Saturday 23rd June - day off in Vilnius

Only a week to go now until we expect to get to Paris and, after a long day driving yesterday and two border crossings (the second one only taking a matter of minutes as both Latvia and Lithuania are in the EU) we are having a day off in Vilnius.

We find ourselves in a country (Lithuania) of which we have no knowledge - no guide books, only a very small scale map as part of our European road atlas, and we arrived not even knowing what the currency is called, or what language is spoken! No problem though, as everyone so far is friendly and able to speak either English or German, so we may not have to mime everything. We've seen our last Cyrillic script too, so reading road signs will be much easier. Last night in the street we met a very helpful man called Martin, on his way to pick up his father from a Joe Cocker concert, who did a detour to find us a hotel. Unfortunately I have yet to find internet access that will let me upload pictures, but will keep trying.

Today will be sightseeing, and a brief immersion in Lithuanian culture before heading on to Poland - Gdansk is the plan, followed by Berlin, then Paris.

To Class P5 - Well done Katie and Shona. You were the closest, by saying a Kremlin is a castle. It is a fortified area at the centre of a town. It would originally have been a place to which the people of the town would retreat (probably with possessions and animals) if they were under attack. There were similar fortifications for some British medieval towns, which were used the same way. Over time the space has become filled with buildings of importance to the town - usually including a church and government offices. Often the Russian centre of government in Moscow is referred to as 'The Kremlin' for this reason, but every old town has its own Kremlin.