Riga
Alone

PRACTICAL SAMPLE

Restaurants and cafés in Old Town

Vecrīga has more restaurants than any other part of Riga, and the quality range inside a few hundred meters is wider than anywhere else in the city. One rule does most of the sorting: the closer a room is to a square with a view of a famous building, the more of the bill is rent. The terraces on Līvu laukums and the ones facing the cathedral on Doma laukums are the clearest cases: pleasant places to have one drink in the sun, poor places to have dinner.

The alternative is not far. Five to fifteen minutes on foot out of the medieval core (north-east into Ģertrūdes and Lāčplēša iela, east to Bergs Bazaar and the streets off Elizabetes, or twenty minutes up to Miera iela) puts you in rooms where a main course costs less and a woman reading at a small table is unremarkable. The cafés and restaurants named under the Art Nouveau district and Miera Street later in this chapter are all within that radius.

A free excerpt from Riga Alone.