In keeping with our desire to see a national park in each country, we’d mentally marked down this as the day to make a trek out to Aukstaitija National Park. However, at the last minute we chickened out of the 2-hour bus trip that would drop us several km away from the park, and decided to visit Trakai National Historic Park instead, a preserve on a peninsula that was a mere 40-minute train ride out of town. With two castles, a ton of lakes, and an obscure sect of Judaism calling it home, we figured it would be the perfect fit, [View Full Entry]

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On our second morning in Vilnius, we still had no hot water, so we called our apartment manager to see what she could do. For some reason I don’t totally understand, calling a plumber was not an option, so she drove us to an unrented apartment so we could shower. Again, it was a beautiful place with some weird flaws, like a shallow recess behind the tub with no drain, so after the shower, Graham wound up bailing a whole mess of water back into the tub with a juice glass. Well, whatever, at least we were clean. Back to Double [View Full Entry]

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Due to being completely wiped from the previous day, and since we had the relative luxury of being in one place for FOUR WHOLE NIGHTS, we slept in the next morning. After rolling out of bed and shaking most of the cranky out of our collective noggins, we descended onto the town of Vilnius. Like most Old Towns®, this one also has plenty of the twisty passages, all alike, that Americans seem to crave about Europe. The difference here was that not only are many of the streets open to cars, some roads through Old Town are full-fledged boulevards, with multiple [View Full Entry]

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To make up for only getting one night in Kaunas, we decided to borrow a little bit from our first day in Vilnius (we’ve got 4 on the agenda, after all) and wait til the evening to hop on the bus. We had a relatively relaxed morning, and headed first to the bus station to leave our luggage in storage for the day. That was a bit of an adventure -- the trolleybus was so crowded Graham almost didn’t make it on, and then we spent the entire ride a bit, er, compressed. I think my backpack spent the ride making [View Full Entry]

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Well, that night was unlike all other nights. Rolled-up towels do not, it turns out, make great pillows. We slept horribly and woke early, and even with a breakfast stop and a coffee stop we still managed to get on a 10 AM bus to Kaunas. We rolled into town midday and called the manager of our apartment, who came to pick us up at the bus station (!) and take us to the place. Wow! This place was one of the nicest of the journey so far -- beautiful decor, a fairly well-stocked kitchen, and no major structural problems. More [View Full Entry]

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Ah! Waking up after having fallen asleep in a new place always makes me feel both refreshed and a little off-kilter. But this time it was in Klaipėda, and the town was just so gosh-darn cute we were feeling pretty good (slightly firm mattress notwithstanding). We made our way downstairs for our early-as-they-served-it breakfast in the same room as the guesthouse’s hostess. It’s strange having smørrebrød in the same room as a check-in desk, but the food was extremely tasty and duly inhaled. (Erin ponders: “What would American smørrebrød look like? I fear it would be an Eg [View Full Entry]

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We woke early today in prep for our trip to Klaipėda -- especially me, as my sore throat kept me from sleeping past 3:30. We grabbed a quick breakfast at home and made our way to the airport. Riga International is a pretty nice airport; they had a drugstore, which was important for acquiring some ibuprofen, and a post office, where we mailed a bunch of postcards, and a souvenir shop with some of the things we’d not been able to find elsewhere (a Latvia patch for me, a small bottle of Black Balzsams liqueur for Graham), and a cafe that [View Full Entry]

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Our last day in Riga! We decided to take it easy -- both of us had sore feet, and my headaches and sore throat suggested that I might be getting a cold. Our friend Laurie, who’s done long trips like this before, once mentioned that it’s important to take a low-key day every now and then. So we didn’t set the alarm and didn’t make big plans. 
Mid-morning we headed to the Central Market to grab breakfast. This is the largest indoor market that either of us have ever seen -- it was built in a hangar tha [View Full Entry]

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After a reasonably refreshing night’s sleep, we awoke ready for a foray into our second national park, Gauja. We packed the appropriate rain gear (Rīga and the surrounding area apparently gets quite a lot of precipitation) and had a hearty breakfast of yogurt, fruit, bread, and hard-boiled quail eggs. Yes, quail eggs. We’ve seen them in a handful of supermarkets, packed in their own little containers, and just couldn’t resist buying some. Unsurprisingly, they taste like eggs, but perhaps just a little . . . smokier? Fortified with nutrients, we packed our small [View Full Entry]

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We woke early in Pärnu so that we’d have time to grab a quick breakfast -- four pastries and two coffees, ordered mostly in Estonian. My rudimentary language skills hit their limits at the bus station, but I eventually figured out that we had to buy our tickets on the bus. The driver was, charmingly, a bit flustered because he couldn’t give us exact change; we overpaid and got on anyway, but after a few more people had paid he found us at the back of the bus and gave us our change. Aww. Meanwhile we’d struck up a friendly conversation [View Full Entry]

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