Travelling around a country is always more expensive than only visiting its capital city. We travelled in June, 2015 in a group of 4.
Each of us spent $27.5 per day in Latvia.
Transportation ($11)
In the daily budget of other cities I have made, I excluded the cost to leave and to get to the city, as it tends to distort the daily average. However for Latvia, we rented a car from Green Motion that we used for 6 days even to drive to Lithuania (128 euros for 6 days). That is why the average for Latvia is higher, while the country is actually cheap. Bus rides in the city is less than 1.5 euro. But to get to other cities from Riga, it varies.
Accommodation ($0)
I’d be surprised if you can’t find a couchsurfing host in Riga. It’s not a touristic place and people still feel ‘excited’ to receive visitors. If you insist on staying at hostels, the cheapest I saw was around $12 in a dorm.
Food ($8)
We also ate quite well in Latvia in our standards. We had three meals in restaurants (Lido, and Charlie Pizza) and rest of the time we ate from supermarket.
Entertainment ($6.65)
We watched an opera there as our couchsurfing host insisted. The price was 9 euros each. We also went to Cesis castle and Rundale Palace, which I will discourage you to go if you are short on time. I don’t think Rundale Palace can be compared with Hermitage, I wish I knew so that I wouldn’t waste the time.
Latvia is a good place to live, but not so impressive for tourists.
Traveling Mega
