Riga sits at the centre of a country small enough that a great deal of it is within a day’s reach. Trains and long-distance buses leave from the central stations frequently, journeys are measured in tens of minutes rather than hours, and none of the trips below requires a car. Four stand out as reliably worth the effort for a visitor with a spare day.
The coast
Jurmala is the obvious first choice and the easiest. A stretch of white sand and pine forest runs for kilometres along the Gulf of Riga, lined with wooden villas from the resort’s late nineteenth-century heyday. The train takes around half an hour, runs regularly, and stops at several points along the resort so you can walk a section of beach and return from a different station. In summer it is busy, in winter it is bracing and nearly empty, and both versions are worth seeing.
The river valley
Sigulda lies inland, about an hour by train, in a broad forested valley of the Gauja river. It is the closest thing Latvia has to dramatic landscape: sandstone cliffs, viewpoints across the valley, a cable car strung between the sides, and the ruins and restorations of several castles within walking or cycling distance of the station. Autumn is the season it is famous for, when the valley turns colour, and it is correspondingly busy then.
- Check return times first. Services thin out considerably in the evening, particularly on Sundays.
- Buy tickets at the station. Simpler than the alternatives and rarely a queue outside peak hours.
- Take food for the smaller destinations. Options can be limited outside the main season.
- Allow for walking. Several of these sights are a genuine walk from the station, not a short hop.
The palace
Rundale is a large eighteenth-century baroque palace with formal gardens, built for the same court architect who worked in St Petersburg, and it is the grandest building in the country by some distance. It is the least convenient of the four by public transport, requiring a bus and a connection, so it suits a full day rather than a half. The restored state rooms and the rose garden in June are the reasons people make the trip.
The wetlands
Kemeri National Park, just beyond Jurmala, protects a large raised bog crossed by a boardwalk trail through pools and stunted pines. It is flat, easy, and completely unlike anywhere else within reach of the city. Early morning in autumn, with mist sitting on the bog pools, is the version photographers come for.
Any one of the four fits comfortably into a day from the city with time to spare. If you only have one spare day and no strong preference, take the train to the coast; it is the shortest journey and the least likely to be spoiled by weather.
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