Latvia travel guide

Back in the early 20th century, Kemeri was famous as a luxury resort town with health baths and sanatoriums. Today it's in oblivion, shrunken to a partly abandoned village - and a fascinating place. Traditional Latvian wooden houses and elegant churches stand in stark contrast to the sad debris of the heydays. An ongoing project try to resurrect the main hotel, but it has been stalled. It's such a bewildering sight to see all the crumbling buildings, one worse than the other, and then realise that people still live next door. Luckily, the network of scenic walking paths are also still here, leading over small bridges, passing tarnish pavilions and through the woods and bogs of Kemeri National Park. Though this is not recommended, some of the abandoned buildings are fully accessible and can turn into an adventure themselves.

Latvia's beach resort number one is Jūrmala hands down. The white sand beach stretches for more than 20 km along the Baltic Sea (well, actually the Gulf of Riga). In the past it was the summer playground for the Soviet elite, but now the sunbathing is done by the region's rich, famous and those who want to be seen, including new-rich Russians who add the flavour of kitsch which suits Jūrmala so well. A restored Soviet-era five stars hotel lies straight down to the waterfront, side by side with old wooden mansions and low-rise family homes. The town still has a lot of the traditional colourful wooden houses, but they are slowly getting bought up and replaced by more contemporary apartamentos for the holidaymakers. Though not Ibiza, Jūrmala can still be a lot of fun - but try to be here in summer!

What Riga doesn't have in prettiness, it gains with edge and character. The Old Town certainly has its graceful moments and the Art Nouveau District is wonderful histrionic, but nothing is done up to make tourists happy - they're all genuine parts of Riga which the Latvians use as much as any other neighbourhood. The Russian neighbourhood around the wonderful Central Market and bus station has its fair share of Stalinist architecture and ruthless attitude, you would think died out with the Soviet-era. But it's such things which make Riga such a fascinating city.

The outdoor capital of Latvia is Sigulda. Although it's not Chamonix, there are both bungee jump, bike trails, bobsled tracks and down hill skiing in winter. For those less adventurous, there are some fine sightseeing in the area. A beautiful church, a medieval castle along with a newer castle - plus views to the open air museum, containing another medieval castle, across the gorge in neighbouring Turaida. The famous Gūtmana Cave is also nearby. The cave ceiling and archway is covered in centuries old graffiti. The oldest readable 'tag' dates back to the 1667, though sources state that graffiti already was chiseled in the 16th century. Believe or not, but the cave's modest length of 19 meters makes it the longest cave in the Baltic.

Branding itself as "unfriendly, unheated, uncomfortable" this prison/museum/hotel is set in a former KGB penitentiary, in an area that used to house a Soviet naval base. The haunting experience here is not the two-hour tour of the inmates' daily lives as KGB prisoners conducted by former guards - though the tour is grim in its own right. For a truly haunting experience, you can spend a night locked up inside the prison. You will be handcuffed, shouted at and woken by sharp lights and sirens during the night; the treatment is miserable, just as it were for the inmates. It is both a horrific and memorable experience. Certainly not for the faint-hearted, but an attractive option for those who seek a better understanding of detainees' conditions than what regular museums can provide. Located in Liepāja's northern suburb of Karosta, meaning War Port, the prison share the neighbourhood with a range of abandoned apartment buildings. These empty concrete blocks, five to six floors high, are left as a crumbling reminder that the Soviet Union and the KGB are no more.