Alternative Riga Tour

Rihards was our guide for the tour on 9th Sept. He gave us a fascinating insight into areas of Riga that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen, along with a very informative and entertaining commentary. Highly knowledgeable and with great enthusiasm for his subject, Rihards really brought the city to life and the 2.5 hours flew by. Highly recommened, thanks Rihards!

It was the worst walkative experience I had. The route was very good and it included interesting and beautiful points, but the guide was terrible. We had a brunette girl, Liga (?) was her name, I think. She claimed to have a journalist education and to be previously a guide in several Riga’s museums, which I find unlikely based on the quality of her storytelling. She was only giving us historical information that can be found in Wikipedia after 3 minutes search. For example, the only relevant facts she gave about the building of Latvian Academy of Science were: “it was a gift from Stalin” (sic!) and “now it contains the main office of the Academy of Science”. She even failed to answer simple questions about how the Zeppelin hangars worked and why exactly were they build in Riga. Her explanation after not being able to give an answer was that “military strategy is not her field”, which is completely beyond the point. Summarizing she seems like someone who just half-heartedly learned the scriptbook about this trip. One good thing was that she was giving many details about present economy, and situation of Latvians. So if you ever encounter her on a trip, just quit to be honest, you will save a lot of time.

I did the free alternative walking tour with Jaspar. He had great knowledge and good charisma. Would recommend to a friend.

Kaspar was an amazing tour guide, both knowledgable and funny. He managed to teach us a lot about Riga’s history in the most entertaining way possible, was not boring at any time. Great guy with perfect English.

We did the tour in a small group with Kaspar, who gave us some really informative and personal insights to the city of Riga. History of the city, Local food,an architecture were the main topics here.