First time in Riga: 7 things I wish I'd known before going

The lessons we learned the hard way

Riga caught us off guard in the best possible way — and in a few ways we’d rather forget. We’d read the standard travel blogs, skimmed a forum thread or two, and thought we had a decent handle on what to expect. We didn’t. Here’s what actually happened when we spent a long weekend in Latvia’s capital for the first time, and the seven pieces of advice we’d give ourselves if we could go back.

1. The airport taxi queue is a trap

We landed at Riga International Airport (RIX) on a rainy Thursday evening, dragging rolling suitcases past the taxi touts with their laminated signs. The first driver quoted us €35 to reach the Old Town — which is just 14 kilometres away. We nearly said yes.

We didn’t, and we’re glad. Bus 22 departs from right outside the arrivals hall, runs every 10-15 minutes, and deposits you near the Central Station in about 30 minutes. The fare in 2018 was €1.15 purchased on board (contactless or cash). It was full of regular commuters, the seats were fine, and we arrived relaxed rather than feeling swindled.

The honest comparison of all transfer options is worth reading before you land. If you genuinely need a private transfer — luggage, young kids, late arrival — the pre-booked option costs around €28-32 and is legitimate. What you want to avoid is the unlicensed touts.

2. Restaurants in Cathedral Square charge a tax for the view

We sat down at a terrace café directly facing the House of the Blackheads on our first evening. The menu looked fine, the waiter was friendly. Then the bill arrived: €28 for two mediocre mains and two beers. That’s approximately double what we paid the next night, five minutes’ walk away on Kalku iela.

This is not a secret — the tourist premium around Doma laukums (Cathedral Square) is well-documented among locals. You’re paying for the postcard backdrop. Sometimes that’s worth it. Usually, for a proper meal, it isn’t. The guide to where locals actually eat in Riga will point you in better directions.

To see the buildings without the surcharge, simply do a self-guided walk through the Old Town in the morning and eat elsewhere. Or better yet, book a guided walk that covers the historical context of what you’re looking at — the classic Old Town walking tour gives you the story behind every facade, which the terrace café experience decidedly does not.

3. Riga Black Balsam is stranger and better than you expect

Someone in our group saw “Black Balsam” on a bar menu and ordered it expecting something like a standard liqueur. What arrived was a shot of something that tasted like pine resin, bitter herbs, and ancient apothecary in equal measure. 45% ABV. We were not prepared.

Riga Black Balsam is Latvia’s most famous spirit, a recipe dating to 1752, and it comes in the classic black ceramic bottle. Drink it neat if you want the full experience — it’s an acquired taste that many people acquire very quickly. It also comes in a currant (blackcurrant) version that’s considerably more approachable. Mixed into coffee is the local favourite.

You can buy it at any supermarket for about €9-11 per bottle. Most bars sell shots for €2-3. At the Riga Black Magic Bar in the Old Town, the whole cocktail menu is built around it.

4. The Art Nouveau district is the real hidden gem

We’d booked three days, and our plan was Old Town heavy. We knew about the art nouveau — the guidebook had a paragraph — but we treated it as a possible afternoon addition rather than a centrepiece.

That was a mistake. On day two we walked into the district around Alberta iela and Elizabetes iela and spent three hours with our necks craning at facades. Mikhail Eisenstein’s buildings alone — the tenement blocks with their screaming gorgon masks and writhing female figures frozen in plaster — justify the entire trip. Nothing quite prepares you for it.

The full art nouveau architecture guide covers the major streets and their history. If you want context as you walk, the 2-hour Art Nouveau history walking tour is excellent — the guides are architecture specialists, not generalists, and they see things you’d miss on your own.

Riga has more Art Nouveau buildings per square kilometre than any city in the world. This is not a side-trip from the Old Town. This is the reason to come.

5. “Free walking tours” aren’t free

We joined one. The guide was good, the route was decent, and at the end he explained — with practiced casualness — that the suggested tip was €15-20 per person. We were a group of four. The social pressure in a group of twenty strangers is considerable.

There’s nothing illegal about this, and some of the guides are genuinely knowledgeable. But the “free” framing is misleading. The honest breakdown of free walking tours in Riga explains the mechanics. The paid alternatives on GetYourGuide — where the price is fixed and declared upfront — often cost less in practice than what the “free” tours expect. The 2-hour Old Town walking tour was €18 per person at the time. No awkward envelope moment at the end.

6. The Central Market is a world unto itself

We’d allocated 45 minutes. We should have allocated an afternoon. Riga Central Market occupies five Zeppelin hangars repurposed after the First World War, and inside is an entire ecosystem: smoked fish dealers with their vast sides of eel, bread stalls selling dark rye rounds the size of cartwheels, dairy farmers with fresh curds in styrofoam cups, and an outer market where elderly women sell garden vegetables from wooden crates.

The market is a UNESCO-listed structure, though you could walk through it without knowing this and simply feel like you’d stumbled into somewhere deeply, unhurriedly real. It opens early and winds down by early afternoon. Go on a weekday if possible.

For a structured introduction, the small-group food tour of the Central Market is one of the better food tours we’ve encountered anywhere — it includes tastings and the guide contextualises what you’re eating within Latvian food culture rather than just pointing at things.

7. Three days is the right length, four is better

We had three days and left feeling like we’d seen the highlights but skipped the depth. Old Town is compact enough to cover in a day. Art Nouveau fills a morning to afternoon easily. That leaves one day for either a deep dive into the food and bar scene, or a day trip.

The day trips from Riga are genuinely excellent. Jūrmala is 20 minutes by train and feels like a Baltic resort town from a different century. Sigulda and the Gauja valley are an hour by train and completely different in character — medieval ruins, river gorges, and autumn colours that were apparently extraordinary. We didn’t make it there, which is partly why we came back.

If you have four days, the structure becomes: Old Town day 1, Art Nouveau morning + Central Market afternoon day 2, day trip day 3, food and bar exploration day 4. The 4-day itinerary with Sigulda lays this out in practical terms.

The practical things no list covers

Beyond the seven headline lessons, a few smaller things that we didn’t anticipate:

Bring a power bank. Walking Riga with Google Maps, a city transport app, and a camera open simultaneously drains a phone in about four hours. The Art Nouveau district in particular is a walking experience where you want your phone alive for the full duration.

Riga speaks English. Almost all hotel staff, restaurant servers, and tour guides in the tourist circuit have functional to excellent English. In the Central Market and neighbourhood restaurants outside the tourist zone, less so, but pointing and smiling covers most situations.

Visa? Latvia is in the Schengen Area. Citizens of the EU, UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea can enter without a visa for stays under 90 days. The ETIAS authorisation for non-EU visitors was introduced in 2026 — check current requirements for your nationality before travel. The visa and entry requirements guide has the current picture.

The public holidays matter. Latvia has several national holidays when some attractions and restaurants close or have reduced hours. Jāņi (Midsummer, June 23-24) is the biggest — a national celebration when much of Riga effectively empties as people go to the countryside. If you arrive not knowing this, it’s disorienting.

Language basics: Latvian is genuinely difficult and nobody expects you to speak it. But a few words — paldies (thank you), lūdzu (please), atvainojiet (excuse me) — go a long way in non-tourist settings. The Latvian phrases guide covers the essentials.

Where this leaves us in 2026

Updated May 2026 — most of what’s here still holds. The airport situation has barely changed: Bus 22 is still the sensible option, taxi touts are still present at arrivals. The Old Town restaurant premium is, if anything, worse. The art nouveau district continues to be the thing people are most surprised by, in the best possible way. Black Balsam hasn’t changed its recipe since 1752 and shows no signs of doing so. The main update is the Central Market food tour, which has expanded its options — there are now several solid operators and the tasting quality has improved. If you’re going for the first time, the fundamentals of this list still apply.