Banya, Mineral Baths, Lunch at Brezhnev’s Dacha: on a tour of culture and wellbeing on your holiday in Latvia
Departure date: September 15-18 2016
For those of you who want to combine some culture on a wellbeing holiday or visa versa, this short tour to Latvia is the ticket. Above all everything you do is hand picked by a specialist in Eastern European wellness who will accompany you.
Your four-day trip kicks off with a four-hour banya ritual at the leading boutique hotel on Latvia’s Baltic coast in Jurmala. Get wafted with linden branches in 100 degree heat, doused in cold water and scrubbed with pumpkin, all in the hands of expert ‘banshiks,’ who have been caring for guests in their banya for more than 10 years. Take it all at your own pace and intersperse your bouts of hot and cold with organic food while you recline and unwind in the banya’s relaxation area. You are guaranteed to sleep like kittens after your day of travel.
After some morning exercise on Jurmala’s 33-km stretch of sandy beach – and some breakfast, you will pick mushrooms in the pine forest that the award-winning chef at Amber Spa Boutique Hotel will prepare for your dinner.
The rest of day takes you with an expert guide on a roam round Riga, the country’s capital, with a stop to see the city’s famous Secessionist architecture and lunch at another award-winning cafe, back in time for a talk on the healing properties of amber and dinner – with mushrooms if you wish, in the hotel restaurant.
On your third morning, after optional morning exercise, your local guide will lead you on an exploration of Jurmala, the famous Baltic coast resort town, once known as the St. Tropez of the North. This pretty town is an architectural gem of wooden summer houses from the 19th century blended with contemporary architecture in the woods where the air is clean and everywhere is green.
Thanks to your host, Sophie Benge, who wrote, ‘Healing Sources – Spas and Wellbeing from the Baltic to the Black Sea’, you have unique access to Jurmala’s only surviving sanatorium built in the Soviet era and unchanged in brutalist architectural style to this day. Here you will have a private lunch in Brezhnev’s dacha (summer residence) in the grounds, which still houses his bank of telephone hotlines to the Kremlin. And a tour of the sanatorium’s facilities and museum of history and healing.
This is followed by a selection of traditional treatments using the natural resources of the area, which has made this stretch of Latvia a famous health destination since the reign of Tsar Nicholas I: mineral water bath, mud wrap, salt cave and herbal inhalation experiences. You will get a taste of the power of natural resources to detox and relax your body and mind.
Supper will be at a fisherman’s tavern behind the beach. Food on this trip is guaranteed to be fresh, local, organic and delicious.
You will have time on Sunday after morning exercise on the beach (if you wish) to enjoy optional spa treatments at Amber Spa Boutique Hotel, or walk through the woods and relax before your afternoon flight to London.
This bespoke tour offers you unique access as it has been curated by Sophie Benge, using her personal relationships in the region.
Written by Sophie Benge. All images by Sophie Benge.