Best of Latvia

Your private chauffeur meets you at Riga Airport (RIX) and transfers you to the Grand Hotel Kempinski Riga, the restored landmark facing the Freedom Monument and the National Opera. You have time to settle in before the afternoon begins. In the late afternoon your architectural historian leads you on a private Art Nouveau walk along Alberta iela, the heart of a UNESCO-listed quarter that holds the densest concentration of jugendstil in the world. You read the mascarons, screaming masks and peacocks of Mihail Eisenstein's facades from the street, then climb to a rooftop terrace arranged privately for you, a vantage almost no visitor sees. As dusk settles, you sit down to a Michelin welcome dinner at the hotel.

After breakfast your guide leads you on a gourmet crawl through Riga's Central Market, where five former zeppelin hangars shelter halls of smoked fish, rye bread, farm cheese and amber honey, and you taste your way from stall to stall. Late morning your chauffeur drives you west along the Gulf of Riga to Jūrmala, the country's long-loved Baltic seaside resort. You stroll Jomas iela and the leafy lanes of belle-époque wooden villas, their carved verandas and fretwork a softer cousin to the city's stone facades. The afternoon is yours at a sea-spa, with time to walk the wide pale-sand beach and take the treatments at your own pace. Your chauffeur brings you back to Riga in the evening for a second night at the Kempinski.

The morning begins with breakfast at the Kempinski before you leave Riga with your guide and chauffeur, driving south through the Zemgale farmland to Rundāle Palace, the baroque masterpiece designed by Rastrelli and often called the Versailles of the north. After closing time the palace opens privately for you: you walk the gilded state rooms and the French formal garden without the crowds, then sit down to a period dinner in the Gold Hall, candles lit against the stucco and ceiling frescoes. Afterward your chauffeur takes you on a short transfer to neighbouring Mežotne Palace, a neoclassical 18th-century residence on the Lielupe river set in its own park, where you spend the night. The evening is yours to wander the formal gardens or warm up in the sauna before bed.

After breakfast at the palace your guide and chauffeur drive you north-east across the country, deep into the wooded Gauja valley and the river gorge at the heart of Latvia's oldest national park. At Sigulda your guide takes you to the cable car over the gorge, the forest canopy spread below, then walks you through Turaida with its red-brick keep rising from the Turaida Museum Reserve. You break for a long lunch among the river bends before your chauffeur drives on to Cēsis, where the medieval castle is yours by lantern light: handed a candle lantern, you walk the spiral stair and inner bailey as the guide tells the keep's history. A short drive brings you to Kārļamuiža, a restored 18th-century manor on the edge of the park with forest trails from the door.

Your chauffeur sets out early, driving you west across Kurzeme and arriving at Kuldīga's Ventas Rumba at dawn, where the Venta spills in a low broad sheet as the widest waterfall in Europe. Your guide walks you along the bank to the long red-brick bridge of 1874, one of the oldest of its kind, then leads you through the UNESCO-listed old town of timber houses and cobbled lanes, with free time to find a coffee or a snack. In the afternoon a pirts master takes over: the Latvian bathhouse ritual unfolds in a wood-fired sauna, working you with oak and birch whisks between cool plunges, a long-standing Latvian way to unwind. You stay the night at Jēkaba Sēta, a boutique guesthouse set in a restored merchant's courtyard in the old town.

Your last morning begins with a long, unhurried breakfast in the courtyard before a private Latvian song recital: the dziesmas that form a UNESCO-recognised living tradition at the heart of the country's national identity. Once the last note has faded, your chauffeur loads the car and drives you back east toward Riga, the Kurzeme countryside passing by one final time. Depending on your flight there may be time to pause for a last lunch or a short stop along the way. Your chauffeur delivers you to Riga Airport (RIX) in good time for departure.