Why visit Riga?
If you think about traveling to Northern Europe, you might think about Stockholm, Copenhagen or Helsinki, but there are some other cities in the north that are not that well known for tourists, like Tallinn in Estonia or Riga in Latvia.

Old Riga is a bit surprising. I pride myself as someone who knows Europe and it’s history, but Latvia and Riga never really got on my radar. It was one of the blind spots, just like most of the Baltic.
It’s a great place if you enjoy walking around in a scenic city during the day, but you also like to go for a quite walk in dark freezing night. You can easily spend a long weekend here and have enough to explore left for when you come back during the summer.
Riga in the winter is cold. I know i know, what an insightful comment. But seriously, one time the temperature got to -27 C, which is just ridiculously cold. It’s cold enough that if you spill water it just freezes mid air and turns into snow.

In this weather you can try a couple things that are normally impossible in warmer places. You can see people walking on the ice of the frozen Daugava river. I’ve tried it myself too, although not on the main river but on one of the smaller ones that encircle the inner district of the city.

If you’re prepared to this weather, the city is quite lovely. I’m partial to these nicely renovated old towns, with cobblestones and palaces all around the place. During the Christmas time, the city is bustling with people despite the cold and you can go to the main square, the Doma laukums, to see the Christmas market, get some hot wine and holiday dishes.
The city has these gigantic churches, which are quite amazing to look at. These are build in the Baltic style as far as I can tell. The only other place where I saw this architecture was in Estonia. My favorite is the Doma, which is at the main square, but a lot of people are partial to St.Peters church as it’s more intricate and you can go up its bell-tower and admire the view.

Once you made it to St.Peters you should really visit the House of the Blackheads, which was the headquarters of the Hanseatic League traders in the previous centuries. There is also a story that the traditon that the first public Christmas tree, or maybe the first ever real Christmas tree originates from the Brotherhood of Blackheads and Riga.
It’s said that the Brotherhood put a fir tree in the square, decorated it with paper flowers, sang and danced and cheered the season, then lit the whole thing on fire.
To this day they still celebrate it, to the most part. They stopped the whole “lighting it on fire” thing for some reason.

If you’re looking for an underappreciated location check out Riga, it’s full of beautiful sights, surprises and legends.