Laundry in Riga, Latvia

Today I attempted my boldest adventure yet in Riga, Latvia: Doing Laundry! In a city of half a million people, you'd expect numerous laundromats and laundry facilities throughout the town. However, not so in Riga. In fact, I could only locate two laundry facilities in the entire city! There's no apparent explanation for the lack of laundromats here.. Only that most people have their own washing machines and dryers. Either that or people must be washing their clothes in the river!

I first checked to see if my hotel had a laundry service, and indeed they did. However, it was incredibly overpriced. I estimated that washing my one weeks worth of clothes would cost almost $100! No thank you hotel! So my only other option was to search for laundromats or laundry services in the city. Only thanks to the website inyourpocket.com was I able to locate a few laundromats. I selected the one which seemed larger, called "Nivala". The address was Lacplesa 21. Of course with my terrible sense of direction I also wasn't looking forward to finding this place.

Off I headed on the 5 tram towards Old Town. Eventually the 5 tram goes around Old Town and has a stop on the Freedom Monument side (which faces towards the city center). I exited there and started walking towards the laundromat. Then I remembered that I had no detergent or softener! Would I need it?? Who knows, this is Latvia! I assumed yes, so a visit to the grocery store was in order. There is a grocery store in Old Town, kind of in the center. If you can't find it, no worries.. Simply follow any fashionable woman walking briskly and she will probably end up there!

At the grocery store I quickly navigated to the aisle which apparently had detergent and softener. In Latvia they use detergent powder which comes in a rectangular cardboard box. There is a separate detergent for colors and whites. I have no idea what the difference is, so I selected the detergent for colors to do all my clothes with. The fabric softener is similar to back home and comes in a plastic bottle. I picked both these items up for around 3 lats.

I left Old Town on the Freedom Monument side and headed into the city center, past the giant Radisson Blu hotel. The laundromat was on a side street. It took me a few minutes to locate it, but they had a logo above the door with their name Nevala. I entered the laundromat, which consisted of about 3-4 washing machines and 2 dryers. Wow, is that it?!

The lady working at Nevala was slightly helpful but older, so she spoke almost no english. They had their own laundry detergent and softener, so apparently I just wasted money buying it myself.. Figures. The best part was the washer buttons were all in Latvian or German so I couldn't figure any of the settings out. The lady chose some settings for me which I hope were OK! The cost was 4 lats for a washing machine run, and 2 lats for a dryer run. Together around $11. I managed to fit all of my clothes in the washer, although I'm not sure if that was a good thing. The washer was a side style and you can usually stack clothes pretty high in those (so I've heard). The lady seemed to think it was fine.

The washing machine took one hour so I headed next door to an unknown but well marked cafe. I was in for a nice surprise! This restaurant and cafe had very good prices and even better food! I finally felt like I was in eastern Europe after going to this place. First I ordered a "meat salad", which had chicken, peas, onions, tomatoes, etc.. The dressing was mustard and mayonnaise.. Yummy! Only about $2 and you could consider it a lunch. However I got greedy and decided to also order a "chicken filet with cheese". It came with boiled potatoes and an interesting carrot/onion salad as well. This was a main entree and it only costed $3! I stayed at this cafe for two hours while my clothes were being cleaned. The dryer also took about an hour. Finally my clothes were done, and I picked them up. Nothing like clean clothes in a foreign country, even if the fabric softener smelled like a girl's perfume.

Today things were looking a little brighter since I had a few events planned. There was a couchsurfing.com meeting in the evening, and one guy invited me go to roller skating in a park. Unfortunately it rained, and I ended up missing both events. I got lost trying to find the meeting in the city.. Yeah I have a terrible sense of direction, so what can I say? However I messaged the writer of the blog, "friendinriga", and she agreed to meet and show me around Riga tomorrow! I'm excited since I haven't had the opportunity to meet a local yet, aside from the group events where I couldn't get much talking in.