Three capitals, three languages, three UNESCO old towns and a sand spit shared with Russia — a straightforward ten days by bus through countries that spent fifty years being told they did not exist.
Vilnius
The largest baroque old town in eastern Europe, and one of the least reconstructed — most of it survived the war. Climb Gediminas hill for the layout, then walk the Jewish quarter, where the pre-war community was among the great centres of Yiddish scholarship and was almost entirely destroyed.
Užupis and the KGB museum
Užupis declared itself a republic in 1997 and has a constitution on a wall in twenty-odd languages, including the right of a dog to be a dog. In the afternoon the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, in the former KGB headquarters, keeps the execution cell in the basement as it was.
Trakai and the Hill of Crosses
Trakai's island castle sits half an hour from Vilnius in a lake, rebuilt in the twentieth century and home to the Karaim community brought here in the fourteenth. Further north, the Hill of Crosses outside Šiauliai carries over 100,000 crosses left by pilgrims — bulldozed three times by Soviet authorities and rebuilt each time overnight.
The Curonian Spit
A 98-kilometre sand bar between the Baltic and a lagoon, UNESCO-listed, half Lithuanian and half Russian — the border is closed and you go as far as Nida. Enormous shifting dunes, a village of wooden fishermen's houses and the Parnidis dune with a sundial on top of it.
North to Riga
A long bus day up the coast. Riga is the largest of the three cities and the most cosmopolitan, with a Hanseatic core, a Central Market built inside five Zeppelin hangars and the Latvian Academy of Sciences looming over it in Stalinist wedding-cake style.
Riga's Art Nouveau
Alberta iela and Elizabetes iela hold one of the densest concentrations of Art Nouveau architecture anywhere — much of it by Mikhail Eisenstein, father of the film director. The Art Nouveau Museum has a restored apartment. Then the Central Market for smoked fish and black bread.
Sigulda and the Gauja valley
An hour by train into the Gauja national park — sandstone cliffs, Turaida castle, the Gutmanis cave with inscriptions cut into the rock going back to the seventeenth century, and a cable car across the valley. Latvia is the flattest of the three and this is the closest it gets to hills.
North to Pärnu and Tallinn
Cross into Estonia — no border check within Schengen — with a stop at Pärnu's beach town if the weather allows. Tallinn's old town is the most complete medieval town centre in northern Europe, with the wall, the towers and the merchant houses largely intact.
Tallinn: Toompea, Kalamaja and Patarei
Upper town for the viewing platforms and the Alexander Nevsky cathedral, then out to Kalamaja — wooden houses, the Telliskivi creative quarter and the Seaplane Harbour museum in a hangar of unreinforced concrete shells. Patarei, the former Soviet prison on the shore, is being turned into a memorial to communist crimes.
Lahemaa or the Helsinki ferry
Finish either with a day in Lahemaa national park — bogs with boardwalks, manor houses and a coast of glacial boulders an hour east — or with the two-hour ferry to Helsinki, which turns the trip into a Nordic add-on. Both leave from Tallinn and both are easy.
Dobré vedieť
All three countries are in the EU, the Schengen area and the eurozone, so there is one currency and no border formality anywhere on the route. Lux Express and Ecolines run comfortable coaches between all three capitals with wifi and reserved seats, booked online a day or two ahead; the whole Vilnius–Tallinn run is about ten hours split across two legs. Rail is good within Latvia and Estonia and poor between countries. The three languages are unrelated — Lithuanian and Latvian are Baltic, Estonian is Finno-Ugric and close to Finnish — but English is widely spoken, particularly by anyone under forty. Russian remains common and is a sensitive matter; ask in English first. Best months are June to September; the winter version works but daylight is short and the Curonian Spit largely closes. Ten days is comfortable and the route runs equally well north to south.
Kratšie či dlhšie?
The two-hour ferry from Tallinn makes a natural extension, and a Helsinki–Stockholm overnight ferry continues it into Sweden. This is the standard way to turn a Baltic trip into a wider Nordic one.
Four extra days allow Kaunas and the Ninth Fort in Lithuania, Kuldīga and Cape Kolka in Latvia, and Tartu and Saaremaa in Estonia — all of which the standard capital-to-capital line misses.
December to February for Christmas markets, frozen bogs walkable on snowshoes and old towns under snow. Days are short — four or five usable hours in December — and the coast and spit are effectively closed.