We went on a tour of the Baltic capitals:
Vilnius (Lithuania), Riga (Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia) and Helsinki (Finland).
It was interesting and a lot of it was fun. Some of the food not so much.
We flew from Manchester airport as it’s a bit
nearer home than Heathrow and the journey promised to be quieter (even the M6
is pretty calm at 05:00 on a Saturday morning). Everything at the airport went
well, though the plane was delayed, right up to the moment when the aircraft
stated its take-off roll. About 10 seconds into the take off, I felt the brakes
come on and it was obvious that we were stopping!
The aircraft turned off the runway and stopped,
with an announcement of ‘technical difficulties’. We were already late and – at
this point – only had about 50 minutes to get through passport control and make
our connecting flight at Helsinki. After a few minutes, the captain told us
that a circuit breaker had blown, but that they’d run the checklist and
everything was OK, so off we (finally) went.
They won back a few minutes on the flight, but
we still only had 30 minutes from landing to take-off, so we weren’t that
pleased to find that it was a bus transfer from the aircraft to the terminal.
Nevertheless, we rushed through immigration (e-passports are great here) and
charged through the airport to our departure gate with a few minutes to spare.
The onward flight to Vilnius was uneventful, other than the cabin crew
wondering why the flight was full and why it was mostly composed of Anglophones.
We were collected by tour guides at Vilnius
airport and taken to our hotel in the heart of the old town: really quite
picturesque and pleasant.
We settled in and then went out to eat, picking a café
in the town hall square. We ate zeppelins; these are enormous potato dumplings
stuffed with sausage meat and served in a cream and bacon sauce – delicious,
but very filling. We also ate a ham hock which was a gigantic lump of meat with
boiled potatoes, all washed down with local beer.
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