Riga to Daugavpils ( 218km) and Daugavpils to Vilnius (175 km)

Wednesday 17th September.

Pick up my bags from the hotel, go to the station  and buy my train ticket to Daugavpils for  €7.75. As with Tallinn,  the tracks are not numbered in sequence. My train is Track 10 so I walk along the underpass, past tracks 4-8 expecting to see 10 at the end, but it turns out Tracks 10- 12 are next to Track 1. I have plenty of time, so sit on the platform enjoying the warm sunshine. Once they open the train doors, I try to get on the first carriage. There are only 3 but the attendant looks at my ticket  and tells me it is for "Wagon 3". Only then do I realise I have an assigned seat. It is by the window and facing the direction of travel so that's fine. The train is another DMU so it's a bit noisy. We leave on schedule and it's an uneventful 3 hour journey, almost all through flat rural  farmland and forest,  with a only few short stops.

Train at Riga Station

Latvian Countryside

Latvian Countryside and Much More of the Same

Arrive in Daugavpils, check into the small Leo  hotel, which is close to the station,  and then go back to the station to check out the train times to Vilnius. Google was right; there is only one train a day, which leaves at 0550 in the morning. Moreover I can see it is the long distance train from St Petersburg so no doubt needs reserved tickets but  the ticket office closed 10 minutes before my train from Riga arrived and won't open until more than an hour after the train to Vilnius leaves. So looks like it is the bus or another night in Daugavpils. Go out looking for dinner; the place is very quiet. There is a burger place  which seems to have the town's teenagers hanging out in it and then I find Cik Pila in a shopping mall. It looks ok and I get what is described as a  traditional Latvian dish which turns out to be a rice hotpot. It's ok and so is the dark beer. Luckily they have WiFi and after looking at various sites which all confirm that the only options are the single train or various buses, I book a direct Ecolines bus from Daugavpils to Vilnius which leaves tomorrow morning at 1015 for€13 Luckily the bus station is just a short walk from the hotel, which by shear luck is about half way between bus and train stations.

Daugavpils Station

Thursday 18th September

Breakfast in the hotel is a freshly fried egg,  sausages, bread, coffee and yoghurt. About 5 other people there, all guys between 25 and 45. Don't look as if they are there on business and I wouldn't have thought it was a business focussed hotel so can't work out what brings them here. Take about 45 minutes to look around the bit of the town near the hotel. It looks better in the day time with  brilliant sun and bright blue sky again. There are many Soviet style 4 & 5 storey apartment blocks but also some older buildings and the new shopping centre where I ate last night. See that this includes a new hotel that might have been a better option  than Leo but is quite a bit further from the station. 

Downtown Daugavpils

Quaint Wooden House in Daugavpils

One of many Soviet era Apartment Blocks 

Daugavpils Shopping Mall

The Snail. No idea why it is there but it has instructions in three languages not to push it or climb on it

Children's funfair

Back at the bus station, the Ecolines bus doesn't  come in at the bay I am expecting but it does have Ecolines on the side so it is hard to miss. The conductor is happy to accept my ticket on my phone and checks it against my passport. The bus came all the way from St Petersburg so lots  of people are already  on it. My assigned seat is next to a woman who is fast asleep so I take  a window seat in front of her. The bus is only half full but all the window seats on the right side, away from the sun are  taken so I have to take a seat on the left side, which is facing the sun and will be facing it most of the journey.

Daugavpils Bus Station

Depart Daugavpils at 1015.  It's a straight road but only two lanes and follows the land exactly, which is not exactly hilly but the road goes up and down every 1 metre bump.  Our first stop is in Zarastai in Lithuania at 1100; if there was a border post I missed it. We continue on through rural green fields and forest for virtually the whole journey. The landscape isn't dead flat like Holland but not far off. It doesn't get to "rolling" on my scale of non-flatness. We stop off in a few  small towns and are on a two lane road that is quite bumpy in places until 1315 when we join a nice smooth express.  This proves to be the approach to Vilnius. Looks like lots of high tech industry as we come into Vilnius; at least the buildings look good. Takes us a while to get through the outskirts and arrive at the bus station just before 1400.  Once I find the exit,  I find that is indeed just across the road from the railway station and a short walk to the City Gate Hotel.

Lithuanian Countryside looks much the same as Latvia or Estonia

Vilnius Bus Station

It seems very odd that when the Baltic republics got their independence from the USSR, they didn't form a Baltic Union like the Nordic countries or Benelux, have open borders and build infrastructure connecting the three countries. Tallinn, Riga  and Vilnius all have direct trains to Moscow, St Petersburg and Minsk but not to each other. Vilnius has 4 trains a day to Minsk!