Russia - Kaliningrad

Why do the Russian Police go round in threes - One can read, one can write and the third one guards the other two intellectuals.

We arrive in Kaliningrad for lunch at 4.00pm (5.00 local time, but we get that hour back later) and go straight to the Seagull Hotel for a lunch of Borsch followed by a main coarse of meat and finally jelly-type-stuff in cubes. The dining room had a glass ceiling - perfect for a self portrait at lunch.

Only I bothered to look up

After lunch a city tour of Kaliningrad is planned, the guide says "an hour", the tour manager says "half an hour", the guide says "wow, only half an hour!". We take more like an hour, mainly because of the traffic in the town. It's a typical city tour on your right is the town hall, on the right the library, on the right something else, look at those old building....

We end up at the cathedral, which is closed, and the location of the tomb of philosopher Immanuel Kant. We can't resist singing the Monty Python Philosophers song.

Time has got on before we're on our way again and we reach the Russian border at 8.00pm our time (would have been 9.00 otherwise), which is part way up a piece of land called the Curonian Spit, but nicknamed "Mosquito Alley" for reasons which continually splatted on the windscreen . There are 4 Russian border gates to get through one way or another, with bus inspections and long delays. There was a toilet though, the usual one per bus load, unfortunately it smelt like it hadn't seen disinfectant since..., well it smelt like it hadn't seen disinfectant.

Eventually we clear the Russian border at about 9.50pm, then clear the Lithuanian border at 10.20.

We have lost the Russian local guide and now have a new local guide to take us through the Baltic States. We may now be in Lithuania, but the day is not over yet.....