Vilnius! Got in past dark, as is pretty inevitable in winter-time Northern Europe, especially when you'd rather not wake up too early otherwise. Plus, some part of the bus broke down midway through, so the driver got out and eventually fixed it after the better part of an hour.

But I got quite lucky overall, navigating was the easiest it's ever been, I found a hostel I was looking for in record time, settled in and then headed out for a walk. This is the central cathedral square! Nice tree and a wonderful bell tower that began tolling out just as I approached. A little sloppily taken, (what's with the corner of the building on the right???) but my other shots turned out surprisingly bad. I'll have to retake this later.

Vilnius is an interesting city; I'll save the final verdict for daylight, but it feels like a larger city than it's Baltic counterparts, even though Riga is by far the largest. It's an illusion perpetrated by the wide avenues and spacious squares that don't really exist in Riga and Tallinn. Vilnius also has a tighter and better concentration of it's CBD than do the others. Something odd about Riga was that the city had a number of tall buildings, but they were scattered about all around the city, with no cohesive plan. That feels like a mistake to me; big buildings take up too much space if they stand alone, and they do a disservice to the city skyline if they aren't clustered. Vilnius does this well; there's a clear and helpful divide between the old (South of the river) and the new (North of it). Tallinn had it's CBD similarly built, but I panned it because of how awful it all looked. Vilnius's CBD isn't fantastic, but it looks impressive at night.

Vilnius also has a lot more surviving iconic buildings than does Riga, and bigger ones than does medieval Tallinn. One of the most incredible things about the Baltic trio is how their old towns each come from a different period in history. Nothing feels redundant in traveling between three countries and capitals with remarkably similar histories. It almost feels contrived how different in feel the cities have managed to be.

Final notes: Lithuanian drivers are the worst I've ever seen, and Lithuanian currency is the prettiest I've ever seen. Oh and I walked past a garbage can that someone had lit on fire. That was odd. But otherwise, I'm really looking forward to Vilnius!