The Three Crowns

Your private guide and chauffeur meet you at Vilnius airport (VNO), take your luggage and drive you the short distance to the Grand Hotel Kempinski on Cathedral Square. Once you have settled into your room, you set out on a gentle evening orientation through the UNESCO-listed Old Town, the largest baroque ensemble in northern Europe, walking past Cathedral Square, the bell tower and the lamplit lanes of the historic core. Your guide points out the landmarks you will return to and the spots worth a quiet morning coffee, so the city feels familiar from the first night. The walk ends at a welcome dinner in a local restaurant, where you talk through the days ahead over Lithuanian dishes. The rest of the evening is yours to rest after the journey.

Before dawn your guide collects you from the Kempinski for the launch field, where you board a balloon for the sunrise flight above the Old Town, drifting over the baroque rooftops, the river and the Gediminas tower as the city comes into the light (the flight is weather-dependent, so timings flex with the morning sky). Back on the ground, you return to the hotel for breakfast before crossing the little Vilnia river into Užupis, the self-declared artists' republic, to read its tongue-in-cheek constitution on the wall and wander its galleries, courtyards and riverside cafes. There is free time for lunch in the bohemian quarter before your guide leads you in the afternoon to a private amber atelier, where a master explains how Baltic amber is sorted, cut and set, and you watch a piece take shape. Your guide walks you back toward Cathedral Square, leaving the evening open to rest at the Kempinski or explore further on your own.

After breakfast you leave Vilnius with your guide-driver and head west to Trakai, the lakeside seat of the medieval Lithuanian grand dukes. You cross by boat to the red-brick island castle set on its own islet, touring the keep and ramparts before a Karaim kibinai lunch, the pastry speciality of the small Karaim community who have lived here for centuries. From Trakai your driver carries you across Lithuania to the Baltic coast, with farmland and pine forest giving way to the dunes near Klaipėda. There you board the short ferry across the lagoon onto the Curonian Spit, then continue south down the narrow sandbar to Nida, a slender village of timber fishermen's cottages between the sea and the lagoon. Your guide settles you in at the boutique Hotel Nidos Banga, leaving the evening free to rest by the water.

You rise early and your guide leads you up the Parnidis dune boardwalk to the great granite sundial that crowns the spit, where the sands fall away to the sea on one side and the lagoon on the other. After breakfast at the hotel, your guide walks you into Nida to the Thomas Mann summer house, the blue-shuttered cottage where the novelist wrote and looked out over the lagoon, now a small museum to his Nida summers. The afternoon is yours along the lagoon shore: the promenade, the village, the traditional weathervanes on the moored boats, or simply the terrace at the hotel. Tonight is a second night at the Hotel Nidos Banga, so there is no packing and no transfer.

This day belongs to the lagoon. In the morning you set out by kayak across the calm, shallow Curonian Lagoon, your guide leading you among the reed beds and quiet inlets, pointing out the birdlife along this sheltered shore. You paddle back for a smoked-fish lunch at a family smokehouse, tasting the spit's traditional catch straight from the alder smoke. The afternoon is free: the pine paths, the open sea beach on the far side of the sandbar, or nothing at all. As dusk comes in, your guide takes you to a private sauna by the water, where the heat of the hut and the cool of the lagoon alternate at your own pace, a slow close to your last night on the spit.

Leaving the spit after breakfast, you take the ferry back to the mainland at Klaipėda and rejoin your guide-driver for the journey north. The first stop is the Hill of Crosses near Šiauliai, where pilgrims have planted hundreds of thousands of crosses over generations, a quiet, moving site that you walk through at your own pace. From there you cross your first border into Latvia and continue to Rundāle, the baroque palace built for the dukes of Courland and often called the Versailles of the north. Arriving after public closing, you have the palace to yourselves for a private tour of the gilded state rooms and rose gardens, followed by a candlelit dinner in the halls; this after-hours access is arranged directly with the palace, subject to availability and confirmed well in advance, with a daytime private tour and dinner at Mežotne as the fallback. A short transfer afterward brings you to the neighbouring 18th-century Mežotne Palace on the Lielupe river, where you spend the night among its period rooms and formal park.

After breakfast at Mežotne your guide-driver takes you on the short drive into Riga, the Latvian capital and the largest city in the Baltics. With your guide you walk Alberta iela and the surrounding quarter, where Riga holds one of the world's finest concentrations of Art Nouveau facades, reading the masks, mythical figures and flowing stonework across the upper storeys. From the boulevards your guide leads you to the Central Market, whose vast pavilions were built inside former Zeppelin hangars, for a tasting crawl through Latvian cheeses, smoked fish, rye breads and pickles. Your guide then leads you across into the medieval Old Town to orient you among its guild houses, churches and squares before checking you into the Grand Hotel Kempinski opposite the Freedom Monument. The evening is yours to dine and wander the lamplit old town at your own pace.

You leave Riga after breakfast with your guide-driver and head into the Gauja valley, the wooded river gorge often called Latvian Switzerland and the heart of the Gauja National Park. You ride the Sigulda cable car across the valley for the wide view over the forest canopy, then cross to Turaida, where the red-brick medieval keep rises above the sculpture park and gardens. The afternoon brings the stone ruins of Cēsis castle, which you explore on a candlelit walk, carrying a lantern through its passages and tower stairs while a guide tells its Livonian history. The day closes in the forest with a master-led pirts ritual, the Latvian bathing tradition of birch-whisk and herbal heat, before you settle for the night at the restored Kārļamuiža country manor on the edge of the park, where the farm kitchen serves dinner.

After breakfast at the manor your guide-driver sets out on the long northward drive, crossing your second border from Latvia into Estonia and continuing up toward the Gulf of Finland. Arriving in Tallinn, you check in to the Hotel Telegraaf inside the medieval walls and begin a private walking tour of the best-preserved medieval old town in northern Europe. Your guide leads you up to Toompea hill for the rooftop views, then past the Town Hall Square, the guild houses and the long defensive walls and towers that still ring the merchant town. As the day winds down, a Michelin-recognised dinner at a restaurant tucked inside the old town closes the afternoon. The cobbled lanes are yours to wander afterward.

You leave Tallinn early: breakfast at the Telegraaf, then your guide-driver takes you east into Lahemaa National Park, Estonia's largest, a coastal mosaic of bog, forest, boulder fields and old manor estates. The day opens with a dawn bog walk, following the boardwalk out across the raised mire, an easy, flat trail your guide reads for its plants and birdlife. After a long manor lunch, your guide continues with you to a manor estate for an initiation into the smoke sauna, the UNESCO-listed Estonian tradition in which the chimneyless hut is warmed for hours and the smoke cleared before the bathing begins. Tonight you stay within the park at the restored Vihula Manor, where the watermill spa and estate grounds offer a slow evening after the heat of the sauna.

Your last morning is unhurried: breakfast at the manor and time to walk the estate grounds or take a final turn in the spa before you pack. When you are ready, your guide-driver transfers you back toward Tallinn and on to the airport (TLL) in good time for your onward flight, closing the journey where the three crowns of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have come together as one story. Travellers with extra days instead turn west for the optional island extension, taking the ferry across to Saaremaa, the largest of the Estonian islands. There you visit the elegant Relais & Châteaux Pädaste Manor, the eerie Kaali meteorite crater lake and the moated Kuressaare castle, the best-preserved medieval fortress in the Baltics, before a later departure from the islands.