Deadly serious

The taxi picked us up at 4pm for the five minutes drive to the airport, the checkin queue was quite long but after that we were at the gates and on the plane without a chance to stop beforehand. The flight was 2.5 hours back and all went so smoothly except for an hour's wait for our luggage. But technically the holiday was over now so we can just blame Luton for that. So that's it, another year is over. I think it's probably been our most successful holiday yet despite, or maybe even because of, our mini health scare. The Baltic is a region rich in so much history over many centuries that has all left its their mark in particular on the stunning architecture. These are very small countries by population but we never got that impression as we toured around. If there was a measure of heritage per capita these countries would surely come out near the top.

We had an hour before our taxi arrived so waited in the restaurant area where the wedding couple were being photographed with the hotel as a backdrop. We had to be careful not to get in their photos. The staff here were so helpful you couldn't help feel like you were getting a taste of privilege. I suspect some people tip hotel staff but I've no idea what the etiquette is and would be more worried about offending.

After our long walk we did eventually develop an appetite and found that reasonably priced restaurant right round the corner from the hotel. Unfortunately after warning them we had little time, they brought out Katarina's pizza in about 2 minutes and my meal another 40 minutes later. I couldn't work out at logic. But this distraction did little to take our minds off the sadness of leaving. Vilnius is such an eclectic city that changes character at every corner. You can see how the Victorian elite on their Grand Tours of Europe could spend weeks at a time exploring these cities at leisure. I just wish I'd had the time to learn some more of the local language. I did however buy a couple of books of poetry in Lithuanian as souvenirs.

For the end of our stroll we walked around the few churches around the town hall area and there are plenty of them. They dominate the architecture everywhere. Despite the communists' attempts to suppress religion and even repurpose some buildings as store houses there has clearly been a resurgence and most have been renovated to a very high standard. Even the less well kept have great character. You just wonder how many city so small can support so many. And when you consider in 1940 forty percent of Vilnius's population were Jewish how different must it have looked back then. But after the Poles, Soviets, Nazis and finally the Lithuanians themselves had their way, nothing of Jewish origin remains, apart from the sign of the old Jew Street which does now have its original name but I do wonder if that was the case in 1941.

We'd made it back to the Gate of Dawn and the Montmartre café. I would have loved to have eaten lunch here and the time was certainly right but we were still stuffed from breakfast so could only handle a coke each and film a wasp, one of many that hounded us whenever we ate outside. This was had fallen into the empty bottle and damaged it's wing. Despite the discomfort wasps had sometimes put us through we decided to help it escape although it did repeatedly fall back into the bottle in its instinctive hunt for sugar.

It tends to be on our last day in the city when we're not planning any particular visit and are just strolling around that we notice how near everything is. The weather has been great in Vilnius with little rain after the first day but plenty of cloud to give the sky some features. But often we find it hard to see the photos we're taking in the bright light and so it ends up as just a random snap and hope for the best.

We took a very slow stroll down Pilies Gatve, the main street through the old town enjoying the architecture and popping into all the souvenir shops. In London I look down on souvenir shops but on holiday they have different significance. Perhaps it's no different in London but it was rare to find a souvenir shopkeeper that seemed to enjoy their work. So often they were young women on the phone or still in conversation with a colleague when we entered. Across the Baltic the most common souvenir is amber with many shops dedicated to jewellery and ornaments made with it.

For our last morning I returned to a traditional breakfast and Katarina had ham and cheese toast. Katarina had some pancakes too but could only manage one. I could only manage one of the two she had left. We were probably still full from 10 days of enormous breakfasts. I've said it's my favourite part of any holiday but there's also a limit. It will be nice to return to the simple bowl of porridge. We took our time after breakfast and didn't get out until after 11am. We still had a little time in the city so left our bags in the hotel and set out.

To finish our last evening we strolled around the cathedral square enjoying the last light of the sunset. The end of our holiday is dawning on us and I'm just grateful we have a few extra hours tomorrow to enjoy the old city. The weather has been great to us here after the first day's wet welcome.

And here's our desserts in the tower. I thought we'd share it with you. Katarina didn't feel like any cream so asked for it without. The waiter's reply was "impossible" and we could see why.

In Riga we never made it to the TV tower and here it was even more difficult to get to but the hotel recommend a taxi. I was nervous after recent experiences with taxis but we got there okay. It was easily the ugliest tower but had a revolving restaurant and the prices were about averages so we treated ourselves to some desserts. We set the video camera rolling and recorded the whole hour's rotation including 15 when we had to sit with the sun shining directly in our faces! It was a nice finish to the day though and the bar ordered us a taxi back to the hotel.

Right by the Gate of Dawn was a little French café where we stopped for a light lunch of the salad and some pancakes. I wasn't sure what language I was supposed to speak. I've found Lithuanian so difficult and have fallen back on only one word, Aciu, which is pronounced like an English sneeze, atchoo, and so feels strange to say. So in this café I felt it easier to say merci beaucoupe. But here everyone speaks English first. They'll speak English whether you're English, German, French, Spanish or whatever. Although most people also speak Russian and often you can't tell.

We walked the length of the main road going north to south, the bottom of which is bordered by the last surviving original gate now about 400 years old. The style is completely different again to Tallinn and Riga. I've read that 200 years ago the other gates were torn down at the order of the government. But when you walk through the gate to the other side you get no impression of the grandeur of the interior. In fact you don't even feel a city is on the other side, maybe a pub or some stables. Maybe that was intentional. Perhaps the marauding bandits would ride past still looking for their bounty.

On the way back from Uzupis we dropped into the Orthodox Cathedral of St Casimir. As ever thought interior is stunning. Unfortunately despite having an equally exquisite exterior we never found an angle that offered us much of a view because it's so big and surrounded very nearby by other buildings.

Our first trip out this morning took us up the hill of three crosses that we started to walk up yesterday before the whiff of mosquitoes sent us back. This morning is another day of blue sky so we've been very lucky after predictions of rain throughout the holiday. I think the weather forecasters here just make it up. The walk up the hill wasn't so hard and we got some great views from the top, of Vilnius and the pure white crosses that have been here, in one form or another, for something like 500 years.

We've seen these in many places across Vilnius. People have knitted covers for lampposts. I haven't asked anyone but I assume there's some meaning and it's not something weird act of vandalism. But graffiti, of the ordinary kind, is very common here in all parts of the city, old and new. I do intend to ask about this if I remember.

For breakfast this morning I ordered Lithuanian eggs which arrived in the pan still hot to touch so almost burnt my fingers. Katarina kept it simple with pancakes but they were so thick she couldn't finish them and so I helped her out. If that wasn't enough we had fruit salad, orange juice, tea and croissants. If gluttony is a deadly sin I feel like I've earned a badge on this holiday. With it being a religious holiday today, ironically the Feast of Assumption, we've made a good start. Today is our last full day and while it will be sad to return home it will also be a relief as we've almost run dry!

After returning to the hotel and resting for an hour we headed back out to stroll some of the local streets including Literatu street where plaques have been plastered to the walls dedicated to various Lithuanian writers. We wanted to walk up a local hill that was topped with three large crosses and had been for about 500 years, it's one of the major sights of Vilnius, but the sun had set and I could already smell the mosquitoes! We headed back to the hotel, where on route I bought an enormous sorbet, and finally crashed in the hotel. We were exhausted.

We stopped at an Italian restaurant on the way back for a very late lunch; it was 4.30pm,but we'd been so full all day from breakfast. I had Bolognese and Katarina had a pizza topped with splodges of mayonnaise! Very strange. The waitress wasn't the mist friendly but when I saw her shout away from begger I could see she had her uses. These three cities haven't had an abundance of beggars but here in Vilnius we've noticed a few young men asking for money. One of which showed us his leg that looked gangrenous. I told him to see you doctor. It seemed eminently more sensible than showing tourists. Katarina then tells me in the Middle Ages people used to rub soap into their skin until it blistered. His leg did look a bit like that. Our late lunch was briefly spoiled by the wasp until I caught it in a glass. When I carried the glass inside for the replacement, the waitress shouted us both back outside and said she'd bring you new one. When we eventually went to pay, becau...

Round the corner from the Genocide museum but not housed in a grand building on the boulevard but instead very well hidden with tiny signs and about 50 metres away from the main road is a small building that houses for museum dedicated to the Jews of Lithuania and mainly to the Holocaust. As we entered a lady warned us they were soon closing so didn't charge. Twenty minutes was in fact plenty of time to look through the rooms because, after Riga, I didn't need to dwell on more horror. Although of course Lithuania had its own terror with 100,000 Jews shot in a forest just 10km from here. One exhibit had the Nazi statistics of how many were shot each day. When you see individual days listing something like 400 Jews, 400 Jewesses and 600 children it adds yet another dimension to the atrocities. We bought a few postcards and left as they closed. It was a very well presented exhibit and did well to point out that the Jews of Lithuania were a thriving world renowned community. It was...

This genocide museum is also listed as the KGB museum but most of it is dedicated to the atrocities committed by the Germans and Soviets in the forties and how the Lithuanian partisans fought back. One room is dedicated to the Jewish genocide and you almost get the impression it's an afterthought. But really this is a KGB museum because in the basement is an old KGB prison together with tiny holding cells, punishment cells, a padded torture cell and finally further below an execution chamber where apparently 1000 people were shot. It was all very sobering, especially when you consider this was a building on the Gedimino Prospektas where people would pass by possibly without any knowledge of what went on below. Altogether it was an unusual mash up of state sponsored crimes but then this area ha experienced quite its fair share of horror.

On the way to our next destination we walked the length of the main boulevard, which is compared in the guidebooks to the Champs-Elysees but seems more like a slightly smaller Oxford Street. It's the first time in the Baltic that we've walked down anything like this.

We popped back to the hotel to get some warmer clothes as it was cooler today despite the better weather. The bottom two photos in the grid shows the view of the tower from the hotel and then the view of the hotel from the tower.

We walked away little further and climbed up the Gediminas Tower which stands as a symbol of Lithuanian independence. In fact on one of the floors of the museum inside they have a display dedicated to the Baltic Way when many thousands of people from all three Baltic nations formed a single human chain to link their three capital cities in 1989 in defiance of Soviet occupation. They were free by 1991. From the roof of the tower we got some good views of Vilnius below.

Just round the corner from our hotel is the Cathedral Square which was to be our first stop on our first full day in Vilnius. The pristine white (or whatever shade it's supposed to be) is breathtaking and there's so much of it. We've seen nothing like this in Tallinn or Riga and I don't think it would look out of place in the big Mediterranean city. It gives the impression that Vilnius is much grander in scale than either of its Baltic neighbours.

The weirdness continued, at least from our point of view, as we entered the breakfast room. Food was served a la carte so we had to order from the menu. We had an English breakfast each expecting perhaps some plate of grease but it was far from it and very well presented. Katarina then had Scotch pancakes and I had fruit salad, both of which were outstanding. We left feeling completely stuffed but not unwell. I can't wait until tomorrow morning. As I've said this is my favourite part of any holiday.

In the morning the rain had been replaced by a bright blue sky and we quickly discovered we had a view of two of the biggest sights on Vilnius, the Gediminas tower and the Cathedral Clock Tower. All the room here are named not numbered and we have the Trollope room, which extends from one side of the hotel so we have windows on both sides of our room. The lift is also strange as it just shows floors 1 & 3, and not two and you have to walk the length of the hotel anyway to get to the room. On the way to breakfast the hallways and wooden staircases continued the theme. I still felt a little out of place.

We eventually made it out despite continuous rain and we trapped for a short while under our umbrellas waiting for it to stop. But it did eventually and we were able to look around. Our hotel is right in the middle of the old town so it was all around the corner. Unfortunately the rain and eventually night sky did show the buildings well so we knew this was just an test run. However we did make about way to Zydu Street (Jew Street)  which is where the Great Synagogue used to be until burnt down by the Nazis. Now it is a dingy garden behind some flats. On the way back we couldn't find a suitable restaurant so dropped into a Deli where we stocked up on meat and bread and then ate back in our room on the sofa. Our method of consumption didn't quite fit the surroundings but it was still all great.

After waiting a while for the taxi at the coach station we finally arrived at our hotel and were a little taken aback. Still a bit jaded from leaving Riga it was almost surreal to enter this room/apartment. It took a while of staring at each other and laughing before we finally debagged and made a mess. However I couldn't help tidy up. It felt rude to leave things out of place. This might take some getting used to, but I'm sure it won't be difficult.

Once again we were sad to leave another city we'd fallen in love with. It wasn't love at first sight like with Tallinn but it grew after the first day once we'd become familiar with the main features of the old town. But most poignant of all of course was to find connections with the family past. We arrived early at the bus station and after realising I'd somehow booked seats that weren't adjacent we traded seats until Katarina and I were able to sit together. That was was huge relief and meant once again we could watch a couple of movies together until we arrived in Vilnius, that last destination of our Baltic trip.

We didn't take enough pictures of the art nouveau architecture in Riga so we captured some on the walk back to the hotel. Our hotel wasn't in the old city but it was on one of the streets best known for this style. But every building here looks so different it's impossible to capture a fair summary in only a few pictures.

For our last morning we took it easy with breakfast and then strolled for an our through the local park. Brief showers continued but nothing to spoil the view. It was nice just to walk and soak up the view. Like Tallinn, Riga is surrounded by landscaped parks I assume were also built upon old Bastion fortifications.

We had supper at a coffee house and finished with a peanut butter chocolate cake that was shockingly good. Finally, and for the first time in Riga, we were able to make the walk back unaided by a taxi and only now realised how close the hotel was to the old city. But on the first day it was new and dark and wet. Yesterday we were the walking wounded. Today we were much more mobile and in any case after such a successful day we were full of good spirits. We returned in time to enjoy the last few minutes of a blue sky through our room's skylights.

We made it just in time for the cruise and spent an hour relaxing on the Daugava river and watching the many spires of Riga float by. The tallest tower is, like Tallinn, a TV tower but this one was too difficult to reach on our schedule. But it was one of the weirdest looking towers I'd ever seen and looked like something from War of the Worlds. Katarina took the chance to rest her feet. I frantically took photos for the whole journey and barely sat down.

Walking the whole distance was now looking too far. So I called the hotel and asked them in a frenzy to order us a taxi. Five minutes later the guy turned up. He didn't speak a word of English but with my fingers I pointed to two addresses and then the old town. It was to be our crazy dash round the family ghetto. The driver must have thought we were mad. First he took us here to the house in the photo and despite it's wooden structure and age it actually looked reasonably well maintained. Here it sat on its own flanked by neighbours that were clearly newer builds. Somehow this house alone survived. We didn't have time to absorb the enormity before we jumped back in the taxi and drove to 68 Maskavas but here the buildings, although not new, were unlikely to have been originals. It didn't matter we'd found what we came for. We were shell shocked and now Katarina certainly felt the connection. The taxi took us back to the old town where we planned to catch our next ex...

And then here we were. One moment we were among warehouses by the river bank and then they next corner there was an opening for the museum. In a very large courtyards were long rows of Jewish documents and photos of the period of Nazi occupation. In the centre was a wall of 70,000 names of those who perished. Among those were the Kiels and Bhans. Names I had on the documentation I bought with. Our immediate ancestors had left for England but who knows whether these families were close relatives. I've always wondered and this is as close as we'll likely get. It felt close enough. To see these names opposite photos of the killings was perhaps too much. He museum also had a ghetto house that had been moved to this location and filled with period furniture. But perhaps the biggest shock of all was a series of photographs of the houses that still remain from the ghetto. They are all over the district and the first house we see is 22 Daugavpils the modern address for the last known a...

We finally made it to the ghetto district. It was here we noticed a few old wooden houses that could date from the period of our family. But this area is a very industrial area now so I was losing hope that we'd find anything meaningful.

At the bottom of the old town is where the Jewish ghetto was situated. On route we passed through this huge indoor market, apparently the largest in the Baltic. We were on on quest to locate Moscow Street, or Maskavas, as it's now called. It marks the beginning of the ghetto and also the museum. As we asked for directions I got the feeling people were wondering why we were there. Down here far fewer people spoke any English and my Latvian consisted of two words: hello and thanks. But it's surprising how far that gets you when mixed with sign language.

Halfway between the Jewish museum and the Jewish ghetto museum I noticed we were near a Star of David on the map I'd seen the day before. I was expecting to see maybe you small plaque or possibly just a repurposed building but in fact it was a very well maintained synagogue, from the outside. We never got to go inside. Katarina hadn't quite yet felt any connection but that was about to change.

We began our Jewish/family journey with the trip to the museum of Latvian Jewish History. The building was originally a Jewish theatre and community centre and then became a propaganda centre for the Soviets. It was returned to the Jewish community around 1990. The top floor now contains the museum which consists of a room with walls filled with photos and documents covering about 200 years of Jewish history, including the obligatory Holocaust documents which were as shocking as ever, but of course here in the Baltic the Nazis would herd their victims into the forest before shooting them. Photos of these moments were all too visible. We spoke to a couple of elderly sisters who spoke about their family history; their father was a Jewish Russian soldier who helped to liberate Riga in 1944 and then stayed. We then got help identifying addresses from family documents I had with me and then directions to our next destination, a ghetto museum.

Today was to be a day of Jewish and family history but we began on route to the Jewish museum, which didn't open until midday, with the visit to one of the many parks around Riga. This one included a spectacular Russian Orthodox Cathedral with stunning gold domes. It was only only shame the main dome was being renovated and so was covered with a collosal canvas printed with a drawing of the dome. A smaller golden dome gave us a taste.

After yesterday's interrupted breakfast today, Monday, our second and last full day in Riga, began with an undisturbed eating frenzy. I'm not sure there was any room left on our table for the plates once we'd tried almost everything on offer including eggs, bacon, sausages, bread, smoked salmon, herring, salami, ham, cereal, fruit salad and an array of pastries. I was rewarded with heartburn. This morning our swellings had reduced a little but were still very present. We used the last of our first aid kit to create dressings and dropped into the local pharmacy to top up before heading out.

After finishing our own walking tour we decided to supplement it with something more guided so joined this car train hybrid thing that somehow wound its way through the tight streets without killing anyone. We ended seeing the exact same sights but at least we got a little history in a very strong Latvian accent. The real bonus was resting our feet. We finished Sunday, our first full day in Riga, with a feast of pastries in a small pastry café, one of which I had to scrape off the cheese after a slight misunderstanding. Eventually we started the walk back but Katarina's swollen leg could take no more so we took a cab. We ended up overcharged but when we complained he started driving away and threatened to drop us back in the old town. We protested and knew there was nothing we could do. He'd had us. We paid up. I did however vent my anger on the polite hotel staff who just went along with this irate foreigner. But it didn't spoil our evening because, given how it started, w...

We finished our lightning tour of Riga with its earliest surviving building. There are three here suitably named The three Brothers. The oldest house, the white one, dates from the fifteenth century. I couldn't help be mesmerised by its unique architecture as if Riga didn't already have enough to offer. To me it seems almost Mexican and wouldn't look out of place in a Western. But apparently this is what they built back then. Of course as you follow your map trying very hard to find all these gems you arrive to a crowd of tourists who've done the very same thing. But you still take it in as something personal.

In the centre of Riga is the Dome Cathedral and square. Everything extends out from here almost in rings although if you thought there might be some logic to the streets you'd be sorely mistaken. Foot sore, as we discovered. In actual fact everything is quite close but turn a few degrees and suddenly the view and architecture has changed so much it's like you've entered a new city. Riga's old town is a museum of architecture and while the lot has been rebuilt after the war it's been done with great care and respect for the original. We must have crossed this square more than any other point but never once entered the cathedral.

This was the last medieval gate still standing and certainly isn't as impressive as the old medieval Viru gates of Tallinn. However what Riga lacks in medieval structure it makes up for in Art Nouveau, in a very big way. And whereas Tallinn loses its charm very quickly outside the old city, Riga's beauty doesn't seem to end.

After the church tower and a break it was a blitz (perhaps not the best word) of all the key sights of the old town. Yesterday when we arrived in the rain it was all so difficult to make out but today the weather held out between rain and showers. The rains were brief but gave respite from the sun. This was one of our first stops, a medieval tower, that was later used to store gun powder. We could still see canon balls wedged into the brickwork from previous battles. Riga has so few medieval features left but this was the best.

I was so relieved we'd finally made it out and up the church tower. For a moment in the morning it looked like our Riga trip would be a disaster. We stopped off at one of the many cafés for a burger and jug of lemonade. Everywhere here there is wifi and most is unsecured.

These pictures lay bare the destruction that was hurled upon these small nations. Tallinn was fortune enough to retain so much original archtecture, but Riga was not so lucky. My connection with Riga might be care of the Jews but I can't help feel a sadness here. However they did so well to rebuild.

I sent this post to the wrong address so out of sequence. I'll try to correct later but you should be able to figure out later. Our coach journey from Tallinn to Riga was four hours, which isn't exactly an arduous journey but it was made especially easy by the presence of technology more akin to cross Atlantic flights. We watched two movies and stuffed our faces with the snacks we bought in the last hour in Tallinn. I was almost sad to get off until we discovered we'd been dropped off 7km outside the centre because I'd misunderstood the original ticket I'd bought online. Then I really was sad to get off. Thankfully a rare honest taxi driver reassured us it wouldn't cost the Earth, because of course some drivers would sell the Earth if they could.