Hello and welcome to the Independence Daily Travel Podcasts coming to you from, well, a beautiful beach.

I do love to be beside the seaside and it's been a while so I'm very happy to be here.

You can hear the waves breaking. To my left there's a beautiful pine forest and the

sand is incredibly soft. It's a gorgeous place to be apart from the temperature which is

approximately zero. There has on my approach here been a bit of snow on the ground.

And that's because I'm in beautiful Ljormela

in the Baltic state of Latvia,

very close to the capital of Riga. And the reason I'm talking to you now

is because the Baltic is a superb destination for your holidays. And if you're thinking about

a budget holiday, whether that's for you or for a family,

well, let me recommend that you visit the Baltics.

That could be Latvia itself.

It could be the fine adjoining countries of Lithuania or Estonia or indeed, and I think this is the main one, Poland,

all the way across from the German border to the beautiful city of Gdansk, is effectively one

long beach. You've got all the stuff that goes with a great beach holiday including

some fantastic places to stay, lots of fun parks, water parks and so on. Very easy to

get to because there's frequent air links from the UK and And the prices, well, they're simply about one third of what you would be paying for the same things in Western Europe.

So strongly to be recommended for anybody on a budget.

Now, a couple of things.

You probably don't want to go swimming. I can't see anybody in the beach. Just some very hardy people with very big coats walking along this beautiful stretch

of shoreline. But if you're here in July, August, well, you are going to have a fabulous time.

And actually, the last two weeks of August are the best time to be here, because this is

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