town or city, most of which would leave you alone after you'd refused their offer.

The Russian quarter is definitely worth a visit. We had a good lunch there, buffet style, at a traditional Russian teahouse and I've rarely seen so many different types of vodka to wash it down with. The honey and chili vodka was especially recommended. There's a market held in old zeppelin hangars that's supposedly worth a visit. Our guide suggested that the best time to see this was in the morning when there was a far better atmosphere but given our previous night's excesses, we were never around in time to investigate properly.

Riga is supposedly developing a reputation as a 'stag and hen' destination. While we did see evidence of one or two stag parties (no hens, though), these were few and far between throughout the whole weekend, though that included one set of mad Scots running around in kilts. Most Brits/UK people we met through the weekend were Scots or Irish - I don't recall seeing too many English or Welsh parties, if any. Riga is also a retreat for Scandinavians and the Finnish who seemingly nip across the Baltic where they can enjoy a cheap stay. We encountered a few such parties and found them to be very friendly.

Riga itself is a classic East becoming West city. I'd say that now is the time to see it before the free market takes total control. It's quite inexpensive now but I'm not sure that will last much longer. Riga's not a huge city, enabling you to walk to most places. Certainly the Reval Latvia was well placed for easy (walking) access to most things north of the river. There are plenty of museums, monuments and churches for the culture vultures amongst you and several good markets to visit if you can haul yourself out of bed early enough.

Unlike Budapest last February, I got a really good vibe from the city and the people and felt quite safe at all times. There was only one time where I thought that people were trying to take advantage of us as tourists when the supposed cover charge for a blues club we visited on the Friday night was 15L, which we declined. Other than that one incident, I'd recommend it to anyone considering a city break, especially for travel sooner rather than later, before too many people get wind of it.

During my stay (24th - 27th February 2006), the exchange rate was approximately:
1.00 GBP = 1.02 LVL

Useful Links:
Hotel: http://www.revalhotels.com/eng/latvija/
Flight: http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/
Currency converter: http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi

Budget guide:
Taxi to/from airport: 6 - 8L
Pub Meal 3 - 6L
Big Mac Meal 1.79L
Beer (0.5l) 1 - 1.50L
10 cigarettes 0.32L
Bottle of local spring water 0.20L
Bottle of Evian 0.7L
 

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