For travellers, the best thing about Latvia is that it is so compact. Its 500 km of sandy beaches are easily reached from historical towns, where medieval hanseatic foundations support baroque and art nouveau buildings, that become venues for cultural festivals during the summer. Families of storks happily give their seal of approval to the unspoilt nature, fresh air and clean water around them. In addition to Riga, its spectacular gateway, there are 6 other UNESCO world heritage listed sites. A

The most western town of Russia. Baltiysk once being German Pillau is the most western outpost of Russia. The town is situated on Samland Peninsula in the Primorskaya bay, where the Vistula Spit begins, stretching for 65 km. The town has an amazing history of military conquests. It was repeatedly occupied by Swedish, German and Russian troops. But even in the German time Pillau was closely associated with Russia: Peter I visited the town three times, and now Baltiysk has a monument to Peter the

Magnificent Sofitel Grand Sopot is located on the sandy shores of the Baltic Sea in a few minutes from the historic center of Sopot city. Since 1927 the hotel is one of the favorite holiday destinations and business meetings of the elite, among its famous guests - Josephine Baker and Charles De Gaulle, Marlene Dietrich and Omar Sharif, Fidel Castro and Demis Roussos, Prince Albert of Monaco. The hotel belongs to the French chain of luxury hotels, which are represented on all five continents. Guests

This art depository was inaugurated in 1979, to become Russia’s first and only Amber Museum. Located in the center of Kaliningrad on the Verkhneye Lake shore, it is housed in a fortress tower "Dona" dating from the mid-nineteenth century. The tower was built in 1853 in the Neo-Gothic style as a part of the city defense system – its construction was supervised by Ernst Ludwig von Aster, commander of the Engineering Corps and the person, who had engineered Konigsberg’s mighty