Latvia

Traveled via a super nice, wifi equipped bus from Tallinn to Riga, the travel industry’s latest “hotspot”. Bus trip took about 4 hours. It is a beautiful city, but there are a lot of beautiful “old town” types of cities in the region and I’m not sure why Riga is “hotter” than Tallinn or Vilnius. It is less expensive than Tallinn, again probably due to Tallinn’s proximity to Helsinki and Tallinn being part of the Helsinki/St Petersburg triangle.

Our backs were killing us from the lousy mattress in Tallinn, so we booked an American-style hotel, the Radisson Blu; using the 4^th night free deal on the Citi Prestige card and the points we’ve been accumulating; the total out of pocket for four nights was $60! Our Radisson was more of a boutique hotel and excellent in every way. The next big surprise was around the corner at Lido, a small chain of self-serve restaurants which I immediately renamed Lodi. The place is wildly popular, so the food sits out for minutes, thus is fresh. The prices were insanely inexpensive and, best of all, the dishes were authentic to the region and the staff was happy to point out which dishes were “most” authentic. We later discovered another of the chain a block from the hotel and we could dine outside overlooking the street. We wound up eating every single meal in Riga at one of the Lidos. I should also mention that the décor was fabulous….one of them had more of a peasant cottage motif, another was fin du siecle, yet another was more modern.

Riga is mostly a walk-around kind of place. A place to admire the beautiful architecture of the old town and the spectacular art deco just outside the gates in the area where we stayed. We took our own walking tour that I found online, but also enjoyed the “free” walking tour which is available daily (tips appreciated). One of the best parts of such tours is getting insights from the local guides. After awhile, it doesn’t really matter that the post office was built in 1752 or 1773

and this church 1648, etc. etc. Who remembers all that stuff?    But learning about the culture from the eyes of a local is always enjoyable. According to our guide, when the Russians took over after WWII, they immediately started populating the country with Russian citizens while getting rid of the troublemaking locals….like professors, doctors, artists, religious folk and anyone else who wouldn’t toe Stalin’s line. To this day, there are more Russians than Latvians in the country and the Russians keep to themselves and have nothing to do with old traditions, the language, etc. They have, however, kept up the Russian tradition of being rude, unpleasant folk who treat locals and tourists alike with disdain.

Annual Celebration of Protest Against USSR

We were lucky to be at Victory Square for a celebration of a date where people linked arms and held hands all the way from the top of Estonia to the bottom of Lithuania to show solidarity of the Baltic States against the Soviet Union.  This is considered the beginning of the end of the Soviet power over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Riga is only half an hour or so from the Baltic Sea (actually, the Bay of Riga), so we spent one day at the beach, admiring the Russian mansions from the past and just hanging out in the local scene. We also visited the KGB museum which graphically detailed the horrors put upon the Latvian people during the days of Communism. This was a much more detailed museum than a similar one in Estonia.

All in all, we found the Latvian people delightful, the food delicious and the city sparkling clean. I write this from a train in Transylvania and at this point we’ve visited seven cities of size on the trip, all of which put US cities to shame in terms of general cleanliness. I wonder what it would take to better educate people at home about such basic stuff as pick up after yourself and don’t throw trash on the ground?