Journal — Europe 2026 Grand Tour. July 21, Riga. Day 1.

We left Tallinn at 9 AM on a Lux Express bus — four hours south through Baltic birch forests and flat green farmland that stretched to every horizon. The bus itself was a pleasant surprise: spacious seats, a personal TV screen, WiFi clocking 3.1 Mbps (enough to be useful, not enough to be distracting), and a free water bottle waiting at each seat. By 1 PM, Riga’s spires rose from the Daugava plain, and our Latvian chapter began.

👅 Palate — Province, Lunch on Grecinieku

First meal in Riga: Province, at Grecinieku 25 — €47.50 for two. We had salmon with baked potatoes and beef stroganoff. While the food was ok, it is not something we plan on having again. There are simply too many options in Riga to try and while we liked the food, we really want to try and experiment with many other cuisines while we are here.

👁 Vista — Museum

€30 entry. The best quality of this museum is the diverse set of artists across time and geographies. From Asia to Europe other parts of the world, there is representation of art from the people around the globe.

Favorite artists:

Gaspar Peeter Verbruggen (1664-1730) – A Flemish Baroque painter celebrated for elaborate flower still lifes, garlands, urns, and decorative arrangements. Trained by his father, Gaspar Peeter Verbruggen I, he developed a more varied and theatrical style, combining precise botanical detail with rich color and architectural settings.

Jan Baptist Lambrecths (1680-1731) – A Flemish genre painter known for lively scenes of taverns, markets, domestic interiors, and fashionable social gatherings. His carefully observed figures and objects provide a vivid record of everyday life and leisure in the early eighteenth-century Low Countries. The exact dates of his birth and death remain uncertain.

Johann Christoph Schwarz (1660-1714) – An obscure German painter associated with late seventeenth-century religious and historical subjects, including a work identified as The Triumph of David. Reliable biographical information is extremely limited, and the name may have been confused in later records with other artists or scholars named Schwarz or Schwartz.

Hurbert Robert (1733-1808) – A French painter, draftsman, garden designer, and curator best known for poetic landscapes filled with ancient ruins. Nicknamed “Robert of the Ruins,” he blended real architecture with imagined settings to create picturesque meditations on history, decay, and the passage of time. He also documented Revolutionary Paris and later served as a curator at the institution that became the Louvre.

Luca Giordano (1634-1705) – A leading Italian Baroque painter admired for his extraordinary speed, versatility, and dramatic compositions. Working in Naples, Florence, Venice, and Spain, he produced altarpieces, mythological scenes, and vast fresco cycles distinguished by energetic movement, luminous color, and bold foreshortening. He was highly influential in both Italy and the Spanish court.

Melchior D’ Hondecoeter (1636-1695) – A Dutch Golden Age specialist in bird and animal painting. His monumental compositions depict peacocks, poultry, parrots, waterfowl, and exotic species with striking realism and theatrical drama. His detailed rendering of feathers, color, and movement made him one of the most sought-after animal painters of his period.

Karl August Poorten (1817-1880) – A Baltic German painter and illustrator born in Riga and associated with the Düsseldorf school. He produced landscapes, genre scenes, and works connected with the people and scenery of the Baltic region. His art forms part of the nineteenth-century visual culture of Livonia and reflects the influence of German Romantic and academic painting.

Ludwig August Most (1807-1883) – A German Biedermeier painter and teacher closely associated with Szczecin. He was known primarily for portraits and detailed genre scenes depicting small-town, village, and domestic life. His paintings are valued both for their careful realism and as records of nineteenth-century customs, clothing, and social environments.

Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873) – A major British Victorian painter and sculptor famous for emotionally expressive depictions of dogs, horses, deer, and Highland wildlife. He often gave animals distinctly human qualities of loyalty, courage, grief, or dignity. Landseer also designed the four bronze lions at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square.

Raden Saleh Sjarif Bustaman (1807-1880) – A pioneering Indonesian Romantic painter and one of the earliest Southeast Asian artists to receive extensive artistic training in Europe. He combined European techniques with subjects connected to Java, colonial society, dramatic landscapes, hunting scenes, and animal conflict. His international career helped establish the prestige of modern Indonesian art. The frequently cited birth year of 1807 is disputed, with many institutions using approximately 1811.

Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) – A Russian-born painter, archaeologist, stage designer, writer, and cultural activist. His symbolic landscapes, especially his luminous views of the Himalayas, combine archaeology, folklore, spirituality, and an idealized vision of cultural unity. He also helped design the original production of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and promoted the international protection of cultural monuments through the Roerich Pact.

There artists are all masters of light, shadow, color, image, culture, and perspective. We often write about the 7 senses but like the electromagnetic spectrum, art transcends far more frequencies that we can see or understand. Like a well refined prism, these artists bring their own light to their work from their unique styles and introspection. They touch all 7 senses and beyond which is why centuries later, they are still featuring in buildings we call museums and we go there to get a sense of who we are and how we attempt to define ourselves.

🙏 Sanctuary — St John’s Cathedral

Free entry, which in a city of ticketed cathedrals feels like an invitation rather than a transaction. Inside: towering vaulted ceilings that pull your eyes upward until your neck aches. Flowered stained glass windows flanking the altar, filtering Baltic sunlight into pools of color on the stone floor. The odor of wooden pews — that particular scent of aged oak, beeswax, and centuries of still air — fills the nave. A sense of spiritual legacy, quiet but undeniable. Not the grandest church in Riga, but perhaps the most sincere.

Because some sacred spaces don’t need to impress — they just need to hold you for a moment.

🙏 Sanctuary — Riga Cathedral (Dome Cathedral)

€30 entry. The seat of the Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia, and one of the biggest and oldest religious buildings in the entire Baltic region, dating from the 13th century. The architecture is a palimpsest — Romanesque foundations, Gothic bones, Baroque flourishes, Art Nouveau touches. Centuries layered like geological strata.

Beneath the stones lies St. Meinhard, the first known Christian missionary in Livonia, who arrived around 1180. Medieval chroniclers describe him as humble, patient, and utterly committed. He died in 1196 and was buried at Ikskile; his remains were transferred here at the end of the 14th century. Canonized in 1995 — eight centuries after his death. Some saints take the long road.

The Walcker Organ — 6,718 Pipes of Glory

The cathedral’s main attraction isn’t a painting or a relic. It’s an instrument. The Walcker organ, built by E.F. Walcker & Co. in 1884, is considered one of the most valuable historic organs in the world. The numbers border on absurd: 124 registers, 4 manuals, 6,718 pipes of varying sizes and materials arranged across 26 wind chests. It stands 25 meters high, 11 meters wide, 10 meters deep. Two consoles sit on two separate galleries. This isn’t an organ — it’s a cathedral inside a cathedral.

The organ façade is even older: built in 1601 by master Jacob Raab, its three large pipe towers and Mannerist woodcarvings have survived empires, wars, and Soviet neglect. The organ represents the highest achievement of late Romantic organ building — both technically and artistically. When it plays, 6,718 pipes fill a space designed for 800 years of echoes.

We have tickets to an organ concert on Friday so we’ll re-visit this sanctuary in a future post.

The Courtyard Garden — Nature, Faith, Spirit

Behind the cathedral, a hidden courtyard garden. The scent of lavender and carnations, propagated by a cool breeze on a clear sunny day. A lone seagull flies overhead and caws — as if announcing to the world that the church is here, waiting. Stone walls, blooming flowers, Baltic sky. Nature, faith, and spirit tuning the seven senses in perfect harmony.

Because the most sacred space in a cathedral is sometimes the garden outside it — where creation does the preaching.

👅 Palate — Frego, Wood-Fired Dinner

Dinner at Frego: pizzas cooked in a wood-fired oven, amazing — €27.50 for three. The first thing that hits you as you enter this restaurant is the wood fire ovens baking bread, fresh ingredients, sauces and desire. The moment the pizza dish hits your table, your mouth salivates and begs for salvation. I could write more but then you’d hop on a plane and order one for yourself so pace your self and start planning for a visit to Frego on your next trip to Riga.

Riga Day 1 — By the Numbers

• 🚌 Lux Express Tallinn → Riga (4hr, 3 pax): €96.00 (€32/pp)
• 🍽 Province lunch: €47.50
• 🏛 Museum: €30.00
• ⛪ St John’s Cathedral: free
• 🙏 Riga Cathedral: €30.00
• 🍕 Frego dinner: €27.50
• Day total: €231.00

Because Riga arrives after four hours of birch trees and Baltic sky — and wastes no time showing you why it was worth the journey.