The room is good - quiet once the road traffic settles down - quite a bit of passing traffic, especially in rush hour, and some squealing tyres at night, which reminds me of home! We wake at 9am, and only have half a day left in Vilnius so ought to go out early. We planned to see the old soviet statues (Lenin and Stalin) which are dumped outside the city, but its too far to go in a couple of hours and guarantee return before the train scheduled to leave. There's a similar thing in Moscow, so we'll go to see that.

[Gates of Dawn]

We walk into the old town and buy some bananas for breakfast. We've got into the habit of one meal a day plus grazing. We want to finish writing postcards (from Riga) and check our e-mails, having done most of what want to in town yesterday. The internet café we find is great, the helpful owner helps us sort out the right hardware to upload our photos as the camera card is nearly full.

We find a pizza place for brunch - our only meal for 24 hours. Spinach pizza and coffee at 11am, interesting! I am suffering from lack of iron and protein, which is making me tired and irritable. All I ate in 24 hours yesterday was lettuce, bread and cheese, boh. I want some quorn! We watch half of the basketball match with Lithuania beating Australia to head for the semi-finals.

We have a look for presents in the gift market, but can't find much. It's all too expensive/heavy: lots of amber, woollen clothing, paintings, wooden carvings. There's an icon market which is even less likely.

We return to the hostel for showers and check out. I double-check our train tickets and realise that I'd forgotten that on booking, the train time had changed: it leaves at 5.45pm, not 2.45pm. We could have done more today if I had realized, whoops.

We check out at 1pm (and find out that Lithuania has won the basketball), walk to the (opposite the bus station, very handy) and drop our bags in left luggage. It's quite new and spangly, with lockers and pin numbers. 60p for both bags, charged by time, which is good. The station is new, with escalators that are movement sensitive. I play. There isn't enough seating and its busy. We've got three hours and decide to go see the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, which we missed yesterday. It has 200+ sculptures of animals, people, and mythical creatures (in a church!) etc inside. Sounds interesting.

We get a tram (I try to communicate in Lithuanian, fail, and show the woman the map) through town. The tram suddenly goes an unexpected direction, we ask some girls and they direct us to a bus. They’re wrong; when we find a list of stops, the tram does go where we want. Our tickets are now invalid, Iain buys more, having to communicate by pointing at electric trolley-bus lines.

Back on the tram, I trace the journey on the map to check it. There are lots of old people on tram, and I bob up and down giving up my seat. The younger generation don’t seem to bother, but ironically, older people do. There's a woman on board with a wicker basket which smells strongly of chicken poo.

[Church of St. Peter and St. Paul]

The bus drops us within sight of the church, and we cross two major roads by the roundabout. I'm slightly unsure about road-crossing laws here. It appears to be illegal to run down pedestrians, but you're certainly allowed to worry them.

This church is everything that was promised. The inside is coated in white wobbly bits with painting, gilt, and a certain amount of scaffolding.

Afterwards, we head back across the road hoping to find a bus back with same number. And helpfully, there is one. We climb on, and wobble as it moves off uncertainly around the roundabout.

Back at the station, we head to the supermarket to use up our remaining Lithuanian currency. Our essentials include bread, cheese, doughnuts, drink and bananas. Cathy is disturbed by the live fish counter. It uses up our cash to the exact amount, except for a 100Lt note which we change for rubles. The exchange has worryingly high-security which completely fails to stop queue jumpers.

And then we sit around in the station for an hour waiting for train to appear on the board. The only excitement is caused by an announcement for a Moscow train at the wrong time, which turns out to be related to one from Kalingrad which comes through Vilnius shortly beforehand.

Finally, we fetch our bags from the magic lockers and head up onto the platform. Our backpacks look totally out of place in the queue of first class passengers.

At first glance it is a lot like second class, with the top bunks folded up and the beds already made, but we get offered food and drinks, and there’s piped shopping centre music.

Great Belarussian Instrumental Train Tunes:

• How Deep is Your Love (pan pipes)
• I Just Called to Say I Love You
• I Will Always Love You
• Moonlight Shadow (accordion)
• House of the Rising Sun
• Candle in the Wind

We pass the time with backgammon (Iain wins), followed by Chess (Cathy gives up with a hurty brain).

What we get:

• 2 beers - cold and with pint cups
• 2 x 4 cheese sticks - salty and processed and cold, rather nice
• 2 x bags of pistachios (later donated to someone in Moscow)
• 4 x train sugar (branded, I save it for my brother's present)
• 2 x coffees - proper cups and saucers!
• 2 x chewing gum

Just as I say after coffee "what would be really good now is a nice piece of cake" someone arrived with selection of ice creams in a basket. Wow.

[Belorussian field]

[Belorussian town]

There appear to be no Russian border guards. I wonder whether this is a first class privilege. A Belarussian guy took all our Belarussian and Russian paperwork when we entered Belarus (around 9pm), after a Lithuanian held onto our passports for ages looking concerned, although not as concerned as we were! It was a bit scary, Belarus (a totalitarian police state) is not the place to find out you have the wrong paperwork. There's an argument next door in Lithuanian. The carriage is two thirds full - mainly businessmen, Posh & Becks wannabes, older couples. No backpackers! The ticket was very expensive but we wanted security. It's nice to travel first class for the first time.

Briefly seeing Belarus out of the window - rural, more developed than the Baltics, some heavy industry, larger towns. Minsk (at 11.30pm) appears very elegant near station, with classical style buildings.