Where was I???

.. in Tallinn??? Well, now we've had a brilliant, wonderful, magical and very very interesting time in Riga, you all HAVE to go. It's beautiful and lively and the streets are full of music - I've never been anywhere where there were so many people busking and dancing in the streets. Bach duets and saxophone jazz and the lady in the square who dances to folk music and the two young gels who played their violins with great seriousness and ethereal beauty... we went to two premiere performances in two ancient churches, of choir with organ/choir with organ and saxophone octet. Super fabbo.

I realise you are all wondering why I haven't put up my usual eleventy pages of descriptions. The usual reason - no WiFi access. And because our time in Tallinn and Riga was attenuated after M's illness, we wanted to make the most of our time, especially in Riga when M had recovered enough to have some energy.

Now we are in Vilnius; arrived at 5pm today. And no too sure when we are leaving, because we weren't able to book train tickets before we left, and now we find that it will take at least 15 train hours to get from here, via Warsaw, to Krakow. We didn't know it would be such a circuitous journey, so there isn't enough time unless we do a day of travel like this:

- 9am - 12pm; Vilnius to ? (we didnt' catch the name of the town)
- 5 to 10pm; ? to Warsaw
- 11pm to 5am!!!; Warsaw to Krakow.

Hmmm.... if we have to take these trains, if there are no alternatives such as bus then train, or flying.. then we'll probably stop overnight in Warsaw. And I can't believe that that late train is the ONLY train to Krakow. I hope I'm right!!!

We had some Lithuanian Chinese tucker for dinner.. very toned-down Szechuan food. More like chicken with fried rice of no particular distinction. But it was purrfectly good to eat, just not real.

Today brought to you by a very wonderful cup of coffee made for me in a 5 minute stop - on the bus from Riga to here - in the kiosk, a woman put a briki of powdered coffee (NOT instant) into a briki, added water, and set into what looked like a tray of hot grey sand. It boiled up very quickly; she added milk, and there was my coffee. It was good, and very strongggg. Today was going to be brought to you by the ever-popular Chanel No. 5, but I packed it too cleverly. I've got some on now but I can't smell it cos of a lungful of cigarette smoke courtesy of a passing pedestrian, when we were walking home from dinner. So I'm koff-koffing and can't smell a thing.