Riga and then what......

We did a walking tour of Riga which was pretty much like Tallinn - not as pretty I don't think but there you go. The Hostel we stayed at was run by an Aussie guy from Sydney who had fallen for a Latvian lovely and decided to stay in Riga - it was a very relaxed place and had good beds, toilets and showers - very important!!

We decided not to go to Vilnius after chatting with a couple of people and ended up catching a bus to Klaipeda - still in Lithuania but on the coast. Our trip there was pretty uneventful on the Eurolines bus and the hostel was merely steps away from where we got off the bus. Not the most salubrious of hostels - pretty basic but it was OK. We dumped our gear and went off to get money out of the bank. When will the worldwide currency be introduced? We commenced with Chinese Yuen, then it was Mongolian Togrog then onto Russian roubles, Estonian Kroner (or eeks as I like to call them) then Euros for our day in Helsinki, Latvian lats, Lithuanian Lits and we're currently spending Polish Zlotys. The hard part is trying to work out how much you/ll need - too much and you'll lose out on exchange rates, too little and I'm up for bank charges for using the ATM.

Anyway, we had a quick look around Klaipeda when we arrived and decided to hire bikes for the day to explore the Coronian Spit which is reached by a 10 minute ferry ride. We got a nice day for it and took our lunch with us. Cycled to Judokrante (wrong spelling I think) and had coffee when we got there - it would have been a pleasant place to stay for a few days but time is slipping away so we had to move on. The day we were leaving we were trying to get to a spot to see the Hill of Crosses (google it) but the bus we took was the scenic one and took longer than we thought to get there. In the end we had to pay a taxi driver to take us out there to see it but it was worth it. Then it was another bus to Kaunas and then the dreaded overnight bus to Warsaw - left at 11.10pm. It wasn't too bad but didn't get too much sleep even though we had two seats each.

Arrived in Warsaw about 6am and it was grey and mizzly weather - we thought we'd be coming to sunshine - ah well. Took a while to work out how to get to centre of Warsaw but we made it and booked into a Youth Hostel initially for one night. We're there at the moment but our peace was disturbed yesterday by two young Polish girls' We often get lucky and get a 7 bed dorm really cheap all to ourselves - yesterday our luck obviously ran out. Unsure of whether we will stay on in Warsaw or head off to Krakow - update will be sent soon.

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Part of trip: Lyn and Carol's Big Adventure

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