Lithuania: Driving to Vilnius

So once again - since I'm not writing these updates daily - I am fortunate to have the benefit of Joel Stransky's hindsight in some of these posts. So, with hindsight, we can now rank the Baltic countries on how they appeared and what the general feel was for them. Latvia was by far the most run down. Loads of abandoned, run down buildings in the countryside. Odd concrete blocks of flats randomly in the countryside that appeared to be very poorly maintained and overall, seemed to be the country with the weakest economy and national pride. Lithuania was by far the most affluent looking with all the buildings (no matter how rural) really well maintained. The cities were all neat and really clean and well maintained. Lithuania was also heavily forested and felt a lot more wild than Latvia. Estonia fell somewhere in the middle between these 2 in our assessment.

The photo depicted here is of a horse shoe bend in a river in Lithuania. This is the closest we came to Belarus with us being only 2.5km from the border at this point. Belarus, with its more than friendly ties with Russia and ties with the Wagner mercenary force, has been a country that we haven't even considered on our trip and probably rightly so. It was near to this point where we saw a train carrying probably about 20-30 tanks and we also passed multiple military vehicles in this region, which is possibly a foreboding sign of things to come!😳😬Read more