The Baltic Trilogy — Latvia
Given that we were only in Latvia for two days, the best way I can describe the stay was “short but sweet”. Due to the time of year, there were Christmas marketplaces scattered throughout various public spaces in close proximity to landmarks or historical buildings. These marketplaces conveniently acted as markers for our group that would lead us to the big attractions; if a Christmas market was there, a big attraction was too.
The currency they use, Lats, had a much higher exchange rate than I had anticipated, especially for such a small, northern country. At the time of writing, 1 Lat equaled 1.4 Euros and was nearly double the value of the Canadian dollar. Given the sparsely populated streets, generally underwhelming food and average cityscape, I would’ve thought the opposite was true! Of course there’s so much more at play when it comes to currency valuation but that conversion disconnect did bother me. Nevertheless, let’s move on to the attractions!
One thing I noticed of the capital city, Riga, was that the churches dominated the skyline. From both sheer size and height, the churches make their presence known.
The Freedom Monument is a landmark I would recommend visiting not necessarily for its beauty but for the historical significance. The monument serves as a symbol for the turn of the “renewed” Latvia that instigated the nation’s freedom, independence and sovereignty. The monument honours the soldiers that were killed during the Latvian War of Independence who fought to remove their nation from Soviet power.
One great area that’s a must see in Riga, particularly at night, is the Town Hall square. Surprisingly, the surrounding area is quite dead but the central buildings found here are elegantly constructed and really captured my attention.
Many streets in Riga contain tall, skinny 3 and 4 story buildings squished beside one another. There’s seldom an alleyway between most of the buildings, many times linking an entire block together. Not that I haven’t seen anything like this in Europe before but it’s very iconic to this city in particular.
By having buildings completely fill out their lot frontages, there are several stretches of road where it seems like it’s just walls of building facade — and I love that.
There’s also a wonderful walkway that goes alongside the Daugava River that separates the main city from the financial district. I didn’t get the chance to actually go to the other side of the river but I was told that there wasn’t too much in terms of historical points of interest there anyway. Plus, it was very cold that night and convincing my friends to cross the length of the bridge in that weather was a losing battle.
Aside from a few other churches, that was the majority of the sights we saw. Apparently there’s an enormous number of museums to see in Latvia, many of which are highly recommended but let’s be honest here; a group of young, international male adults would much rather spend their time sitting in a pub and swapping stories… so that’s what we did for the remainder of our stay. This is a great rock pub we stayed at on our last night in Latvia.
In conclusion, for two days, Riga isn’t a bad place to visit. Just be sure to go at a warmer time of the year than I did and be prepared to spend a little more than you may have originally anticipated. The final country to visit now was Estonia!
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This blog entry is part of the publication Robert Cekan Travels & was originally written on January 29, 2013
Robert Cekan is a young entrepreneur and proud Hamiltonian. He is the founder of the Hamilton discovery website True Resident, as well as Cekan Group, a property management group. He is also a Hamilton REALTOR® with Ambitious Realty Advisors Inc., Brokerage and an active blogger.
For all of Robert’s projects, please visit robertcekan.com
