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@home, 2024 | baltics24, estonia, europe, finland, helsinki, istanbul, latvia, lithuania, riga, tallinn, turkiye, vilnius
Baltics24: Days 19-20 – Istanbul – Home
Home. Not Istanbul, nor Constantinople, nor Byzantium. Not Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki, Stockholm. Just a couch with a dog that has mostly forgiven, and the heater on, because we’d certainly acclimatised to 30 degree weather and are feeling the chill of an otherwise mild Perth winter. The journey home was uneventful, Singapore Airlines generally took care of us well (except for their website stuffing up L’s gf selection, and their online help being next to useless to correct it — Jeshua I’m keeping my eye on you). We bounced through Changi with enough time to grab some duty-free, and it’s good to see Changi airport has a lot more stores…
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Baltics24: Day 15a – Vilnius – Istanbul
This might end up as a two part entry as it’s a little after 2am and we’ve just checked in to our Istanbul Hotel. So if I fall asleep typing this I’ll throw some more words at the screen in the morning. The main tasks for today in Vilnius were shopping, shopping, and shopping. All the last minute souvenirs and presents and that kind of thing, including getting the snow dome. Important stuff. Checkout of our “interesting” apartment (it did the job but had a few quirks, like the sensor for the shower light and exhaust fan with a 5 second loop) was at noon, but our flight wasn’t scheduled…
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Baltics24: Day 14 – Vilnius
Our last full day in Vilnius, and indeed the Baltic states. Eastern Europe has apparently just one castle built on an island in a lake, and that’s in Lithuania at Trakai, about 20km out of Vilnius. Having travelled through Scotland several times, including just last year, I’ve seen my fair share of castles in lakes, it’s basically mandatory there to have a castle, or the ruins of one, wherever an island exists in a lake/loch. Mandatory, Bonnie Prince Charlie said so. Eastern Europe, not mandatory, maybe the folks at Trakai did it and then paid everyone else not to, so they’d be unique, or maybe in the Grand Duchy of…
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Baltics24: Day 13 – Vilnius
Vilnius (though the locals barely pronounce the second i) the capital of Lithuania (which is spelt locally as Lietuva) is an interesting place. It’s the second largest city in the Baltics, with just a few less people than Riga, Lithuania is the most populous of the three countries, and as Laura told us yesterday, has a more spread out population (of the 6 cities with more than 100k pop, 4 are in Lithuania). This morning was the obligatory wander to see where things were, it was also about 30 degrees so a part of the wander was just to find patches of shade. There was an occasional breeze which helped.…
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Baltics24: Day 12 – Riga – Vilnius
A long day on the road. We booked a transfer tour from Riga to Vilnius with Traveller.ee, so we were up and ready before 9am, having a breakfast of the last of the smoked pork and other random bits. We met Laura (pronounced more like lauw-ra rather than lora) and soon a group of eight of us were on the road (several USians, a Chinese/US/Swiss, a Kiwi, and an Argentinian/Kiwi). Lithuanian Laura was very entertaining from the outset, full of the dry, ironic, slightly self deprecating humour that is prevalent in the Baltic region. Her potted history of the Baltics was a hoot, especially with the deadpan delivery, around how…
