Riga & Latvia
Two days of the trip to Lithuania were spend in Latvia. Now they are in the European union there are no bordercontrols anymore. But the roads are pretty bad, so it took us 4 hours to travel the 300 km from Vilnius to Riga. Riga has a very different feel from Vilnius. As it is situated on the coast it was one of the medieval hanse cities. With a lot of German influence, therefor the medieva l houses have much more of a west european feel to it. A very beautifull city, but not as different as Vilnius is. We did spend a lovely day there going into a few of the houses and looking at it all from the outside. Amongst the highlights were the cats house famous for two cat castiron statues on the roof and in the new part of town the very big russian church. Unfortunately I could not take pictures in there as it was fascinating . And very busy as well. We drove back to just over the border were we spend the night in Lithuania. Getting to Birzai was an adven ture as well, we had to travel ove