Tips for Riga? (Quickie)

rxmd

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Hi,

Wednesday next week I have a seven-hour stopover in Riga and would like to go to the city. Calculating an hour to go from the airport to the city by bus leaves me with about four hours to look at things and maybe take some pictures. Here's a couple of questions:

- Any suggestions where to go, take a stroll etc? Any things worth photographing? I'll probably not have the opportunity to go beyond the city center.
- Any nice bookshops? Is there's any shop that has a good selection of artbooks, photography, albums, that sort of thing (new or used)? I'm interested obviously in Soviet-era photography and I remember there were some fantastic photographer conventions in the Baltics in the late 1980s; it must be possible to get a good album or two.
- Any good places to go for a coffee in the meantime?

And some more practical questions:

- Does it make sense to pick up a Latvian phrasebook? I am German and I speak English and Russian fluently and people tell me that in my Russian I have a Latvian accent (ironically enough), but the one thing I want to avoid is to start speaking Russian to people, be taken for a Russian and then shunned because of post-Soviet sentiment.
- (Considerably more profane) How much should I expect a taxi to/from the airport to cost - does it make sense to take the taxi instead of the bus?

Philipp
 
There is a bus service from airport to city of Riga. You can google Riga airport and/or Air Baltic and learn about the $ 4.50 ride, please do.

Get out at the Hotel de Rome right near the Freedom Statue, walk around it, then walk back south (compass you have?) into the old town and explore.
 
You need to eat Latvian food and bread when there, so no Italian!

Go to the Dom (brick baroque) and there is a wonderful Latvian restaurant (self serve) to the left (indoors and outside tables) [90 degrees to your left] if you stand face to face of the Dom towers, I forgot the name of it.
 
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