Jūrmala | Relaxing place to vacation

Jūrmala | Relaxing place to vacation

Jomas Street

A typical vacation is enjoying the sun and beach during the day; shopping in commercial streets, drinking in a bar and having fun in music with friends at night. Jomas Street is where you should visit in Jūrmala for a romantic midsummer night.

Ken Eckert, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Surrounded by beautiful North-Eastern European architecture, you can appreciate the aesthetics of the structures while you walk on the street and shop for the suitable souvenirs. Dining out in award-winning restaurants allows you to understand north-eastern Europe with your taste buds. The mesmerising music and fine wine and cuisines will elevate your journey to another level!

Lielupe

As a seaside resort, the most significant element of Jūrmala is undeniably water. Besides beaches and aqua parks that Jūrmala is famed for, you can also enjoy the fun of water in between woods – Lielupe. Fishing and kayaking in Lielupe would be a great choice to get rid of the summer heat.

You can witness what Latvians do with water on the 100km-long Lielupe. As a canoeing hotspot, people can be seen rowing their boat around the river enjoying the fun of summer, with old fishers fishing on the river bank and young men waterskiing on the river. You can ride on a ferry to Riga and other major cities and enjoy the beauty of Latvia.

Former Kemeri Hotel

The sea is where you can relax and also recuperate. During the Soviet era, the state advocated recuperation tourism so that those from the working class could recuperate by the sea after work and achieve higher productivity with better well-being. Former Kemeri Hotel was such a sanatorium back then.

The hotel is a brilliant example of Neo-Classicism in the Latvian architecture. With grand halls and luxurious hotel rooms, Kemeri Hotel was first opened as a resort. The opening ceremony was hosted by the then-president. During the Soviet occupation, such extravagance and leisure were obviously not in line with communism. Yet, the equipment here was comprehensive and the rich minerals of the sea were good for health, so it was transformed into a sanatorium for treating patients with nervous systems, joint or bone problems. Now, you can still imagine how popular the structure was back then as a hotel and sanatorium from its elegant architecture and treasure the gifts that the sea has given to us.

Jūrmala Open-Air Museum

One of the best gifts that the sea has offered to human is rich seafood. The sea, raising them and taking care of their lives, is the hometown of fishermen. The Baltic Sea offers much delicious seafood for tens of thousands of people to have a taste of the sea.

Inside the woods near the sea, there is the fishermen’s home. Trees and sea build the comfortable home for fishermen in harmony. In Jūrmala Open-Air Museum, you will see the lives of fishermen, fishing equipment and houses they lived. Though you are inside the woods, you can still feel the fishermen’s passion towards the sea.

Dzintari Forest Park

Apart from the sea, Jūrmala has forests too. The Dzintari Forest Park, not far from the city centre, allows you to not only have the opportunity to stay close with nature but also have fun in the forest.

The park is filled with towering ancient trees. There are a lot of 200-year-old fir trees in the standing. The park features playgrounds for children, cafés, a skate park and a basketball court. The 36m-high viewing tower allows visitors to overlook the entire forest from a height. You can even see the Riga Radio and TV Tower from there. If you are obsessed with excitement, try riding the zip line across the forest or challenge the rope course in the woods. In the Dzintari Forest Park, you can appreciate the beauty of nature in both dynamic and static ways.