After an arctic winter loop driving through Scandinavia, our top-pick route back to ‘mainland’ Europe would have been east through St Petersburg. Alas, the border to Russia is currently saying nyet to tourists. Instead, we take the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia. On this next ‘Euro-stage’ we plan to go overlanding Baltics and tick-off a few bucket-list central Euro-cities.
The Baltics
It’s easy, but a bit lazy, to lump Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania together as ‘the Baltics’. Yes, they do have that shared Baltic coastline and in ‘western’ eyes they’re often associated with a shared 20th century Soviet-dominated story. But they’re each quite different countries with their own identity, history, language, culture, food etc. It’s certainly not a case of ‘seen one, seen them all’.
For us, the common dilemma with many places we visit, is choosing the best season to be there. Sure, we want to see the best a country/region/city has to offer in the best season. But we hate…hate…hate… with a passion… peak season. It’s just too… ‘peoply’ 😉. And it’s not merely the crowds. Parking gets difficult. Prices go up. But our No.1 Top-of-the-Pops hate of all time, is the need to forward plan and to book ahead for almost anything you want to do. Not only does this remove flexibility, but it saps the joy out of a nomadic lifestyle. We therefore always aim to see places outside of their peak season wherever possible.
This is all a long-winded way of saying that our time in the Baltics was, by choice, out-of-season. As a result, we know we didn’t see the best of what these countries have to offer. These omissions may warrant a return to the countries one day. But for now, we’re happy to have spent a bit of time in some of Europe’s most beautiful cities… out of season!
Estonia
Day one off the ferry from Finland and the weather was much warmer than we had become used to in Scandinavia. Temperatures are well above the seasonal norm here and the cross-country snow tracks commonly used by the locals at this time of year, are a slushy mess. We headed into town and found a great park-up spot close to the centre. Well… we say ‘great’… we mean as ‘great’ as city wild-camping gets – it’s just a car-park, but it’s only €15 for 24 hrs and very peaceful at night. Best of all, it’s a short walk to everything in the old town, so we settle down for a few days of Tallinn ‘old-town’ culture.
Around Tallinn
Tallin was a lovely surprise for us. We hadn’t known quite what to expect, but it really is a beautiful, compact centre. Wonderful architecture, lots of great views, and even better… street stalls selling a warming glögg (mulled wine) to sip as we wandered the cobbled streets taking in the sights. There’s plenty of medieval history, but modern history is also represented by a tour of a ‘secret’ floor of the Hotel Viru. It was once occupied by the KGB for spying on visiting foreigners. The tour included accounts of life in Tallinn during the Cold War. It was fascinating to get an insight to the world that Estonians of our generation grew up in, whilst we enjoyed the freedom of a ‘70s childhood in the west.
After Tallin we headed south down the coast and found a fab little wild-camp night-stop on a Baltic beach; one of those places where you plan to do a quick night stop, but end up staying 4 days. The weather was a glorious +12C. Might sound a bit chilly if you’re a Florida sun-worshipper, but hey… this is the Baltic Sea… in winter! Traditionally it would be around 0C at this time of year. Instead, the sun has melted most of the snow on the beach and the ocean is ice free.
One mega-plus was a fab sighting of the aurora borealis from the beach camp. Marcus took the opportunity to do a bit of maintenance on Cuthbert and got all his tools out to change the UJ bearing in the rear prop shaft (of course… just a normal, every-day, beach activity). Over the years he’s had far worse places to work fixing Cuthbert!
Latvia & Riga
Next down to the Latvian capital, Riga. Now… we’ve done enough of this travel malarkey to know that arriving in a place with pre-conceived expectations of ‘amazing’ can lead to disappointment. Riga is a popular weekend-city-break for Brits, so maybe our expectations might have been just a wee-bit too high.
Our verdict is that Riga is absolutely a very pleasant place; it’s certainly a top-spot if you like a bit of art deco architecture. Only by comparison to its northern neighbour, Tallinn, does Riga disappoint slightly. Unlike Tallin, we found Riga’s old town to be less characterful and more interspersed with modern buildings.
Like Tallin, Riga’s modern history is represented by a KGB-esqe feature. This time it’s an awful (but fascinating) gaol and interrogation centre where local suspects were subject to the infamous KGB menacing treatment of ‘talk or else’. The grimness of the venue brings home the dreadfulness of the Soviet era in eastern Europe, but the guide was at pains to point out that Stalin’s post-war/pre-1953 era was (comparatively) far worse than the subsequent eras into the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Riga slides
All in all, we spent a pleasant few days in Riga and tried some delicious local food, having breakfast of potato pancakes and cottage cheese with the local workers in the food market.
South of Riga we thought we’d get off the highway and take a few rural back-roads. Well… what can we say? Latvia is indeed a lovely country… friendly people, pretty scenery ‘n all that… but boy do they have an aversion to repairing pot-holes on the back-roads! These were not remote trails that we particularly sought-out for a bit of exploratory rough-roading (as we have been known to do from time to time). These routes featured on regular road-maps, had allocated route-numbers, and linked a chain of rural villages. Even with our rugged 4×4 roughty-toughty Cuthbert (high clearance and off-road capability) we had to really slow down and take the never-ending string of deep holes at a careful pace 😬. If the potholes hadn’t shaken our vision to blurring, we might have enjoyed the scenery!
Lithuania & Vilnius
Next country was Lithuania and our first stop just over the border was the curious Hill of Crosses. Near Siauliai is a hill with thousands of crosses left by worshippers and pilgrims. It’s thought to go back over 200 years, but even today, visitors continue to add their crosses to the site. The nearby small town benefits mostly from traffic generated by the crosses, but it also has a couple of cute tiny museums and some great restaurants to try some tasty local pasties.
After Scandinavia where English is spoken pretty much everywhere by everyone, we’re finding language sometimes a bit of a challenge in the Baltics (at least outside the tourist centres and big cities). My knowledge of German, Spanish and French was of no assistance here! We noticed that language here seemed to demonstrate an age-divide in the population. People of our generation, with their Soviet dominated 60s/70s/80s childhood, were never given the opportunity to learn western European languages. Whereas those with education from the mid-late 90s onwards seemed to have an excellent command of English. In a local café in Siauliai, the owner saw us struggling with google-translate on her hand-written menu, so beckoned over one of her younger customers to translate for us.
A bit further down the road is the former capital city: Kaunas. Far smaller than the current capital Vilnius, but still very much worth a stop for a wander and more great local food was consumed. We stumbled upon a large group of students on the church roof, gathering peacefully to commemorate the Ukraine War. Obviously much of the world has great sympathy with the Ukraine situation and shares the condemnation of Russia’s actions there. But in the Baltic states, there understandably seems to be a particularly close affinity with the situation; an awareness that Ukraine’s situation could so easily have been their situation (arguably, as the Baltic States are all in NATO, they are less vulnerable than Ukraine, but we’ll not take that particular hot-potato subject any further… this isn’t a political blog).
Final stop in Lithuania… Vilnius. Again, we weren’t sure what to expect. But we were absolutely blown away by this lovely town! The delights of Tallin and Riga were well and truly relegated to the back of our minds as we spent a few days exploring Vilinius. Not only did we find a lovely city and a great central park-up spot, but we hit my ‘city-visit-jackpot’: a huge craft fair in town! In all our travels we have honestly never seen anything on this scale! Literally hundreds of stalls selling all manner of fabulous craft-ware and gourmet foods. The lines of stalls were never ending around the old-town streets and the quality of wares was excellent. If you’re planning on a city break in Europe, we can highly recommend Vilnius, and even more so if you check out next year’s craft fair dates (usually early March).
Vilnius scroll-slides
Poland: Warsaw, Krakow and Salt
Unlike the tiny Baltic States, Poland is heuuuge. A drive-through with a stop in two major cities can’t possibly do it justice. Without doubt Poland merits a return visit. But this trip, if we were going to include our other wish-list Euro-cities, we really only had time for a couple of highlights. So how were they?
Well… Warsaw and Krakow probably benefitted from the fact that we had previously heard very little about them and therefore didn’t really have much in the way of expectations!
Slides of Warsaw
Warsaw showed itself to be a pleasant stop. Sitting in a sprawling, modern, 21st Century city is a ‘compact and bijou’ old town which makes for a nice wander and some tasty pyrogies. The impressive and imposing tower at the Palace of Culture and Science, having been a gift to the city by Stalin, is yet another reminder of the whole region’s 20th Century story.
If there’s one thing we hadn’t expected in Krakow, it was to find so many British tourists there (embarrassingly, several stag-do gangs not totally on their best behaviour ☹). Having taken just an initial half-hour wander in the old town, it wasn’t hard to see why it attracted so many visitors. Krakow now ranks alongside Tallin and Vilnius in our top-tip ‘Little-Known-Euro-Treats’.
Krakow slideshow
Just outside Krakow is one of Poland’s biggest tourist attractions: Wieliczka mine. This had been on our hit-list since we visited Zipaquirá, Colombia in 2017. Okay… be honest now… no Googling… who knows what the link is between Zipaquirá, Colombia and Wieliczka, Poland? Answer: they have the world’s only two underground salt cathedrals. Now, having been to both of the world’s only two underground salt cathedrals, we can assure you, dear Cuthbert follower, that they are both equally spectacular and both very much worth a visit.
Salt Cathedral – over 300m underground!
Hungary & Budapest
From southern Poland we took a quick blast through Slovakia (don’t worry… we’ll be back soon) to our overlanding country No.59 Hungary! After a short stopover in Vác (yes, worth it), we landed in a city that we had been assured never disappoints: Budapest.
Yes folks… Budapest is the real deal; a truly spectacular city worth several days of your time. Put on your comfy shoes… there’s walking to be done here, with a treat around every corner. We had great fun and took a lotta, lotta pics!
Buda and Pest slideshow – have a scroll…
Slovakia, Bratislava & a long overdue meet-up
Before we move on geographically back to Slovakia, bear with me whilst I digress with a little overlanding history. Waaay back in 2012, when Cuthbert was a mere glint in the back of our minds, we met on-line a like-minded English couple who had a similar idea to us. Like us, Neil and Pat Hay were procuring a camper-truck to overland-the-world and we exchanged ideas. As we were in Qatar and they were in England, we never got to meet in person and our respective routes to overlanding freedom took different paths. Said paths almost crossed in the Americas. And we once unwittingly drove right past them on a highway in Dorset. Now, in 2024 in a wet field outside Bratislava, we finally met Neil and Pat in person for the first time! What lovely people they are; we hope to cross paths with them again somewhere.
Okay… back to the Euro-city-extravaganza… next stop is Bratislava. Impressions? A lovely old town, very pretty but small. Probably too small to be worth flying in for a whole weekend city-break, but definitely worth popping in for half a day if you happen to be driving through central Europe.
Scroll through Bratislava
This means nothing to me🎵
As Bratislava is close to the Austrian border, it’s a very short hop down the road from Slovakia to a massive-euro-city-tick that has been on my bucket list since that 1981 Ultravox monster-hit. Like Budapest, Vienna is a classic and uber-popular city-break. Lots to see, stunning and historic architecture everywhere, just everywhere. What’s not to like here? Well… it’s touristy… but most of the best places are. It’s big with a lot of walking… just because they couldn’t fit that much great stuff into a smaller area.
Vienna has a ‘big-city’ rather than a cool ‘old-town’ feel… but that’s because it is a big city. Verdict: we liked it very much for what it is. Would we hurry back? Probably not. For us, it’s one of those ‘been there, seen it, done it’ kind of places. Highly recommended… once.
Vienna slideshow
Back to Blighty
It’s a loooong slog drive from Vienna back to UK. Not that there isn’t plenty, plenty to see and do on the way, but for us it is mostly going over old ground. We’ve spent a lot of time in central/western Europe over the years. And that damned Schengen-palaver doesn’t allow us the luxury of spending so much time in Europe any more 😒. So we blast (well… to the extent that Cuthbert can ‘blast’ at 80kph) along the autobahns of Germany and Belgium, obviously avoiding the extortionate tolls in France, back to Calais.
Back in UK for some family time, we’re planning a summer of (finally) exploring our own country. Watch this space… maybe a little jaunt from Land’s End to John O’Groats?
