Riga

Riga owns the world's densest collection of art nouveau, and her façades know it: a third of the center winks, grimaces and blossoms overhead — screaming masks, peacocks, sphinxes — built in one giddy decade when the port money ran wild. Below, a Hanseatic old town of cobbles and guild houses; beside it, five zeppelin hangars landed after the first war and became the market that feeds the nation.

The sensible traveller walks Alberta iela slowly and twice — once for the buildings, once for the details —, climbs St. Peter's tower for the Daugava panorama, and eats through the Central Market's hangars: smoked eel, garlic rye, sea buckthorn everything. Evening belongs to the old town's cellars and a cautious glass of Black Balsam, the bitter national dare.

The Guide's honesty: look up but stop walking first — the cobbles and the façades compete for you —; the market's fish hall rewards the pointing finger over the menu; and Jūrmala's pale beach is a forty-minute local train: in summer, the capital simply relocates there on weekends. Follow it.