Southern Estonia - Viljandi

Sometimes you have to take the road less travelled to discover things you did not know. For example: I remember that in the town I come from, there is a part of town calles stork's nest (Storchennest) - mostly because storks are comparably uncommon and there is actually just one pair of them in the whole town and vicinity. So you can imagine how surprised I was that in rural Estonia, almost every chimney has a nest with a stork couple on it (and I learned the Estonian word for stork - tonekurk). We arrived in Pärnu - a nice beach town in Estonia, where I shot the nice sunset below and went further inland to Viljandi and later on to Tallinn. See some of the natural beauty of Estonia below.

Riga, Latvia

And part two of the Baltics series. In short: Riga is amazing! The old town is really beautiful, the food is great and you can good ans affordable beer. The weather was slightly worse than in Vilnius, but that didn't really lead to us enjoying ourselves less. We took a great photo-stroll through the old town, the results of which you can see here:

Vilnius, Lithuania

Part 1 of our journey to the Baltics. I will probably write up to five blog posts today to cover the last two weeks, which actually have been very exciting. Riin and I used the weekend of the May Bank Holiday (and also her birthday), to visit Estonia - but as I had never been to Riga and Vilnius and am still after my goal to visit every EU-capital, we combined it with a day in Vilnius and Riga each.

Vilnius is probably the least famous of the three Baltic capitals and not as buzzing with tourists as Riga and Tallinn. But especially as the three are easily combined (I highly recommend booking a bus with Lux Express between the cities - free WiFi, comfortable and clean) - I can say it is worth a visit as well. There are so many churches in Vilnius from different ages and in different styles and the old town is definitely worth a stroll - even though it might not be as exciting as the other two.

I also liked the prices as a beer is usually under 2 Euro and you can get cheap and good food as well - so I would probably recommend going there before the likely introduction of the Euro in 2014 (same couts for Riga), as this has ruined the prices in Tallinn a little bit.

See a few pictures to get a better overview of the city.

One of the gorgeous churches in Vilnius

Great building in the old town

View from the castle tower 1

View from the castle tower 2

Don't I know this from the Italian 10 Cent piece?

Old town impression 

Church Inside

Lithuanian Balloons