The Baltic's underrated middle child
Estonia gets the tech hype and Lithuania gets the basketball, but Latvia quietly has the best capital city in the Baltics, a national park an hour from it, and a western coastline of empty white beaches that most of Europe has never heard of. Everything on this route runs on cheap trains and buses, nothing is more than three hours from anything else, and a week here in summer costs less than a weekend in Scandinavia.
Riga, three nights
Riga rewards slow walking. The medieval old town, all guild houses and crooked lanes, is the postcard, but the city's real flex is a few blocks north on Alberta iela, the densest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture in the world: entire streets of facades crawling with sphinxes, screaming masks and peacocks, most of them designed by Mikhail Eisenstein. It is a free open-air museum, best in low evening light. Then go where Rigans actually shop: the Central Market, housed in five colossal First World War Zeppelin hangars, where a euro or two buys smoked Baltic sprats, rye bread dense as a doorstep, and midsummer strawberries. Dorms run 15 to 20 euro, dinner at a self-service lunch canteen costs 6 to 8 euro, and a craft beer in the Miera iela district about 4. On a hot day, add the 30-minute train to Jurmala, 1.50 to 2 euro, for its long white beach and eccentric wooden villas among the pines.
Sigulda and the Gauja Valley
Hourly trains run from Riga to Sigulda in a little over an hour for about 3 euro, dropping you at the gateway to Gauja National Park, a deep forested river valley that Latvians, with straight faces, call their Switzerland. There are no mountains, but there are castles: medieval Turaida with its red-brick tower rising out of the forest across the valley, the ruins of Sigulda's crusader castle, and a cable car swinging across the Gauja between them. Walk the trail past Gutmanis Cave, its walls carved with inscriptions back to the 17th century, and if adrenaline calls, Sigulda keeps an Olympic bobsleigh track that tourists can ride in summer on wheels. In late September and October the valley turns amber and gold, and half of Riga comes out to walk in it.
Cesis, the perfect small town
Twenty minutes further up the line, Cesis might be the most charming town in the Baltics: a cobbled core around a ruined Livonian Order castle, where the visit comes with a candle lantern to explore the dark towers by. The new town square cafes do excellent cake, the beer garden by the castle pond does local Cesu alus, and the whole place can be walked in an unhurried day. Stay a night in a guesthouse for 35 to 50 euro a double rather than day-tripping; small-town Latvia in the evening, swifts overhead and almost no traffic, is its own attraction.
West to Kuldiga and Liepaja
Back through Riga, buses head into Kurzeme, the western region that feels a century calmer. Kuldiga, about three hours and 8 euro away, is a peeling, pretty 17th-century town on the Venta river, whose claim to fame is Ventas Rumba, the widest waterfall in Europe, 240 metres across and only two metres high, where in spring you can watch fish hurl themselves up the ledge. Finish two hours on in Liepaja, a port city with a windswept white-sand beach, a serious rock music heritage, and the eerie half-abandoned Karosta district, a former closed Soviet naval base where you can tour, and even overnight in, the old military prison among sea forts crumbling into the Baltic surf.
When and how much
June to early September is the sweet spot, with white nights in June and sea warm enough by late July. May and October are quiet and cheap. Budget 40 to 55 euro a day all in. Book nothing but the first hostel; Latvia is the kind of country where winging it still works.
