How To Spend A Festive Winter Weekend In Riga, Latvia

My recent trip to Riga was for one main reason: Christmas markets!

It seems a bit strange to be writing about Christmas markets right now, but after my previous Riga post about what a disaster the trip ended up being, I really wanted to write about what I loved about it. Because actually, Riga was one of my favourite city breaks right up until the end!

We had a reasonably full weekend in the city, arriving late morning on the Saturday and leaving late on Sunday night (or not, as it turned out…!). The small city packs a punch when it comes to things to see, especially beautiful architecture, and what I especially loved about it was all the quirky sights we stumbled across.

We started with a wander through the snow, taking in some of the sights in the main town on the way to our accommodation and the markets. I loved how Christmassy it felt in the snow, and there were icicles like I’d never seen before!

Plus we’d barely even started when we found some cool buildings (this will become a theme).

We grabbed lunch in a place called This Place Doesn’t Need A Name, which is hilarious. It was really good too, with awesome decor! But it was also an introduction into the fact Riga wasn’t as cheap as we were expecting it to be. It’s about on par with western Europe, rather than cheaper countries like Poland.

Caffeinated and full from lunch – very much needed after a 4am start – we were ready to hit the ground running.

Here are my highlights from a weekend in Riga.

Christmas markets in Riga

The main reason for the timing of our trip was for the Christmas markets. Riga isn’t typically somewhere you’d think of as a Christmas market destination, but it felt incredibly Christmassy when we went thanks to all the snow. The markets also have lots of quirky things on offer like pony rides, drinks in drilled-out ice blocks, fire pits, a manually-pushed wooden carousel, mulled Balsam (Riga’s signature liquor), and you can even meet adorable bunnies!

The main markets are concentrated in Dome Square, which firstly is a beautiful location, and is also a really nice size. It’s not as big as some markets around Europe – it was smaller than Gdansk, even – but it had an excellent selection of stalls.

I think Riga is also a great place for festive celebrations because the idea of decorated Christmas trees actually originated here! (Or in Tallinn, depending on who you ask…) There’s even a statue in the Rathausplatz commemorating the first ever public Christmas tree, along with a massive Christmas tree when we were there, of course!

Some of my favourite things at the Christmas markets were:

Playing with bunnies

Outside of the main market in Dome Square, there are a few other smaller, local markets dotted about. To be honest, these weren’t really worth making a concerted effort to go to, except… the one next to the Orthodox church had A WHOLE MASSIVE PEN OF FLUFFY BUNNIES!!!

We spent loads of time here watching people feed the bunnies, and watching them gather by the fence to say hello. They were so, so, so cute! I recommend that all markets should have rabbits.

The main markets also had some sheep and goats, which was cool!

Drinking out of an ice block

Back at the main market, one of the quirkiest things at the Riga Christmas markets was these drinks that were smoking from a block of ice. They were awesome!

The queue for these was always fairly long, and it was only when we got to the stall that we realised there were two options: alcoholic (yellow) and non-alcoholic (purple) – which made us feel better about the fact we’d seen a kid drinking a purple one. So we had one of each! The non-alcoholic ones were actually nicer, but they both came with a shot glass of dry ice to create the smoking effect.

It was fun watching one of the guys drilling the holes into the ice blocks for the drinks to be poured into. Very unique!

Mulled Black Balsam

Mulled wine is a staple of any Christmas market, but Riga takes this one step further and offers a version with Black Balsam – Latvia’s signature drink! This was my first time trying it, and they had the original version and a cherry one. I’m pretty sure I tried both!

(Black Balsam is an acquired taste – it’s a strong herbal drink, a bit like Jagermeister, but the blackcurrant and cherry ones take the edge off and are delicious!)

Also spotted… a mulled pina colada, which I am not on board with and no, I did not try it.

Watching someone’s stall

We were browsing a Christmas tree decoration stall, and I decided to pick out a wooden carved box to put a few in (what better place to pick up Christmas tree decorations than where the idea was invented, after all?). As I was choosing, the owner asked us if we could watch her stall while she popped out for a couple of minutes! Not your typical experience on a Christmas market trip, to be honest! Anyway we happily obliged and when she came back, she threw in an extra decoration each. Very sweet!

Re-usable souvenir cups

To be honest, these weren’t as cool as buying an actual mug at some other European Christmas markets, but Riga had these re-usable plastic cups which were used for all drinks. You had to pay a 2€ deposit, and then either return them to get the deposit back, or keep them! There were two designs – one in English and one in Latvian. A great little souvenir!

Pony rides

Obviously we didn’t indulge in a pony ride as they were for kids, but it was cool to see!

And of course I had to say hello to the ponies.

The light trail

Not part of the market, but another fun bonus of visiting at Christmas was this magical light trail through Bastejkalna Park just outside the old town. So pretty!

Important to note: a lot of places, and particularly market stalls, were cash only. We went to the Central Market the next day, which was also mostly cash only, and a couple of shops seemed to prefer cash. I’d only taken a small amount of cash with me, so I went to get some more money out and the machine ate my card!! During a weekend! And I thought that was going to be the biggest disaster of the trip.

So the question is – is it worth visiting for the Christmas markets?

Personally, I really enjoyed the Christmas markets in Riga, and they had a lot of unique things that made it worth going. It’s definitely a great destination if you want something a bit different to Germany.

Want another Baltic Christmas market? For something a bit more off-beat, check out my post on the Christmas markets in Kaunas, Lithuania!

However, the good thing about Riga is there is so much more to do there. It’s a really beautiful city, and we filled our weekend with much more than Christmas markets. Read on for everything else we got up to!

St Peter’s Church tower

After a particularly foggy day on the Saturday, we were relieved to wake up to clear skies on Sunday! That meant one thing: we needed to get to St Peter’s Church to get a great view of the city while we could.

From the outside, I don’t think St Peter’s Church is anything special, nor is the inside if I’m honest, but it’s definitely worth going up the tower. It’s a beautiful view!

Behind the church, there’s also a unique statue of a pile of animals, which is actually from a Brothers Grimm fairytale, the Town Musicians Of Bremen. Funny that I’d just been to Efteling, the Grimm fairytale theme park!

I’ve got to be honest – I think St Peter’s Church is more impressive from this side! What do you think?

House Of The Blackheads

This was actually the first thing we saw in Riga, but it was surrounded by a stage the whole time we were there. They were just setting up when we arrived, which we were slightly annoyed about – but we ended up watching the event just before we left the next day, which was a unique experience in which we even saw the Latvian president make a speech for a charity event being broadcast on TV!

At one time, the House of the Blackheads was the largest public building in Riga, and it also ended up being home to the Brotherhood Of Blackheads, one of the largest town guilds. Unfortunately it was completely destroyed in WWII, and I only just found out researching for this post that it was only rebuilt about 25 years ago! It re-opened in 1999, and people could donate money during the rebuild and lay a brick themselves, which is actually really cool. So despite now being a modern building, it really was built by the people!

It was also the site of the first ever decorated Christmas tree in 1510, and there’s a statue of a Christmas tree in the square, but it was behind a barrier for all the staging.

Cat House

The black cat house is called this for an obvious reason. Though the actual reasoning behind it is definitely not so obvious.

It’s said that the owner of the house was rejected from the town guild, and in his annoyance, he put the black cat sculptures atop his building, facing the guild and ready to strike. A little dramatic! Apparently the statues were eventually turned away, but they still remain on their perch.

The black cat is now an icon of Riga – I even got Ash’s mum a thimble shaped like a black cat! Even the souvenirs in Riga are unique.

Speaking of unique souvenir-related things…

Anyway, more of that to come in another post about the weird things we saw in Riga…

The Three Brothers

These famous buildings are tucked away on a street near Dome Square. They are the three oldest buildings in the city, and it’s easy to see – they stand out against the surrounding architecture.

Interestingly, they are from different centuries – the one on the right is from the 15th century, and the other two from the 17th century. There is a small architecture museum inside one of them, but we didn’t go in (I think it was shut anyway).

Riga’s Old Town is incredibly compact, which makes it ideal to walk around, and you could walk between all the above buildings in about ten minutes.

However, there are a few things to see outside the Old Town too, which are really worth the walk.

Nativity Of Christ Orthodox Cathedral

This is hands down one of the most stunning churches I’ve seen. I love Eastern European architecture and Russian style churches, but I haven’t spent a lot of time discovering any of it, so this was an unexpected treat.

We also went inside, which led to an awkward encounter when a priest came out and blessed everyone with frankincense (we think?) while chanting in a language we couldn’t understand. In fact, he could have been doing anything – but regardless, we felt insanely out of place amongst the worshippers.

Anyway, it was an interesting cultural experience, that’s for sure. Cultural in the fact it made me feel incredibly uncultured!

There’s another church across the river that I really wanted to visit – and I caught a glimpse of it on our extra day – which is a PINK Russian style church! It’s called the Holy Trinity Church and it looks beautiful!

The Corner House – KGB Museum

The Corner House is one of my favourite buildings in Riga – but it has a dark history that’s finally being told.

This used to be the headquarters for the KGB at the height of communism. It’s now a museum, which is free to enter, although you can pay for a tour which runs regularly for 10€. The tour is meant to be excellent, but I decided not to do it this time around and settled for reading the boards in the museum.

When you think of communism, you don’t tend to think of the Baltic states. In fact, the museum delves into the fact that Latvia and the other Baltic states were taken over, and WWII was over, they lived in hope that this meant they were about to be liberated from the Communists. But help never came. Western Europe never cared. The Latvians were all but forgotten.

It was jarring, reading about this in the full knowledge that even after the fall of communism in 1991, nobody really learned about Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and what it meant for them.

Read more about history and Christmas markets: A Getaway In Gorgeous Gdansk: Gates, Museums & Christmas Markets

Art Nouveau architecture

One of my highlights of Riga has to be the art nouveau architecture. In fact, the thing I probably loved about Riga the most was the architecture in general, but the art nouveau was something else.

They estimate that a third of Riga’s buildings are art nouveau, and the most impressive of them are concentrated in an area around Albert Street, or Albert Iela. There are a handful of beautiful buildings on Elizabeth Street too, but we missed one in particular that looks like one of the best, so it would be worth a wander back along there too!

It’s about a twenty minute walk from the old town, so we walked up to the Corner House and then back down via the art nouveau streets, which did wonders for our step count.

It is STUNNING!

Eat lunch in a zeppelin hangar

There’s a huge market, Centraltrigus, a short walk from the old town, which is inside four massive zeppelin hangars. While the setting is cool as heck, I have to admit I didn’t love the markets. They felt very local and there wasn’t a lot that we felt we could buy (no, I do not want a fish, and I can’t really buy cheese and keep it in my bag for a day). Gaggles of old ladies queued up for bread and tea. It was all really interesting to see, but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I suggested going there for lunch.

However! There is part of one of the hangars that is essentially a food court with lots of stalls, and this is what we were really here for. The frustrating thing was most places were cash only, and after my disaster with the cash machine, I didn’t have any left! So I missed out on a couple of things I really wanted to try, but my lunch ended up being… tomato soup. In a bread cup.

Now I’ve seen those big, crusty bread soup bowls. That’s not what this was. This was like a cup-a-soup, and the cup was bread. I was concerned it would soak through pretty quickly, but I made it through the soup before that happened, and ate the bread cup as I went. It was actually so good! And yet another unique thing in Riga.

So – I recommend coming here, but definitely bring cash, and don’t expect to spend hours looking around.

Pick up a snack at Cruffin

Oh my God, I don’t know what it is with the Baltics doing sweet treats so well, but after my delicious doughnut in Lithuania, I thought I’d try this equally highly-rated place for cruffins!! I haven’t seen cruffins since I worked in a bakery in Australia where they were the best thing we sold.

Naturally, I was an idiot and could only see savoury ones, which I thought was… interesting. I thought it must be because it was the afternoon and they had low stock, but actually it’s because a group of people were stood paying in front of the sweet ones and I couldn’t see them. Of course, as soon as I’d chosen a savoury one, they moved and I realised my error.

Anyway, the savoury one was good, though definitely not my first choice! So naturally, I had to treat myself to a sweet one on the way out as well, which I saved for later. I chose the raspberry one which was absolutely delicious!

Underground dinner & drinks at Folkkclubs Ala Pagrabs

I had a couple of places on my list for potential dinners, and this was one of them (the other that I really wanted to try was Uncle Vanya but we didn’t end up eating there because we ate at the Christmas markets instead). We happened to pass close by the Folkkclub on our second evening just as it started raining, so we decided to pop in.

We went downstairs and then along this underground corridor – I think my friend wondered where on earth I was leading her! The bar is incredibly cool, completely underground in an old wine cellar.

It’s a fantastic place for drinks, but we decided to order a vegetarian platter to share and they misheard and gave us the meat one instead (which still came with plenty of veggie stuff), which isn’t great when one of you is actually veggie…! We just split it out so I had the meat. Anyway, one thing I will say is that the platter had this Latvian rye bread, and oh my god, we both commented on how good it was! Sooo more-ish!

Despite our food mishap, I do recommend coming here even just for drinks as it’s really awesome!

We ended our trip with an impromptu charity concert in the main square, which was being broadcast on live TV. However, at this point the heavens really opened, and rather than delay the inevitable, we headed to the airport – and you all know the disaster from that point on!

Fancy another city break? Try Three Days In Fairytale Budapest, One Of My Favourite Cities

Where we stayed – Bluebird Hostel

When I was initially looking at Riga, I looked at Cinnamon Sally, which is such a great name that I remember it from my trip to Lithuania, as a few Baltic hostels were advertised where I stayed in Kaunas (there’s also the Naughty Squirrel, but this definitely looks like more of a party hostel). It’s also highly rated – but then my friend found Bluebird Hostel, a new hostel right smack bang in the centre of the old town.

Not only is the location better (our room literally overlooked the Christmas markets!!), but it was slightly cheaper AND I think the dorms were much nicer. They were private, enclosed beds with curtains, and it was less of a social hostel. Plus, the building is – yet again – BEAUTIFUL! I was actually taking a photo of it when I realised, “oh my God Emma – that’s our hostel!”

I highly recommend staying here, it’s a lovely hostel, very low-key and we were able to leave our bags for the day on Sunday too and pop in and out to use the common areas.

What I really loved about Riga was that although we saw a lot, we didn’t have a packed itinerary. It meant we could enjoy everything there was on offer, wander down streets we stumbled across, take some time in the quirky souvenir shops, take a million photos of all the pretty buildings, and still have plenty of time for mulled balsam at the Christmas markets.

Also, when I say a million photos…

I took so many that it was impossible to narrow them down for this post!

And I found that Riga was really perfect for wandering and discovering. It’s full of some of the best architecture I’ve ever seen – which isn’t something I expected at all! Even though I’d read about the art nouveau area, I had no idea that virtually the entirety of Riga would be quite so pretty.

It’s also full of quirky stuff; so much so that I’ve decided to put together a photo post of all the weird and silly things we saw! (Me with a giant garlic? It’ll be there.)

Altogether, it’s exactly my type of city.

And do you know what? I’d absolutely go back too – I think Ash would really enjoy it and there are a few things I’d do next time, like the tour in the KGB Museum, checking out some more of the cool bars and restaurants, and of course finding more architecture! While it’s perfect for a weekend trip, I certainly don’t feel like it’s “done and dusted” within a weekend like I do with a lot of cities.

Hopefully I’ve inspired you to visit this beautiful city. I’m really starting to warm to the Baltics (ha), and Riga is undoubtedly one of the best places to start.

For more northern Europe adventures, check out these other posts:
⭐ Christmas In Kaunas: Feeling Festive In Lithuania
⭐ The Perfect One Week Norway Itinerary For First-Timers
⭐ A Tale Of Riga & Ryanair – It’s Another Travel Disaster Story
⭐ A Getaway In Gorgeous Gdansk: Gates, Museums & Christmas Markets
⭐ #tbt: That Time We Took A Day Trip To Scandinavia