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.