Viesnica Saulite

[randomness]

And a couple of words about my hotel, the Hotel Saulite (Little Sun).

Pros:
--It's cheap. Ls. 7.00 a night. ($12.50)
--It's got a great location. It's across the road from Riga's main train station, a few blocks from Riga's very pretty Old Town, and a short walk from the ginormous Central Market.
--They take credit cards.
--My room has a phone, a sink, and cable TV (which shows soft-core porn in the evenings, among other things, but *no* news or weather station, irritatingly enough)

Cons:
--Ls. 7 is for a shared toilet with no toilet seat (this seems to be standard in Latvia, for public/semi-public toilets), and showers cost Ls. 0.50 ($0.90). There may be some deluxe rooms (for Ls. 15) with their own toilet, but none were available when I was there.
--There's no elevator and my room is on the 4th floor.
--Staff, while not outright surly, seems to be from the old Soviet school of customer service. One of them did greet me at one point, so maybe they're changing with the times.
--There's no clock in the room.

I actually would stay here again, because the other alternatives are either much worse or much much more expensive (by, say, a factor of six or so). And you really can't beat the location.

Viesnica Saulite
Merkela iela 12
Riga, Latvia
tel: +371.722.45.46 (although whether they'd take a reservation or not is not clear)

(Little Sun describes the weather in Riga quite well.)