Name: Baltā māja
Address: Pilsrundāle, Rundāles nov., Rundāles pag., Pilsrundāle, LV-3921, Latvia, Bauska, Bauska, Bauska, LV-3921, Latvia
Rating: 8

Smoke-free property

Heating

Gift shop

Garden

Terrace

All Spaces Non-Smoking (public and private)

No elevators

General

Bridal suite

Non-smoking rooms

Family room

Wardrobe/Closet

Linens

Rooms

Ironing

Laundry

Services and amenities

Diet menu (on request)

Breakfast

Breakfast in the room

Common kitchen

Packed Lunches

Meals

German

Russian

English

Languages Spoken

Bike rental

Barbecue grill(s)

Picnic area

Recreation

Free parking

Parking

Spa tub

Beach/pool towels

Pool and beach

Meeting and presentation facilities

Business

Cycling

Sports

Children's playground

Family/Kid Friendly

Kids

Location

At the hotel

Riga International Airport

Riga Food Market

House of the Blackheads

Latvian National Opera

The Freedom Monument

Vērmanes Garden

Esplanade

Arena Riga

Riga Motor Museum

Līvu Akvaparks

Riga Zoo

Baltā māja

Bauska

Historic building very close to the palace at Rundale. Unique, well-equipped rooms, very friendly service, free parking and good breakfast and price. 
Enjoyed our stay there very much! Definitely recommended!

Unique!

This place is amazing. Its close to Palace. The yard is so nice we spend all evening just sitting in the sun. Dog had fun relax on the grass near pond. Thre is swings and batut for kids. You can grill your own food too. It's quite and lovely place with own character. Cottage is old but well maintained. Beds are comfortable. There is plenty what to do in the cottage. Breakfast that is the rock!!! Very fresh and tasty and most importantly value is great. Thank you for having us. We will remember for a long time and definitely will recommend to everyone.

Amazing place

this hotel/guest house is the former palace servant's house. Completely renovated by the charming owners. It is located on the outer grounds if Rundāles  Palace, a leisurely stroll to the museum. Clean and comfortable. Shared shower and bathroom were clean and well appointed. The owner served us homemade apple cake as a snack and gave us a small token gift on departure. Great value for money

Super guest house

Fine food - served in cozy local guesthaus
Nice personal and we we’re VERY full when we went walking for the Castle nearby 
Soup on roots pork with salat and potatoes and ICE with Apple and cinnamon 
Also A Nice shop with souvenirs 


Cozy food

We ordered the apple pie, pancakes and sour cream with berry sauce. Whilst the food was good, the chef must have been out the back milking the cow, grinding the flour, growing the apples and waiting for the chicken to lay an egg.  

Eat at the cafe in Rundale Palace. 

Life is too short to wait so long

Stopped in here on a wet afternoon for coffee and cake.  
Enjoyed a couple of hands of cards while the waitresses carefully ignored us.  
Finally my husband got up and went to the counter.  Greeted with a can I help you in a tone which indicated they had no interest in doing so.  
He ordered a coffee and a tea, a pancake and piece of cake.  
Got a warmish pancake, no tea, coffee that might have been made the day before and an average piece of cake.  
It came as no surprise when the waitress tried to shortchange him 3 Euros as he paid.  
Yes both of them get my vote for surly waitress of the year.  

Forget the restaurant 

We certainly found it memorable. We had the ground floor room, plenty of space, comfortable double bed, interesting mix of furniture. You go through a lobby to the bathroom - the lobby had an out of tune piano, a beat-up dresser and a rusty looking fridge. The bathroom had a broken soup dispenser and no soap, and a Jaccuzzi. That was a surprise. We could only open one small window to get some air. Nice table and chairs by the window, with cups for tea and coffee (and a hot water maker). No tea or coffee, though, so that fell a bit flat. 
The location, though was great. Near the palace, you could wander around in the evening. There is a pond and outside benches and swings to play one. 
Breakfast was decent, with particularly good jam and yogurt. Then after finishing our food we were presented with pancakes (so that was what our jam and yogurt was for....). 
The cafe was closed on the day we went, but always closes at 6 p.m. when the tourists have left the palace. So we went into town by car for dinner.

Quirkily eccentric

We three middle-aged British guys are on our last leg of a three week Baltic States tour (omitting Estonia). We decided to stay overnight here (Sun-Mon 2-3/7/17) as it was next to the unique palace in Latvia. We arrived at 14:30 on a Sunday (2/7) and entered via the front door (not clearly marked as a guest house) to a bustling restaurant! A waitress approached us and we explained we what booked a room. She spoke English and took over our checking in. She took us upstairs to the first floor room six via a quirky set of of corridors and common rooms.

She offered us breakfast (bookable in advance for €4 - gone up fourfold since February 2016 but so has everything else apparently; blame the Euro and proximity to touristy Riga!

We had to fill in individual paperwork (first time in two weeks!) which required passport details and length of stay (multilingual instructions and not written in good English).

Room six was under the roof eaves with a window (including mosquito net) overlooking a lake, drive, souvenir shop/barn and what turned out to be the original castle foundations (covered in black plastic sheets to protect them). The occasional tourist group walking past from the car park to the palace. No problem.

In the room were three fair size single beds, a wardrobe with rod and shelves but only one hanger. There were no hooks or in room although lots of opportunities to attach to wooden beams. Bedside tables but no personal bedside lamps unfortunately. No problem. There was enough headroom so no banging heads against the quaint exposed timber beams.

The hostess spoke no English, only German which helped! Chatting to her we found she ran art, loom, pottery classes in the Guesthouse, presumably residential courses too. There was a functioning kiln in the garden (producing 1000degC to make black reduction raku/earthenware pottery) with stacks of sheltered wood for fuel.

The garden was very pretty with a big pond and lots of benches for restaurant users and guests. We had a beer (from the nearby supermarket) after the restaurant had closed in it in the sunshine before a walk round the palace grounds at 20:30. 

We met a fellow Brit from Yorkshire staying the night. Only one other German couple were around as far as we could tell. At one point I saw a grey cat which had managed to 'trap' itself (as cats do) in between the upper part of the window and mosquito net. A previous review loved this cat and gave the guesthouse 5/5 as a result of its presence. I am allergic to cats but would not mark an establishment down on that basis!

There was a kitchenette by the guests' dining room with a small electric hob, fridge, kettle and small sink. No microwave unfortunately. No problem.

There was no recycling evident in the kitchen but there were separate yellow (overflowing) wheeledbins for glass outside. Other recycling bins were cross contaminated! One day they will learn via an EU sponsored government campaign, if they are bothered (same in U.K. unfortunately).

My friend managed to cook a pelmeni stew and we ate well in the dining room. We had bought a bottle of good Georgian wine (€6), to accompany the home cooking, but had to get more wine glasses from our hostess (living on our first floor other half of house) and a corkscrew as none in the kitchenette. Lots of lights in the shared guests' dining room (for art teaching sessions) but none directly over the sink as one is washing up in one's shadow from the central light. The small sink and bad arrangement of draining made washing up difficult unless a drier is helping! Dishcloths and towels were available. Coffee grinds in the bin please, not the sink, despite a notice in Latvian saying down the WC!

Bathroom: hooks thankfully in toilet/sink room and shower. Water pressure in the morning low so operating shower with taps working elsewhere was tricky (and vice-versa so jetting out razor was only possible when no shower). All was clean and done in an artistic style, flattened moraine pebbles galore! Bit cramped at sink as huge hand drier by it. Shaving just possible with ambient light but an extra light over the mirror (fed by nearby socket) would be very useful!

Wifi was surprisingly good given the remoteness. The internet access must be linked to the palace cable which obviously needs it as so busy with its own active website. 

A peaceful night was had in room 6, my bed was a bit lumpy and old and my friend under the eaves had to put a couple of blankets between him and the mattress to iron out his lumps. 

Drilling and hammering in house at 10:00 as lots of things to improve and repair! Everyone should have been up by then anyway! 

We skipped the breakfast on offer to eat our own leftover food bought from supermarket day the before and 'fresher' tasty rye&seedy bread on the Monday morning. No very fresh fresh bread in shop, this is not F, B, D or U.K.! It is isolated but that is the charm; between palace opening hours and associated coach parties and also the repair noises.

This is an old house with countryside foibles. Don't expect luxury but expect quaint, relatively peaceful and quirky environment. The owners probably have never heard of TA, although management could take note of the comments via others more web literate.

See pics in Palace section of the local bus between Bauska and Jelgava which serves the palace and the Guesthouse. Palace to Jelgava is €2.40 each, Palace to Bauska is €0.90 each. We left the Guesthouse at 11:00 to catch the bus to Jelgava on the way back to Riga (a circular route).

Well worth staying in for a unique experience. Accept it's foibles and you will love it.

Went there with a group of 32 people pre-booked for late lunch. Cafe looked nice from the outside but once inside we were squashed like sardines - wooden table that should seat 6 people has squeezed in 8 chairs, and no room left between yours and next table so if someone needs to go to the washroom the entire row of people would need to stand up and make way! With so many diners squeezed in such a small area even the waitress can only stand by the end of the table and have diners help passing dishes to each other. It feels more like a fast food joint than a restaurant!

Only two unisex toilets at this place so expect long queues when there are large groups about. They also chrging 50 cents Euros for hot water which I've not experienced elsewhere.

Too many tables & seats for such a small dining room!!

The food and the drinks were good, but the first bill summer up by 18.7€. After reclamation (Hoh, I'm so sorry! - Yes, I'm sorry, too.) the correct amount of 7.9€ was charged and paid.
So, enjoy,  but check the bill afterwards! 


Baltā māja

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