Ventspils

Ventspils is widely known as the Latvian flower capital. The reason for this is its many festivals in which flowers are used for decorating the entire town in a number of artistic sculptures. That’s what makes Ventspils a perfect place to visit anytime between the spring and the autumn season when the flowers are in bloom. During the Ventspils City Festival, in the first week of August, florists from Latvia and surrounding Eastern European countries come together to decorate the entire town with thick carpets of colourful flowers.

A western coastal town, Ventspils remains to this day one of the busiest ports of the continent. The town is small and walkable, so most of the places in Ventspils can be reached on foot in less than 20 minutes. On the beach, you’ll find beautiful dunes as well as an observatory along with a digital planetarium. Popular sites include the Castle of the Livonian Order, Ventspils House of Crafts and Market Square. One funny quirk of this town is the street sign; the jagged right-angle of the streets causes many of the signs to actually point in the wrong direction, so you might want to invest in a map. Luckily the town is small, so getting lost can’t be too much of a problem.