Maritim Park Hotel: Where to Stay in Riga, Latvia

Our last night in Riga, Latvia was spent at the Maritim Park Hotel due to reservation issues at our previous two hotels. The Maritim Park Hotel is on the outskirts of Riga proper, out towards the airport. This did not make it very convenient to anything I wanted to see, but it is great for the myriad European conventions held in Riga each year. It did, however, allow us to rent a limo for the remainder of the stay. I so adore business holidays... the company gets to pick up the bill for things like this. Hey, they shoulda gotten the prior reservations written in blood. It wasn't our fault they stuck out in the middle of nowhere that night, was it?

The best things about the Maritim is that it has 24 hour room service, a bar that is open 24 hours, and two restaurants; one of which (the Park Restaurant) is open all but one hour each day. I have this bad habit of wanting a snack at 1:00 and most hotels can't accommodate that. The Maritim can and did. Score! The other restaurant, called the Bellevue, is the more elegant of the two for you uppity folks and is open from 13:00 to 23:00.

Another thing we liked about the Maritim is that it is of Scandinavian design. Yeah yeah I go to other countries to enjoy different architectures, but by this point I had ooohed and ahhed at the buildings and castle of Medieval Old Town and stared in wonder at the Art Nouveau District, so a bit of home felt kinda nice for the night. (I currently live in Sweden.)

The Maritim is convention heaven. This is where a lot of Europe's scientific conventions are held, so the hotel caters to that clientele rather than tourists like me. They have 10 conference halls beautifully appointed with every modern gadget you could ever need for such things.

The hotel fitness center is also equipped with pretty much any machine you would ever want to use, and they have massages by request.

As to the room, we went with the standard for about 100 EU, but the Maritim Park Hotel has every size room imaginable up to a huge 2-room Executive Suite on the 9th floor going for around 385 EU. Our standard room had 2 double beds, and plenty of space to move around. The beds were very comfortable. It must be something about Riga folks and beds. I have never visited a city with so many comfortable beds in it. Really. This is refreshing.

There is high-speed Internet access in the rooms. We had a small desk facing the window looking out over a lovely park. They also have a gift shop on the grounds outside where you can get pretty much anything you need from shampoo to Riga souvenirs. They are not over-priced, either. In fact, they hold with pricing all over Riga, which is to say rock-bottom cheap.

The bathroom was, as usual with European hotels, disappointing. It is small with no tub, just a shower, and the soaps and such are on the wall in dispensers. Once again I was faced with no place to spread my beauty junk out. Bummer, that.

The worst thing, though, was the mini bar problem. It was there, and fully stocked. The problem is the door did not seal well, and the maids forgot to push it to make sure it was in fact closed, so we returned to warm beer that night. Lars was not happy.

So, of the 3 places we stayed in Riga over the past 2 weeks, I liked the Hotel Latvija best, the Domina Inn second, and the Maritim Park last. That is not to imply the Maritim is not good, just that it isn't the best if you are in Riga to play tourist.