Me and my 25-year-old daughter take a short break in the Latvian capital, seeking out fun, culture and a good catch-up. July 2026.
Riga is easily accessible from northern England with four direct flights a week from Manchester, five from Leeds-Bradford and two from East Midlands Airport.
Many go to Riga for the Hanseatic old town, seeking out its daytime beauty and/or its late-night drinking scene. The old town certainly delivers on both these fronts. We did some lovely afternoon wandering around the 13th/14th century buildings and had some beers at a great old town bar one night (Kwak Inn).
The old town, however, is just one feature of Riga and we spent most of our time in other parts of the city. Here are some things we would recommend in the broader city area:
Explore the Art Nouveau District
Art Nouveau architecture in Riga is a big thing. Built during a period of rapid economic growth, most of Riga’s Art Nouveau buildings date from between 1904 and 1914 and make up roughly a third of all the buildings in the city. They are clustered in the Art Nouveau District, which sits adjacent to the old town, and which represents one of the biggest concentrations of Art Nouveau architecture in the whole of Europe.
All the buildings are of a theatrically decorative style packed with sculpted faces, masks, mythical figures and floral motifs. The single best streets are Alberta Iela and Elizabetes Iela but the area runs for many blocks well beyond these main avenues. The Riga Art Nouveau Museum is decent. It is set in a genuine period apartment and shows how people lived behind the façades.
We went for dinner in a fab restaurant on Alberta Iela. Juusu serves traditional Latvian food and has good local beers.
Walk the City Canal
Riga is jam packed with waterways and green infrastructure. We never felt far away from a tranquil spot.
Our favourite place to relax was the City Canal which runs for 3km through the middle of Riga and through the city parks of Kronvald and Bastejkalna. Every bit of the 3km route benefits from canal side walkways and high-quality landscaping with lots of seating. At either end it flows into the Daugava River, the main river that Riga is built around.
We spent plenty of time wandering up and down the canal and also took a boat tour. There are numerous boat companies based at Andrejosta harbour and it takes about an hour to do a loop that takes in both the full length of the City Canal and a stretch of the Daugava River. You can also pick up boats doing this same loop at Bastejkalna Park.
Drink in Fringe Bars
This is a phrase I like to use for slightly ramshackle bars that are rough around the edges but full of character and interesting people. The sort of bars I love. We managed to find at least one such bar each night and there are plenty to go at in Riga. Our favourites were Moku, Gauja, M/House of Jazz and Kanepes Kulturas. All of these venues were in close proximity to Miera Iela – which definitely felt like the main hipster drag in the city.
The other area where we found a few cool bars was Latgale. Once known for its rough reputation in the 1990s, the area has been transformed into one of the more dynamic and rapidly evolving districts in the city. We spent some time at Lastādija, which is a bit of a bohemian sanctuary run by the Free Riga Movement who revive abandoned buildings into cultural spaces. We also went to a superb little breakfast/brunch restaurant in Latgale called Katkevich.
Get Cultural
As with any capital city there are plenty of major cultural facilities to enjoy in Riga.
On Day 1 we went to the impressive National Library of Latvia, known locally as Gaismas Pils, the Castle of Light. It opened in 2014, just after Latvia had joined the Euro and to coincide with Riga’s designation as European Capital of Culture for that year. It is angular and asymmetric and looks like a piece of geometry has grown out of the riverbank. We spent an hour lounging in the glass crown at the top, taking in views and reading our books. There is a nice ground floor café as well.
We visited the Latvian National Museum of Art. The museum was built between 1903 and 1905 and designed specifically to house art. It had a major renovation in 2016 and now combines modern exhibition spaces with its historic original building. It contains an impressive range of permanent and temporary exhibitions.
I also took myself off to the ISSP Gallery which is a great little exhibition space dedicated to contemporary photography.
Go to the Beach
No trip to Riga is complete without a visit to Jūrmala Beach. The beach stretches for 30km along the coast interspersed with about ten different small settlements, Majori or Dzintari being the main two.
Getting here was a joy, with super modern trains running every 15-30 minutes and taking about 35 minutes each way from the main Riga rail station.
The various settlements are heavily populated with Art Nouveau villas and a few low-rise apartment blocks and hotels. The beach itself is a major attractor and hosts all manner of leisure pursuits. The sand is heavily compacted and makes cycling along the beach very easy.
We came here relatively early in the day and enjoyed coffees on the beach and then the Alus Krodzins brewhouse for food and an impressive array of Latvian craft beer.
Overall
We both really enjoyed Riga and for me the trip enhanced my love of the Baltics (see here for my trips to Tallinn, Estonia and Kaunas, Lithuania).
Riga is very easy to get around. A lot can be done on foot, and the tram/bus network is extensive. We bought a three day pass for all trams and buses that cost next to nothing. Prices throughout the city are decent, with the average cost of coffees, beers and eating out considerably lower than the UK. Go explore!
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