Rundāle Palace, Bauska Castle & Ķemeri Bog Boardwalk

The full day is approximately 10 hours, departing Riga in the morning and returning by early evening. You'll spend around 2–3 hours at Rundāle Palace and gardens, plus time at Bauska Castle, a local restaurant, and a gentle boardwalk visit to the Great Ķemeri Bog (sequenced at the start or end of the day depending on weather and traffic).

Rundāle Palace is about 70 km south of Riga, roughly 75 minutes by car. You can drive, take a bus via Bauska (around €4 each way with a connection), take a taxi (€80–100 each way), or join a guided excursion like this one, which handles all transport and bundles in Bauska Castle and a Ķemeri Bog boardwalk visit — three stops you couldn’t comfortably reach in a single day on public transport.

Late May to mid-June for the rose garden in full bloom (2,300 roses, 600 varieties). September for golden light and fewer visitors. Weekday mornings are quietest. Even in peak summer, you won't experience anything close to the crowds at Versailles or Schönbrunn.

Absolutely. Rundāle is a fully restored, 138-room baroque palace designed by the architect of St Petersburg's Winter Palace, set in 10 hectares of French formal gardens, and you can visit on a Tuesday morning and have the Gold Hall almost entirely to yourself. That's an experience Versailles stopped offering about a hundred years ago.

Yes, children are very welcome. The castle towers at Bauska and the wooden boardwalk over the Ķemeri bog pools are particularly popular with kids — the carnivorous sundew alone is usually a hit. The boardwalk loop is flat and pram-friendly. Let Daiga know the ages when you book and she'll plan accordingly. The child price is €70.

Free cancellation up to 24 hours before the excursion for a full refund. Cancellations within 24 hours are non-refundable.

Our default guide languages are English and Latvian. We can also offer the tour in Russian, German, or French on request, just let us know which language you’d prefer when you book and we’ll do our best to arrange the right guide. There’s no extra charge for non-English languages, but on-request languages are subject to guide availability and we’ll confirm by message before your tour.

Booking platforms like GetYourGuide and Viator charge commission, typically 20–30%. When you book directly with Daiga, there's no middleman, so you pay less for exactly the same tour with the same guide. €85 direct vs €128 on platforms.

Technically yes, in practice it’s a very long day and I don’t run it as a combined tour. Rundāle is about 85 km south of Riga, and the Hill of Crosses is another 100 km further south across the Lithuanian border, near Šiauliai. Combining both means roughly 12 hours door-to-door including the drives, and both sites deserve more than a quick stop. I recommend doing them on separate days: Rundāle from Riga on one day, and the Hill of Crosses from Vilnius or Kaunas if you’re continuing into Lithuania. If you really want both in one day, I can arrange it as a private hire, but I’ll tell you honestly it’s a tight schedule.

Yes, though it takes some patience. Take a bus from Riga International Bus Station to Bauska (roughly 1.5 hours, €5–7, several departures daily). From Bauska, a local bus goes to Pilsrundāle (the village next to the palace) but runs only a few times a day, so check the return schedule before you go. Total journey is about 2.5 hours each way. The palace entrance fee is €12–15 depending on which rooms you visit. You’ll miss Bauska Castle and the Ķemeri Bog boardwalk that we include on the guided tour — and you simply cannot reach all three by public transport in a single day, which is exactly why we put this potpourri together. For independent travellers on a tight budget the palace alone is still a workable day.

A different palace entirely, and arguably my favourite version. The rose gardens are dormant and the formal parterres are covered in snow, so the big summer postcard is off the table. What you get instead is the interior at its most atmospheric: low winter light coming through the state-room windows, far fewer visitors (especially January to March), and the chance to spend longer in each room without being hurried by crowds. The palace is fully heated. The Ķemeri Bog boardwalk in winter is its own quiet marvel — the pools half-frozen, frost on the dwarf pines, and almost nobody on the boards. I run this excursion year-round and December–February is often my personal favourite season for it.

Partly. The ground-floor state rooms at Rundāle Palace are accessible and wheelchair-friendly, and that’s where most of the visual highlights are, including the White Hall. The formal gardens are on flat gravel paths which work for most mobility aids in dry weather. The second-floor rooms require stairs and there’s no lift. The Ķemeri Bog boardwalk is flat wooden boards and works for most mobility aids in dry weather. Bauska Castle involves cobblestones, uneven stone steps, and a tower climb, so it’s the hardest stop on our itinerary for reduced mobility — we can skip it and extend the palace or bog visit instead if you’d prefer. Please tell me when you book if anyone in your party has specific needs, and I’ll plan the day around them.

Smart-casual is fine, there’s no dress code. The palace interiors are climate-controlled and cool even in summer, so a light layer is useful. Comfortable walking shoes are more important than smart ones, you’ll be on your feet for several hours across palace floors, gravel garden paths, and Bauska Castle’s uneven cobbles. In summer bring a hat and water for the open garden walk; in shoulder seasons a warm jacket for the castle ramparts (it’s exposed and windy).

Yes, photography for personal use is allowed throughout the palace interiors, no flash and no tripods. The Gold Hall, the White Hall, and the Duke’s private apartments all photograph beautifully even on a phone. The French gardens and the rose garden are unrestricted, no permit needed. Drones are not permitted on the palace grounds. If you want professional gear or a wedding shoot, that needs separate arrangement with the palace administration.

The French rose garden, more than 2,300 varieties, has its main flush from mid-June through July, with a strong second wave in late August and early September. Late June is the peak: the formal beds are at full saturation and the historical-variety section is at its most fragrant. May and early June give you the gardens with the geometry visible but few flowers; October gives you the last roses against the autumn light. The garden is included in your palace ticket and we always allow time for a slow walk through it.

Lunch is a sit-down meal at a local restaurant in the Rundāle area, simple Latvian country cooking, soup, a meat or fish main, dessert, included in your €85 price. We can accommodate vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and most allergies if you tell us when you book or at least 48 hours before departure. Soft drinks, water, beer and wine are available at the table if you’d like.

It’s a gentle, on-boardwalk-only visit — not a hike. We stay on the wooden boards the whole time and walk a flat loop into the heart of the Great Ķemeri Bog, one of the largest and best-preserved raised bogs in the Baltics. From the boards you’ll see sphagnum moss, dwarf pines that are 200–300 years old and still no taller than a Christmas tree, and dozens of small dark bog pools that mirror the sky. Your guide will introduce the carnivorous round-leaved sundew right beside the boards (Charles Darwin’s favourite plant), the smell of wild rosemary, the call of cranes, and the bigger story: why EU peatland-restoration scientists treat Latvia as a model ecosystem, and how this same bog chemistry built the Latvian spa industry up the road in Jūrmala. No special equipment, no waiver, no off-boardwalk hiking — just a real, gentle exposure to one of the most unique ecosystems in the world.

The standard excursion is all three because they make a coherent day — palace in the morning when it’s quiet, lunch, castle in the afternoon, and the bog boardwalk slotted in at the start or end depending on weather and traffic. Doing the palace alone is technically possible but the day becomes a five-hour round trip from Riga for two hours of palace, which doesn’t feel like good value. If you’re short on time, a better option is the standard excursion done at a slightly faster pace. If you have specific reasons for wanting palace-only, message us and we’ll see if a private-hire arrangement works.

Honest answer: it depends on the child and the day. Children who like castles and dressing up tend to love Bauska — you can climb the towers, the views are wide open across the river, and there’s a real sense of being inside a medieval fortress. Rundāle is gentler-paced, the palace rooms are about looking rather than touching, and the rose garden walk asks for patience. The Ķemeri boardwalk is usually the surprise hit: spotting the carnivorous sundew right beside the boards, mirror pools, dwarf pines, and the springy moss visibly flexing under each step (from the safety of the wooden boards, not on it). We pace the day with breaks. Tell us your children’s ages when you book and Daiga will plan the day with the group in mind. Child price: €70.

Tipping is not expected in Latvia and our guides are paid properly. If you’ve had a brilliant day and want to tip, €5–10 per guest in cash is generous and appreciated. If you’d rather not tip, please don’t feel awkward, an honest review afterwards is worth far more to us.

Either at the start or at the end of the day, depending on the morning’s weather and the traffic out of Riga. Bog ecosystems are at their most photogenic in soft, low light, so a clear early morning or a soft late afternoon both make a strong case. Your guide picks the order on the morning so the light, the road, and the bog conditions all work in your favour. Either way, the boardwalk visit is the contemplative bookend of an otherwise architectural-and-historical day.

We’ve put this day together as a curated potpourri of three Latvian places no public bus reaches in a single day, no map alone makes legible, and no traveller should explore unguided. Three different layers of Latvia in ten hours: baroque grandeur at Rundāle, medieval borderland at Bauska, and a 10,000-year-old bog ecosystem at Ķemeri — one of the rarest in the world. Most visitors to Latvia would never get to all three on their own; we serve them up neatly curated, with a local guide doing the work of context, safety and logistics.