Outside Riga

Daugavpils

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From the moment you step down from the train, Daugavpils feels very much like the back end of nowhere, one of those dour, end-of-the-world places still endemic in the old Eastern Bloc. The last jumping-off point before the Belarusian border, the station building's stab at monumentalism is neutered by a departures board listing four trains a day, half of which were returning to the capital. It's Latvia's second city, though the lingua franca on the slush-bound streets was Russian (Latvian speakers make up just 17% of the population, only slightly ahead of Poles).Straight across from the station, Rigas iela begins. The town's pedestrianized main street, it has lots of attractive early-20th ...Read More

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Lielvarde

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It's half past twelve and the Lielvarde train sits idling on platform six. Hawkers stand by the door speaking quickly in Russian then moving down the carriage, selling nothing. The sun beats through the dirty window, passengers step languidly across the glinting metal tracks, over the tannoy the announcer draws her vowels out until each new station begins to sound like a list of complaints.It's an hour later when we finally get to Lielvarde and the end of the line. The guidebook describes it as "the first town upstream from Riga worth spending some time in," which doesn't say much for the places I passed on the way. There were neither maps nor signposts at the station so I started walking...Read More

It's half past twelve and the Lielvarde train sits idling on platform six. Hawkers stand by the door speaking quickly in Russian then moving down the carriage, selling nothing. The sun beats through the dirty window, passengers step languidly across the glinting metal tracks, over the tannoy the announcer draws her vowels out until each new station begins to sound like a list of complaints.

It's an hour later when we finally get to Lielvarde and the end of the line. The guidebook describes it as "the first town upstream from Riga worth spending some time in," which doesn't say much for the places I passed on the way. There were neither maps nor signposts at the station so I started walking in the general direction of the Daugava, Latvia's longest river, turning left along the street behind the station building until I hit the junction with Lāčplēsa iela, named after the mythical Latvian bear-slayer created by the 19th century poet Andrejs Pumpurs, who grew up in the town.

There are only two things to see in Lielvarde and both are on Lāčplēsa iela. Turn right at the crossroads and continue five minutes past the Elvi supermarket for Udevena pils, a reconstruction of a 12th century Liv wooden stockade which looks like an adventure playground situated in a scrapyard. Open Wednesday to Sunday from April to November it didn't look worth the two lats entrance fee so I contented myself with a walk round the walls and the views of the nearby river, evidently a popular backdrop for wedding photographers.

At the other end of town, twenty mintutes the other side of the Maxima supermarket, the Andrejs Pumpurs Museum fills what once was Rembate Manor. The museum itself is located in the old gardener's house but what's outside is much more interesting: a whitewashed Lutheran church built in the 1930s, wooden totem pole sculptures of characters from Pumpurs's epic poem, and the ruins of Lielvarde Castle, built on the site of a conquered wooden fort by the crusading Knights of the Sword in 1205 and destroyed in turn itself three hundred years later.

I'm not sure why anyone would ever end up in Lielvarde unless, like me, you've spent long enough living in Riga to want a break from the city. If you ever do though, there's enough here to keep you occupied for a couple of hours. Read Less

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Kemeri

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The westernmost town in Jurmala, Kemeri is an hour from Riga by electric train. After its interwar heyday as a spa resort and later use as a Soviet sanatorium, the town has been neglected since Latvia regained independence and now has a forlorn, abandoned air. The remains of the spa are a fifteen-minute walk from Kemeri station along Tukuma iela, although nowadays the prime tourist attraction is the 6,000 hectare Kemeri National Park, to the north and south of the town centre.When I think back to Kemeri, it'll be the sound of barking dogs that I hear first, as loud and constant as car horns in Beijing. What little traffic there was moved too quickly on the narrow roads. Church bells rang...Read More

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Kuldiga

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"If you only have time to visit one provincial town in Latvia then it really ought to be Kuldiga," advises my Rough Guide to the Baltic States. With no train link, bumpy roads and buses from Riga taking anything up to three and a half hours to make the journey, you'd need to have plenty of time on your hands to make the trip worthwhile. With a population of just over 13,000 you can easily navigate your way around all of Kuldiga's sights in a half day trip. From the bus station, a kilometre south of the town centre, follow Skrundas and Jegavas ielas until you see the whitewashed spire of the Holy Trinity Church, built in the 16th century like most of the buildings that survived t...Read More

"If you only have time to visit one provincial town in Latvia then it really ought to be Kuldiga," advises my Rough Guide to the Baltic States. With no train link, bumpy roads and buses from Riga taking anything up to three and a half hours to make the journey, you'd need to have plenty of time on your hands to make the trip worthwhile.

With a population of just over 13,000 you can easily navigate your way around all of Kuldiga's sights in a half day trip. From the bus station, a kilometre south of the town centre, follow Skrundas and Jegavas ielas until you see the whitewashed spire of the Holy Trinity Church, built in the 16th century like most of the buildings that survived the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden. Between here and Kuldiga's pedestrianized main street, Liepajas iela, are a jumble of two-storey, half-timbered yellow and beige buildings including the oldest surviving wooden building in the town, first built in 1632. Liepajas iela itself doesn't have much of interest except for cashpoints and the wooden Stender's restaurant, which has outdoor seating, a reasonable selection of food and Cesu beer on tap for only ninety santimes a half-litre. Unless you're hungry, however, you're better off continuing straight on along Baznicas iela in the direction of St Catherine's Church and Kuldiga District Museum.

Currently undergoing external reconstruction, Kuldiga's small museum is housed in a pavilion first built as the Russian exhibition in the Paris Exposition Universelle. Although there isn't much to see inside, it's worth taking the short walk through the park, built on the spot where Kuldiga's castle once stood, to reach it, if only for the view of the river Venta from the observation point next door.

Flowing into the Baltic at Ventspils, the river forms what is thought to be Europe's widest waterfall in Kuldiga, 270-metres across (but only one and a half metres high) from rock face to rock face. You can easily walk across the rocks into the middle of the river, though the best views are over the bridge on the other side. Just don't expect anything spectacular.

Once you've seen the waterfall and the few streets that make up the town centre, you've seen pretty much all there is to Kuldiga. Although it's a relaxing place to break a journey between Riga and Ventspils or Liepaja (both of which are just over an hour away by bus), if you really want to see the Latvian countryside on a daytrip from the capital then Sigulda and the Gauja National Park make much more interesting options. Read Less

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Cesis (General)

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A little under two hours east of Riga on the last trainline to Estonia, Cesis is easily manageable as a daytrip from the capital. Well-preserved and quiet, it's touted as one of the most authentically Latvian towns left after half a century of Soviet occupation, "so homely and cosy that a visit here seems like a holiday to a kind Latvian granny," if you believe Cesis's official tourist guide.No matter whether you arrive by bus or by train, you'll end up half a kilometre east of the main square, Vienības laukums (Union Square), where you'll find the town's Victory Monument, a concrete obelisk in the middle of two roads. Celebrating the 1919 Battle of Cesis, in which a combined Estonian an...Read More

A little under two hours east of Riga on the last trainline to Estonia, Cesis is easily manageable as a daytrip from the capital. Well-preserved and quiet, it's touted as one of the most authentically Latvian towns left after half a century of Soviet occupation, "so homely and cosy that a visit here seems like a holiday to a kind Latvian granny," if you believe Cesis's official tourist guide.

No matter whether you arrive by bus or by train, you'll end up half a kilometre east of the main square, Vienības laukums (Union Square), where you'll find the town's Victory Monument, a concrete obelisk in the middle of two roads. Celebrating the 1919 Battle of Cesis, in which a combined Estonian and Latvian force defeated the remnants of the Baltic German army, it was demolished by the Soviets in the 1950s and only reconstructed after independence.

The monument marks the centre of Cesis. Behind, the Kolonna Hotel has a basement restaurant (the entrance is down a flight of steps on the side of the building) with point-and-order Latvian food, pizzas and pints of the local Cesu beer on tap. Turn left and you'll enter Rigas iela, which has been Cesis's busiest street for the past eight hundred years. Halfway down, Rigas opens out into a square dominated by the 13th-century church of St John's (50 santimes entrance), which contains the tombs of several Knights of the Sword, the crusading German knights who first conquered pagan Latvia. Below St John's, the cobbled streets and one-storey wooden buildings of the old town are worth a few minutes of exploration.

Cesis's premier sight, however, is the remains of its 13th century castle. Left in a ruinous state after the Russians took it in 1703, a combined ticket for the castle and the adjoining Museum of History and Art costs 3 lats. Both are interesting enough, though nothing spectacular. If you don't want to pay, follow the monumental staircase down into Castle Park where you can scramble up the banks to the castle walls and have a peek over the top for free.

On its own, you can see all there is to see in Cesis in two or three hours. The only reason to stay overnight is that along with Sigulda - thirty kilometres back towards Riga - it makes the best base for exploring the Gauja Valley, Latvia's hiking, rafting and skiing capital. In winter one of the country's best ski slopes is located just three kilometres outside Cesis itself; in summer there are a multitude of forest and riverside hiking trails. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on March 20, 2009

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Gutmanis Cave

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Attraction | "Gutmana Ala"

Sigulda Photo - Gutmanis Cave, Sigulda, Latvia

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"The biggest cave in Latvia, the oldest…the most visited…the most described". In reality Gutman’s Cave (Gutmana ala) doesn’t quite live up to all the superlatives hurled at it. A ten-minute walk across the Gauja bridge, roughly halfway between Sigulda and Turaida Castle, the cave is famous as the place where Maija, the Turaida Rose, met her death, stabbed by a jealous Polish Army deserter. The tale formed the basis of a 20th century play by Janis Rainis still studied by every Latvian child.Ten-metres high by twelve-metres wide at the entrance, the cave extends almost nineteen metres back into the sandstone rock. Shaped like the hull of an upturned rowing boat, it was named by lo...Read More

"The biggest cave in Latvia, the oldest…the most visited…the most described". In reality Gutman’s Cave (Gutmana ala) doesn’t quite live up to all the superlatives hurled at it. A ten-minute walk across the Gauja bridge, roughly halfway between Sigulda and Turaida Castle, the cave is famous as the place where Maija, the Turaida Rose, met her death, stabbed by a jealous Polish Army deserter. The tale formed the basis of a 20th century play by Janis Rainis still studied by every Latvian child.

Ten-metres high by twelve-metres wide at the entrance, the cave extends almost nineteen metres back into the sandstone rock. Shaped like the hull of an upturned rowing boat, it was named by local Germans after a healer who lived inside (the water that trickles round the base of the cave was reputed to have magical healing properties, though the only liquid consumed by visitors nowadays is beer, swigged straight from the bottle). A centuries old tourist attraction, the walls are covered with the names and dates of long-dead lovers and local landowners, inscribed by artists who sat in the cave awaiting commissions. Like hieroglyphics in an Egyptian tomb, the graffiti is the one extraordinary thing about what after all is just a small fissure with a colourful history.

Immediately to the left of the cave entrance, by the information board, a long flight of wooden steps cuts steeply up the rock face, forming the start of an alternative route to Turaida Castle, half an hour away via the top of the hill at Karla kalns. Although the route is not too strenuous once you reach the top of the stairs, given the amount of rain and snow in the Baltics you’ll need a good pair of walking boots. Alternatively, you can continue uphill for another kilometre or so on the main Sigulda to Turaida road, which passes a hundred metres or so in front of the cave. There’s a bus stop and car park almost directly opposite the entrance.

The area in front of the cave would make a good spot for a picnic, though you’d need to bring provisions with you from Sigulda. There’s no reason to traipse all the way just to see the cave but as part of a longer hike to Turaida or a visit to Krimulda Castle, a fifteen-minute uphill walk back in the direction of the Gauja bridge, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.

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Member Rating 3 out of 5 on April 8, 2009

Gutmanis Cave
Gauja National Park
Sigulda, Latvia LV-2150

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