August 28th
Today is day 49 of our trip. That is hard to believe. It was not an overly exciting day really. We left Riga at about 8:30am, and drove south, to our first stop, Rundale Palace. It was a palace for the Duke of Courland - Ernst Johann Biron, completed in 1740. After nearly 2 hours driving, including on some of the worst roads we have driven on in this entire trip we pulled up to the carpark in what seemed like the middle of nowhere really. Once we approached the impressive gates of the pale-yellow palace we realised what a good find this was. A stork obviously thought so too, and had made its' enormous nest on top of one of the large palace chimneys!
Firstly we looked around inside the palace. It was not as fully-furnished as other palaces we have looked in, but the interior decorations were yet again amazing. The thing that stood out to me were the sculptures incorporated into the ceiling, and the cornices. The detail in them, given they had withstood more than 250 years of some indifferent treatment, was amazing. It is still currently being restored but it was great to look around. The nice thing was that there were not hoards of people to fight past everywhere. From the palace we moved out into the French Royal Gardens, which were just like in the movies really. All symmetrical, perfectly sculptured hedges and topiaries, a magnificent fountain at the bottom of the steps, and some very nice grass. Again this is still being restored, but it was looking very nice. To add to the fairytale feeling, it was a beautiful hot summers day, the best we have had for at least 2 weeks.
It was lunch time when we had finished here, and we saw the menu board of one of the nearby cafes that we could not go past, so had lunch there before getting on the road to drive to Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. At the cafe, Em tried 'Black Balsam' – a liquor made locally. It was very dark, and made from herbs. It was quite nasty, tasting like strong herbal medicine, but not so bad mixed with lemonade. We had seen a very small amount of Latvia, and I enjoyed that more than our experiences in Estonia. Our short time in Latvia did not do it justice, but we have to keep moving.
The drive to Lithuania was just over 200km, but felt much longer. The roads in parts were shocking, with large track indentations in the roads making things more difficult. It felt like you were driving on water, so that put the brakes on things a little, much to the disgust of some truck drivers behind us (several blared their horns at us as they passed). I was not sure what had made the tracks in the road, but think it is the large volumes of trucks that drive over the roads (not 100% sure). Anyway we found our way to our campground in Vilnius without any problems, and settled in. In the evening we got talking to the Quennell family – a couple and their young daughter in their camper across from us, who are Australians, who have been living in London, and are currently on a 5 – 6 month trip around Europe on a similar path to us. The similarities did not stop there either. Adam has been collecting patches of countries like we have started, and he has also been plotting their route of their trip like Em and I have been doing. We ended up talking to them until the we hours of the morning sharing stories, plans, and photos. It was great fun.
August 29th
After a slightly later than normal rising we caught the bus into town. It wasn't a very nice day today – dark clouds and drizzle all day. We successfully navigated our way from our bus stop through the city centre of Vilnius to our first sightseeing stop, Cathedral square. Along the way we stopped in at a very neat art gallery, a bridge that for some reason had hundreds of padlocks locked to it (many engraved with names and dates), and we also saw some very cool bright cartoon type artworks of animals on a street stall. Cathedral square was, as it sounds, home to a cathedral. The unique thing was that the round bell tower was separate to the main building of the church. It was a nice area, with the surrounding part of the ground being paved, creating a large open area.
From there we moved through one of the main shopping streets, and stopped for lunch, which was a necessity before going to the Museum of Genocide Victims (or the KGB Museum). We went there after lunch, and it took more than 3 hours to go through, and we were trying to do a shorter visit. Em and I both have a habit of reading everything and looking at all of the photos which has made some museums longer than they say. Anyway, this was a fantastic museum, with a number of different subjects covered; the occupation of Lithuania by the Communist regimen, then the subsequent Nazi occupation, then the Communist occupation again, telling stories of victims who were deported, interrogated, and killed. The museum was in the former headquarters of the Lithuanian branch of the KGB, and also had the KGB prison in it, which has been left the way it was when the KGB left in August 1991. This was a particularly eerie place; a cold, damp basement area, with tiny cells, minimal lighting, a water torture room, a padded room, a solitary confinement room and an underground execution room in which more than 1500 people were killed (shot). The museum gave a very gripping account of what happened, and left us feeling quite drained, but extremely happy for the Lithuanian people that they are now an independent state after having to endure so many decades of ruthless occupation by such extremist regimens.
The museum was our main interest in Vilnius, so afterwards we wandered around the very touristy old town, which was nice, but a little repetitive (our third old town this week, and it didn't have much character left after Gucci and Chanel etc have set up shop here). At about 5 o'clock we decided it was time to head back to the camp where we played some cards and relaxed in the van to finish off our 50th day on the road.
