We were traveling with Svetlana, an old, very well-read lady who knew a lot of interesting and varied things to report. In terms of Art Nouveau, she had focused on two important roads: the Elizabetes iela and the Alberta iela. Certainly you can already get a good impression of Art Nouveau buildings there. However, we had subsequently visited the Brivibas iela, the Terbatas iela, the Caka iela and the connecting cross streets on our own and thus got an even more comprehensive picture of Art Nouveau buildings (and also of traditional wooden houses) in Riga.

We took a guided tour of the Liberty district, where about 800 Art Nouveau buildings have been restored. Worth visiting, we then visited a small museum where an apartment describes the art and the interior with stucco and furniture of the time.

We wanted to take this tour, but some our hotel neighbours told us about their experience and suggested to come to Opera hose at 2pm and to take free walking art nouveau tour provided by free Riga tours by locals. We agreed because day before we had an old Riga tour with their guide and were right. The tour provided by Tomas was amazing. A lot of information in very easy and memorable way with funny stories.

This was an incredibly disappointing customer service experience. I booked this tour the day of, and it showed confirmed on the app. I received the Viator countdown notifications til my tour. But when I showed up at the meeting spot, there was no one there. I tried reaching out to the tour company, but could not and live chatted with Viator. They advised that the tour company had canceled my booking because there were not enough people booked and that they’d reached out via email. I don’t typically check my email when on vacation and instead was relying on checking the app verifying that the booking was confirmed. This tour company didn’t cancel my reservation with Viator, which is why Viator still showed the tour confirmed. I lost a precious vacation afternoon and an opportunity to book another tour because they left the tour as confirmed rather than initiating the cancellation with Viator. The lost time and experience is something that can’t be gotten back.