Chasing Storms Across the Baltics

Mildly Leaky Skies: Latvia & Lithuania

We spent the night at a lovely beach pullout just past the Latvian border. The sand was amazing — super fine and somehow able to fall right off your feet and hands instead of following you everywhere for days.

We had a mostly peaceful sleep but woke up fairly early. Cotty got busy cooking all of the day’s meals in one shot while I caught up on some work back home and, of course, worked on this blog.

We had received an alert warning of severe thunderstorms, lightning, and possibly hail, so we decided it might be wise to tuck the Blue Gnu into some underground parking while we did our exploring. The skies were only mildly leaky at that point, which seemed manageable.

We did a walking loop through Riga and thought it was pretty cool. Latvia felt quite different from Estonia. The outskirts had a much more Soviet, slightly run-down feel, while the city centre was quite beautiful.

One thing we always enjoy when travelling is checking out grocery stores. We need supplies, of course — with a tiny car we can’t carry too much at once — but we also genuinely enjoy seeing what everyday life looks like in different places and what people are actually eating. We had a lovely woman help us at the self-checkout when we couldn't figure out how to search for red onions.

After Riga we headed back to the Blue Gnu and decided to try outrunning the storm by making our way toward Lithuania. We only had to deal with 5 minutes of heavy rain on the journey.

That night we found a roadside truck pullout that turned out to be surprisingly good. It was nice and flat, and the surrounding big rigs somehow shielded us from most of the road noise. We watched part of an episode of the show we're currently enjoying and then Judi completely conked out. I think I slept about ten hours, maybe more.

Apparently I needed it.

The next morning we woke up refreshed and got ourselves set for another full day. We've both discovered that we really enjoy cooking all our meals ahead for the day. It's nice knowing everything is ready to go and that there will only be one round of cleanup.

From there we headed into Vilnius and managed to find parking remarkably close to the start of our walking route.

We had a lovely time wandering around the city.

It was cooler than expected, which finally gave me a chance to wear the jacket I impulsively bought in Helsinki. So far I am pleased to report that it was an excellent impulse purchase.

As we explored, I kept noticing a surprising amount of eye-themed graffiti and strange underwater-looking characters painted across the city. I looked it up later and learned that a lot of this creative energy is connected to the Užupis district — a self-declared artistic “republic” within Vilnius — where street art and symbolism are a big part of the neighbourhood’s identity. “watching the world differently”

We also visited the famous Užupis Constitution wall. Some of the articles are wonderfully quirky, including:

"Everyone has the right to be happy."

"Everyone has the right to be unhappy."

We also passed a building that had a large exterior installation covering its facade, made up of work from multiple artists. It was one of those places that made us stop and look properly for a while, and I ended up taking far more photos than I expected.

We captured as many photos as we could and felt like we gave the city a pretty good look.

Eventually we made our way back to the Blue Gnu and pointed ourselves toward Poland.

The drive through Lithuania was beautiful, and we found ourselves really enjoying the scenery as the kilometres rolled by.

Another couple of countries checked off, another storm successfully avoided, and another really good couple of days on the road.