Day 6 - Warsaw - Vilnius, Lithuania

Another day another country! Today is number 6: Lithuania and it was so nearly number 7! I'll explain later in this post.

Once again, we arose to clear blue skies. None of us can quite believe how fantastic the weather has been for the first week of the drive. We drove out of Warsaw and took the main highway north-east towards Lithuania. It was a good road but when it narrowed down to single lanes, it became very slow, so we turned off on to side roads crossing flat open farmland.

I don't think we have ever seen so many dandelions! Many fields were carpeted with them, giving a lovely splash of yellow to the landscape.

At one point, we were stopped by police as they were clearing the road after a major truck accident. We were sent on a detour through the fields and came back to the main road just past the overturned truck. The next section of road was being repaired and for mile after mile we were slowed down by traffic signals. It reminded me of the Chinese roadworks we encountered in 2004!

We made contact with Bob, who was not far behind us, and told him to avoid this road. We agreed to meet up shortly to discuss the route for the day.

The countryside was very beautiful and we made several stops, mainly to try and stop a diabolical rattle that is somewhere in the back of the car. Try as I might, I couldn't stop it! Here we are parked up having a break. Notice the deserted roads which have become a lovely feature of our drive through northern Poland.

The drive took us past many storks' nests where we would see one or two storks on top. The nests are an amazing construction perched on top of a pole.

 

 

There were also storks flying high above us and, try as I might, I never quite managed to get a photo perfectly in focus!

We were now driving through a large national park which was a mixture of open countryside and beautiful wooded areas. Most of the time we were on our own with nothing else on the road, apart from the occasional tractor.

We were in an area that was very close to the border with Belarus so, when we met up with the others, we agreed to see if we could drive through Belarus into Lithuania and then on to our overnight stop, Vilnius. We looked on the map and saw two crossings that we could take. Wendy and I headed off, while the others stopped for some lunch. After about an hour's driving, we realised that the crossing we had decided to take did not exist! The maps were obviously out of date or simply wrong! We called the others to stop them from taking the same route and turned back to meet them. We then attempted the second crossing. Near to the border, we passed this blue-domed church which had a distinctly Russian look to it.

After about 40kms we came to a barrier across the road, with a ploughed section beyond that looked to me that it might be mined! We could see the street lights of Belarus about 500 yards away.

As we were discussing what to do, a security guard on a motorbike appeared from nowhere and started to tell us, in Polish, or maybe Russian, which it sounded like to me, that we must turn round. He refused to allow us to take a photo of him at the border. So, reluctantly, we retraced our route back along the road towards the border between Poland and Lithuania. We were so close, yet so far!

For the train-lovers reading this blog, here is a Polish train pulling trucks laden with gravel, that we had to stop for at a level crossing.

The remainder of the drive, which crossed into Lithuania, was wonderful. Beautiful empty roads through great countryside. The border sign entering Lithuania.

We reached Vilnius at about 5pm, having driven nearly 600 kms, about 150 kms further than planned because of our abortive attempts to enter Belarus!

We checked into our hotel and met up with Ahmad and his brothers who were booking a farewell dinner for us all, as tomorrow he is driving directly to Riga so that he has time to visit St. Petersburg. Farewell, because his brother Ali will be flying back to Boston from Helsinki and we won't see him again.

We all met up at 8pm and walked to the restaurant. It was a great way to say goodbye to Ali as we told jokes, Eric sang a song and once again the vodka flowed!

Reading the 'newspaper' menus. From left to right, Kenny, Reza and Ali.

Kenny decided to have a half metre sausage. You can imagine the jokes that were told, none that can be repeated on this blog!!

Tomorrow we leave for Klaipeda on the Baltic coast. We have just enough time in the morning to take a quick tour of Vilnius.