Latvia Holidays & Holiday Itineraries

Privet!

Hi Daina,

I very much enjoyed the Baltic & Russia tour, Moscow, St Petersburg & Tallin the favourite places.  It was well organised, enjoyed the informative morning orientation  tours with  free time to pursue your own activities.  Lamia ( not sure of the spelling) the tour guide from Vilnuis to Tallin was excellent, handled the diverse age range  and fitness level of the group with good humour, nothing was a bother and her language skills were excellent. The coach,  hotels and breakfasts  were all good and the weather perfect, (just I had ordered) I did think some of the add on tours were over priced, I had done my homework before I went and did some of these by myself easily by public transport for a fraction of the cost. i.e. both Suomenlinna & Jurmala    5 Euro, Organ recital Euro 15 .  

Thank you for your help planning the tour.

Kind regards 

Andrea

Hello Michael,

Everything went well. It was Yuanbuo’s dream trip and he really enjoyed it- everything was well organised and the hotels were lovely. Our local guides were excellent, friendly, fun, informative. In particular the local guide we had in St Petersburg was a mine of information and had clearly thought through what he was going to say over the two days. His narrative was very coherent and built up a picture of Russian tsarist history as well as giving us a lot of info about present day Russia. 

Thanks again for all your help with the visa. I had insisted on going to the Baltic on an organised tour because I knew I’d need support having been ill, and it was such a relief that so much was set up for us in advance. 

All the best

Angela

Hi Daina,

The trip was absolutely amazing...quite possibly one of the best trips I've been on.  Your support in the planning and the visa process was invaluable, and I can't thank you enough for your (and your team's) constant communication.  There were a few people on the tour who also used your services, and we were all singing your praises.

The only comments/feedback that I would have, and I don't know how much control you have over it are the following:

1) Having the morning tours start at 9 is great, but during the tours (the city tours especially) they seemed a little rushed in order to get everything in.  People would want to linger to take pictures or to explore, but there wasn't the time.  Potentially starting at 8:30 would give a little bit more time in the tour (although, I'm sure that even with starting earlier, people would then just want more time).

2) The transfer to the ferry station in Estonia on the way to Helsinki was a challenge, with people having to haul their luggage and trying to keep up with the group in such a busy station.  While I don't think there's anything that can be done to change that, I think letting people know that the luggage will be manually transported in the trip details/itinerary may alert people to what to expect on that day.

Thanks again, and I will definitely be recommending your company to my friends and family.

Rita

This was a great trip – really enjoyed it and wished we’d had more time in this lovely country. The pre-trip organising was really good and all the guides were very friendly and where they were supposed to be at the designated times along the way. The pre-organised train tickets were good to get too.
All the accommodation were good. Home stay in Ligatne was lovely - people were really accommodating and the place in the semi-rural setting was so relaxing. People at Hotel Gutenbergs in Riga were really friendly and couldn’t do enough for you. The Sigulda Hotel was too far out of the town - this made it hard to get back to the attractions. Getting to the Valmiera Hotel was quite a long walk - there were no taxis at the train station. We enjoyed the walk but it did require using google Maps to get there through fields and forest.
The supplied mobile phone was a really good idea as our phone didn’t work in Latvia and we needed to get in touch with the guides at the end of a few legs to be picked up.
The cycle through the forest was my highlight – we ate berries and lingered in a few spots to enjoy the river or the white cliffs or the quiet of the forest. Navigation wasn’t obvious though – we followed initially a bike trail (which took us a little time to find) then some orange markers on trees. I recommend that better maps and instructions are provided to make this easier. We were lucky to find the orange marked trail but wasn’t sure it was taking us to the right place at times.
Few tips:
1. There are no lunch spots along the way for the cycling or canoeing. Get something the day before.
2. Make sure your bike is set up before Maris and the local contact leave you. The bikes were in good working order but my seat needed adjusting (not up and down – the angle).
3. Take your time on the canoeing days. The distance is easily achieved in the timeframes. Get out and explore the forest or take a picnic and stop along the way. We didn’t do this and probably didn’t get as much out of the padding sections as we could have.
4. We recommend that the bike hire in Sigulda should be for the whole day so that you can explore the whole area – there is so much to see and would be hard to do on foot (we just kept the bikes and got in trouble with Maris – sorry mate!).
Thanks Daina and everyone else. We highly recommend this trip.