Wednesday 16th September, 2026, 6:15am. Rami, our regular, reliable taxi driver arrives to take us to the airport for our Air Baltic flight to Riga. The previous day the airline had filed for bankruptcy protection, but no matter, our flight is going ahead as normal. In fact it’s a very good flight – a nice modern plane, very clean, and only two thirds full so lots of space. Latvia, from high above, looks very flat and covered in forest – the only view is of the Gulf of Riga and Trees.
The flight touches down early and our free taxi – courtesy of booking.com – isn’t there to meet us. But he does message us to say he’ll be with us shortly and we soon identify his car arriving and make contact.
He takes us on the relatively short ride to the hotel. There’s no verbal communication on the way (no Latvian from us, no English from the driver) but what he does do, whilst driving, is constantly look at his phone, attached to the dashboard. We don’t know what he is watching exactly (could this be that Tik-Tok thing??) but it’s a series of mindless, slightly weird, short videos – for example a woman vacuum cleaning, a guy riding a very short pony, ……each one constantly repeating after just a few seconds until he swipes onto the next one. What is this all about? What on earth is the entertainment? And driving at the same time is crazy.
Fortunately we’re at our hotel – The Grand Poet – quite quickly, and It happily turns out that he is the only strange Latvian we come across during our visit. The Grand Poet is a very nice hotel and perfectly situated – right by the lovely park leading to the Riga Old Town.
A short time later we take a walk through the park and cross the pretty lake into the Old Town, to Dome Square, Town Hall Square, and the amazing ‘House of Blackheads’ – much more attractive than its name. It was originally the headquarters of the ‘Brotherhood of Blackheads’, a guild of unmarried merchants, shipowners, and foreign traders from Germany, England, and the Low Countries.
Having got our Old Town bearings we stop in the sunshine for a coffee for one of us, a beer for the other.
Then it’s back to the hotel and out for dinner at ‘Forest’ restaurant – a short walk along the street from our hotel – where we discover the high standard of Latvian food.
Thursday 17th September
Around 1900 Riga was one of the busiest ports in the entire Russian Empire, driving vast quantities of imports and exports. At the same time there was an industrial boom and a huge population explosion making it the fifth largest city in the Empire. This created massive wealth and much of it was invested in new buildings in the fashion of the time – Art Nouveau. So today we are going to see some of this in the area near our hotel, just outside the Old Town, on Elizabetes and Alberta streets.
The buildings are absolutely beautiful and we snap away with our phones, totally carried away with the loveliness of the architecture. Every building is unique and artistically creative.
On Alberta street is a little shop that has lovely things for sale. Looks like it should be expensive but turns out to be good value. Margaret buys some nice cushion covers that she has been looking out for and are exactly the right size.
It’s raining a little on and off today but we manage to stay fairly dry.
After the Art Nouveau tour we walk on to the Nativity of Christ Cathedral – the beautiful Orthodox Christian cathedral. During the communist era the building was used as a planetarium and café. It’s now back in its full religious glory. A typical orthodox church gleaming with gold and full of bright Christian images and icons.
A sign as we walk in says that ladies should cover their heads and that headscarves can be borrowed from the cathedral shop. But – sign of the times – no ladies are bothering and no-one is bothering to stop the ladies who are not bothering. Virtually no-one has head covering.
From the cathedral we walk on to the main market behind the railway station. There’s generally an older generation in the market – both stallholders and customers – and we think it’s Russian we hear spoken. I’m clicking away with my iPhone but Margaret draws my attention to the lady at the fish counter who doesn’t seem to like me photographing either her or her smoked eels – we’re not sure which. The market halls look and feel like old aircraft hangars and, on enquiry, it turns out they were indeed originally built as German military airship and Zeppelin hangars during world war I.
Back in the old town we find ‘Petergallis’ – a very traditional Latvian restaurant – and book a table for the evening. It’s a popular restaurant and turns out we have just snapped up the last table for tonight!
Before eating in the evening we go for a cocktail to the Skyline Bar on the 26th floor of the Radisson hotel and overlooking the Orthodox Cathedral. There’s a fabulous view of the whole of the Riga area. It’s a lovely sunny evening, a great cocktail and view experience.
Petergallis restaurant in the evening continues to show that Latvia does great, creative food. We had snapped up the last table inside, but as we leave we are surprised to find a large number of people dining outside, even though its not the warmest of evenings. I guess we are a long way north here and the locals are brought up hardy.
Friday 18th September
Lots of walking today. Through the old town to the monument to the Jews and others who, in wartime Europe, were taken from their homes and dispatched to who knows where. Coming from the monument is a haunting sound that reproduces the sound of the trains taking people away.
On the other side of the monument is a depiction of a handkerchief embroidered with the names of fellow inmates of Merija Stakle. Merija was a Latvian teacher & political prisoner deported to Siberia during the Soviet occupation. While imprisoned, she and fellow inmates used loose threads pulled from their clothing to embroider their names and arrest details into a handkerchief. It’s a thought-provoking and emotional monument.
Then we are off on our exploratory walk over the stone bridge and across the river Daugava towards the Agenskalna Market – our next destination. On the way we walk through a park and find a convenient toilet just when we need one. But there’s a catch – it seems that Latvia does not follow the international standard of stick lady in skirt and stickman in trousers to identify the relevant door.
Instead there’s a triangle on one door and an inverted triangle on the other. Which is which? We make our choice and enter – I walk into the Ladies and Margaret gets the Men’s! We make a quick exit and swap over.
The Agenskalna market is in a beautifully old but perfectly renovated building. The fruit and vegetables are equally beautifully displayed to match the artistic surroundings and there’s a buzz of people on their lunch-hours eating at the multitude of interesting-looking food stalls.
Back to the centre of Riga via Kipsala island – the elongated piece of land stretching along the west bank of the river that just still manages to be called an island. Kipsala is famous because of Zanes Lipke – a Latvian who hid and saved the lives of many Jews here in the second world war.
Leaving the island and going over the Vansu bridge we get a good view of Riga Castle which, on independence, became the official residence of the President of Latvia. And back to our hotel. Margaret is very proud of the number of steps we’ve done today.
We’ve left it too late to book a restaurant for dinner on this our final evening in Riga, so we end up eating at the hotel. The restaurant is called ‘Snob’ and we seem to to be the only diners when we arrive, so we don’t have high hopes. But life is full of surprises and the meal is one of the best we’ve had – and that’s with the Riga food quality bar already set very high.