Riga, Latvia - A Surprising Hidden Gem, Riga, Latvia

Riga, the capital of Latvia is one of those European cities that are hardly ever visited by ordinary tourists traveling across the old continent. There's very little information about it and it almost never appears in the media. To be honest, we hadn't planned visiting Riga either. The reason why we went there at all was because we had a stopover in Latvia on the way to the unknown and absolutely amazing Kazakhstan (read posts about Kazakhstan here). Our visit in Riga was completely spontaneous - we didn't have any plan regarding what to see and where to go but the Latvian capital turned out to be a surprising hidden gem - large enough to offer many attractions as well as the beautiful old town and small enough to walk around in only one day.

As I've mentioned before, we came to Riga on the way to Kazakhstan. However, I think the best way to visit Riga would be during one longer trip across the Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (you can also see Kaliningrad - a little piece of Russia squeezed inside the European Union). The flights within EU are really cheap and you can get to all of those countries (except Kaliningrad) directly from all major European cities. Afterwards, you can travel by bus or train between them. If you're interested in something completely off the beaten path, visit Minsk and other cities in Belarus - it's the least visited European country - more people vend up visiting countries like Moldova, Albania and Macedonia. As we love this sort of destinations the most (the less tourists, the better - you can see how different such countries are from the way they are perceived in the west), we're going to visit Belarus soon! ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).