auntiegwen's guide to 4 days in Riga

We are currently in Riga, which is beautiful. It is cold, as you would expect in the Baltics, it is not cold enough for himself, last week is was minus 20 and under several feet of snow, disappointed is not even close to how he feels. The poor old Latvians have had a shocking time of it, it comes to something when the Nazis were the better deal. We like a good bit of awful history when we do a city break, last time Poland and the holocaust, this time Latvia and the Red army, they have pretty well been occupied from the end of WW1 until the 1990's.

We are staying in the Old Town,which is lovely, we have a fancy window that opens up into a balcony with lovely views. The hotel Welltown Spa gives you free fizz at breakfast, what's not to like? 

We have walked the legs off ourselves, there are several charming parks with lots of statues, great churches, lots of monuments and as I travel with himself lots of trips to war museums, I enjoyed the museum of the occupation and himself the corner house which is the KGB headquarters, this building and staff within were still providing their own brand of torture till the 1990's ! 

The art nouveau district is particularly charming and definitely worth a wander, sadly the museum was closed during our entire visit but the buildings more than make up for it. Also in the evenings everything s beautifully lit, the auntie loves a fairy light so I'm very happy. We ate heart shaped pizza and watched a wedding as befits Valentine's Day so it felt very romantic.

Eating out is always an adventure for this fussy vegetarian as I don't eat meat, fish, eggs or poultry, this is another meat heavy region but we managed to find Miit, which is a vegetarian place and we had the lunch deal, we had a fantastic tomato and lentil soup with cashew cream and a polenta thing, both courses with a sparkling water for me and a beer for him for 13 euro. I wasn't fussed on the polenta thing. I would also recommend Burger Story,  my spinach burger was alarmingly green but extremely tasty, he had a fancy burger with loads of different bits of dead animal, very nice skin on chips and 2 beers for less than 20 euro.

The local beers were good and cheap and I drank Rigas the local sparkling hooch, a lovely wee lady bottle was 1 euro 50 ish, get the Brut one if you don't want your teeth to fall out, I made the mistake of the Rose, once.

We flew Wizz air from Luton and our return flights and 4 nights in a fancy room at the Wellton cost £300 for the 2 of us, so if you fancy a city break with lots of history, scenery and all within waking distance, come to Riga.

Please note we paid for the break ourselves, it was my Christmas present to the lovely mr adventures.