Riga - a city that is bright even in winter #2

Entertainment & Clubs

Short long nights
Local youth prefer to avoid them and spend long nights shorter the Mai Tai Club, just a few meters from the symbol of the city, the Freedom Monument. During the day it is a great vegetarian restaurant called Buddha (the owner is a committed vegan), but at night it turns into a club at the weekends, where we can enjoy a variety of other cocktails in addition to the cocktail that lent the club its name. Or you can quench your thirst with an ice tea made from goji berries and join the Latvians, who can't even survive the cold autumn and winter nights.

Bar Yolo near the river is famous for a wide variety of cocktails that we have never heard of. For example, the house cocktail (which costs 5 euros) is a mix of cognac, strawberry and peach liqueur, cider, orange and lime juice, while the "move to New York" cocktail (you can get it for 4.50 euros) is a mix of Bailey's, Malibu , whiskey and grenadine.

Infomat

Festival of Lights
After sunset, Riga changes - light dances on the facades of buildings, bridges become fairy-tale sculptures and powerful beams of light illuminate the dark sky. Once a year, in November, the city turns into a city of lights with illuminated building facades, light installations and hundreds of lights in parks and squares. Old Riga Festival of Lights, which will take place this year between November 14 and 18, will be particularly interesting this year, as it will not only chase away the late autumn greyness, but will, in line with Riga's role as the cultural capital of Europe, become a platform for international multimedia light and technological art projects . The red thread of the festival will be video and light installations made especially for the event, as well as projections by internationally renowned artists. The organizers of the festival also want to attract the local population to participation and artistic expression, so under the slogan "light up your Riga" they invite them to light up their homes and offices with various materials, such as paints, colored paper, colored light bulbs, projectors and other materials .

Shopping

Central Market
Riga is becoming more and more cosmopolitan with top fashion brands and other prestigious products on offer, but the most authentic shopping experience is a visit to the Riga Central Market, which ranks among the largest markets in Europe. It is located in five buildings built between 1924 and 1930, but not as a place for a market, but for military purposes. The buildings were designed as hangars for zeppelins, but when it became clear that they would never be used for their original purpose, the largest and most modern European market was opened in them in 1930. Even today, between 80,000 and 100,000 people visit the huge area of the market, which occupies as much as 72,300 square meters.

Each of the five buildings is dedicated to certain products, in one we will be able to see only the offer of meat products, in the second we will be able to offer traditional Latvian products, such as all kinds of pickled vegetables, in the third we will enjoy the offer of fish, especially a large amount of smoked and marinated fish. Food is not the only thing for sale in the market area, some of the more than 3,000 stalls offer typical Latvian knitwear, linen and ceramics. Because of its interesting architecture, which combines neoclassicism and art deco, in 1998 UNESCO included the Central Market in Riga on the list of World Cultural Heritage, so today the city fights even more vigorously to maintain it at a high level of quality, hygiene and safety (market is a popular spot for pickpockets) and to maintain its competitiveness and popularity in the flood of shopping centers around Riga.