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Vacation experienceTo make your idea of a vacation in Estonia or Latvia come alive we publish accounts of our guests’ and other travellers’ experiences. If you have visited Estonia or Latvia and want to share your memories with others you are welcome to send us your impressions. In Swedish and German we have more vacation experiences, we just havn't had time to translate them yet.
Experience 1.By swedish guest to house 128 in Engure, Latvia, July 2008. To have a look at house 128, please click here.
A trip to LatviaHaving been to Riga many times I decided to take the family and go check out what Latvia has to offer outside Riga. A colleague's wife's family lives in Engure village, right by the sea just a short drive from Riga and he offered to show us around. We rented house number 128 in Engure. It turned out to be great value for money, sure, the interiors isn't your standard modern euro standard, more like Baltcott writes, a bit of Soviet feeling to it, but still absolutely ok - clean and in good condition and in a beautiful stone building, just 50 meters from the sea. The beach near the house wasn't really that good for swimming, but we didn't have much time for swimming anyway, we wanted to see and do something. Still, first day after arriving we just wanted to relax and went to a beautiful white beach 5 minutes drive from the house, at the other end of the village, not many people there, despite great weather. In the afternoon, the weather changed and we went to Tukums and had a look at the town festival's exhibition of odd vehicles, mainly homemade, competing on a slope.
The next day we went for a drive to Ventspils, harbour and beach town, where we found great (and free of charge!) playgrounds for the kids. One had a bit of a theme with flies, shoes and other fun stuff to climb on. The other was possibly the largest one I've seen, lots of slides and climbing attractions, the kids had a great time. We also went to the open-air museum by the beach where they display a lot of old-time boats and buildings. Their narrow-gauge railway wasn't operating, as it was a Monday, but the kids really enjoyed a "bicycle on a railway track", they were allowed by the kind guards to actually ride it! And of course there was another playground in this museum, with wooden attractions appearing to be traditional Latvian village playthings.
Tuesday we went south for a walk in the forest, but not an ordinary forest, but the dwarf's forest, where the dwarf's houses, mines and windmills have been erected to amuse the kids and teach them respect for the forest. This forest is large and also features the kingdom of the forest king and the realm of the forest witch. The witch was working hard making tea from bat's ears and snake's eyes. The kids were reluctant to accept her candy made from rabbits' excrement ;-) but it was very good and the witch was a great entertainer. On the outskirts of the forest was another very nice playground.
Wednesday we went to Switzerland, Kurzeme Switzerland, the hilled area around the towns of Sabile and Kandava. Forest bowling in fairytale park "Imulas" was great fun for both children and adults and toboggan rides near Sabile was equally great, our 7-year-old was really happy about riding it himself. To finish off the day, we went to some caves called Mara's chambers, which meant another walk in the forest, some 1,5 km to the caves. Very nice forest and beautiful caves. But we weren't lucky with the weather, a really heavy rain hit when we started to go back - we got soaking wet, but it was fun anyway.
Thursday was another lazy day. Main event was an evening stroll at the Engure lake, very beautiful and pleasant, with real wild horses and cows as additional attractions.
Friday we were busy again, went to the road museum in Slokenbeka manor, where the kids were most impressed by the display of old street-building machinery. Then we drove a bit further to Cinevilla, a town built for making a movie about Riga in 1918, great fun again. Strange to find a town in the middle of nowhere, with bridges leading nowhere. We also rented costumes and posed by military vehicles of the era, other tourist mistaking us for actors and asking to be photographed with us, we could have earned our lunch money there :-) After that we also found time for the war museum in Zante, where the guide took great pride in showing us around and doing it with great enthusiasm. In this area some really heavy fighting was going on in the 2nd world war, some 500.000 men died. The guide allowed the kids to climb on an old Soviet tank, which was great fun for them. The re-created trenches were also interesting.
Saturday we had to go home again, but stopped in Riga for a visit at the zoo there - ok, a bit of Soviet touch there, but main very nice, the kids mostly enjoyed watching giraffe, tigers and the fishes at the aquarium, the adults enjoyed the new tropic house.
What else we found? Well, we found a lot of very friendly people, not always so good at English, but always doing their best to communicate anyway, and successfully. We found very good beer and tasty food at decent prices. We found lots of rural charm and the kids really enjoyed the whole week. We'll surely go back, there seems to be lots more to see and do in Latvia.
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