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THE BALTICS THREE BEAUTIFUL UNDISCOVERED COUNTRIES |
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LITHUANIA
Head for the border... Lithuania here we come |
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Road side memorials are elaborate and there are usually a lot flowers alongside of the road. Many people walk alongside of the road (usually in the dark) and there are a lot of people that drive too fast for the roads |
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A little run in with a fire engine left us without a wing mirror for several hundred km. |
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The black hole of Lithuania... an indication of how many bad accidents happen on their roads |
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A traditional Lithuanian restaurant with a tree in the middle, a snake pit, cockrels and plates of potatoes, pig ears, pig knuckles and pig hands! |
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Vilnius Centre |
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Tea houses are located all over Vilnius as well as amber sellers. |
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Vilnius Castle |
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The view over Vilnius |
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Grass as - a new pub that all the walls were decorated by someone with an obsession with grass and gnomes |
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The spires of Vilnius |
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Tree cakes made from lard spun on a spit |
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Tom's Bank - Bankas Snoras |
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LATVIA
The 300km trip back up to the Baltic sea took us into Latvia |
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It is all Latvian to me... Dinner cost us £3.50 for a 2 course meal with beer at 60p a pint (Riga, Latvia) |
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A hot Balsam drink made from Balsam (the purple flower that grows along the river banks with explosve seed pods) and honey.... highly potent |
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St Peter's Church |
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Riga Centre |
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Riga Centre |
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No weeing in Riga |
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The internet cafes allow you to play more than just on the internet... you can play every Xbox, Playstation and other games for only 20p/hour. They are full of Russians and Lativans the like battling it out against each other |
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Roughing it in Riga with a glass of champagne |
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The Cat House - two cats that are precarioulsy balanced on top of the spires managed to kill their sculptor as he fell from the roof putting them up; they were also the centre of a court case in the early 20th century when the Latvian owner of the building wasn't allowed into the German guild across the road and turned the cats so they were pointing bottom first towards the building! After a long battle they were turned around and he was allowed into the guild!! |
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ESTONIA
The Estonian border... the last baltic state before Russia |
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The Beast and the Baltic. Time to stop for some amber hunting along the Baltic coast. |
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The golden sands and the forests of Estonia. Three quarters of the Baltic states are covered in forest. The drive along the coast from Vilnius to Tallinn was along the tree lined Baltic Highway financed by the European Union. |
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Tallinn the capital of Estonia, first recorded in 1219, Tallinn has 415,000 inhabitants, occupied by Danish, Swedish and Russians. It is a beautiful medeaval capital that has blossomed from tourists and the eurovision song contest with prices zooming up in accordance. |
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The town hall with a large market square that holds medeaval fetes and christmas fayres. |
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St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral built during the tsarist time of Estonia |
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The Medieval era of Tallinn is shown by the number of Hanseatic restaurants and people wandering around in medeaval outfits... |
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..soup anyone? |
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Tallin skyline |
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Yvgeni (Eugene) our hotel bar man |
