Rīga
Rīga has always been the big boy of the Baltics - a metropolis with a big-city atmosphere hard to find elsewhere in the region.
Rīga has always been the big boy of the Baltics - a metropolis with a big-city atmosphere hard to find elsewhere in the region.
Sandy beaches meet rocky seaside points, rolling farmland yields to thick forests, and cobbled medieval towns bump heads with thriving urban centres in Latvia’s enchanting western Kurzeme region.
Latvia's third-largest city has a gritty, urban vibe.
This enchanted town stands on the southern edge of a picturesque, steep-sided, wooded section of the Gauja Valley and is spanned by a string of medieval castles and legendary caves.
Heading east out of Rīga, cobblestones quickly yield to conifers as you enter the wild and woolly Vidzeme region.
Viewed by Latvians as the country's most dynamic city after Rīga, Ventspils is a tidy oil-transit port renowned for the riches it reaped from black-gold exports.
Once a medieval war zone, today peaceful Talsi, 115km from Rīga, is the cultural and economic centre of northern Kurzeme.
Daugavpils, Latvia's second-largest city, dates from 1275 and has a chequered past in which it has, at various times, been called Dünaburg by the Germans, Borisoglebsk by the Russians and Dvinsk by the Poles.
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