During this segment, we bid farewell to Poland and encountered a very challenging border crossing into Lithuania. As much as we were impressed by the cycling infrastructure in Poland, we were somewhat shocked by the absence of such infrastructure in Lithuania. We only benefited from cycling paths in few towns but most of the time we cycled on the road without any shoulders. On a positive note, we continued to be blessed with comfortable cycling weather (15-20C) and some tail winds helped us for a few days. We also experienced many more climbs in Lithuania – but still very few requiring us to walk. We found folks in this country a lot more friendlier than in Poland but also less courteous at road/street intersections.
2025.05.26 – [PL] Augustów ==> Suwałki (45 kms | Total: 396 kms)
After another ample hotel breakfast, we started our cycling day around 10:30am. We cycled almost half of our journey on hard surface dirt road. The route in the forest was very pleasant but slightly slower than on paved roads. We checked-in to our hotel shortly after 2:00pm. We were impressed by our hotel’s three star standard. We realized that many restaurants were closed on Mondays, hence we opted to eat our dinner at the hotel’s restaurant. In the evening, we walked over to the town’s business area.
2025.05.27 – [PL] Suwałki ==> Sejny (42 kms | Total: 438 kms)
We had a relaxing hotel breakfast before leaving town at 10:30am. Our Eurovelo route quickly brought us again on some peaceful forest dirt roads. We noticed our route was the hilliest since our start from Warsaw. In the early afternoon, we had to replace our front tire and inner tube as a result of a puncture. From the start of our trip, it seemed our original tire developed a hole over a small area where a piece of rubber had been torn away on the tire’s side wall. We checked into our last hotel in Poland for this trip at a similar time as yesterday. We opted to have dinner at our hotel’s restaurant. Just when we felt like folks working in the hotels appeared to speak/understand English, we struggled with language in this small town. Since our stay was the last one in Poland, we used up all of our remaining złoty (Polish currency) to pay for our room and part of our dinner.
2025.05.28 – [LT] Sejny ==> Druskininkai (59 kms | Total: 497 kms)
We were the only patrons enjoying the hotel’s breakfast this morning. We left the hotel shortly after 9am. As Google Maps did not offer any cycling route options towards our first hotel in Lithuania (or other part of the country) and the EuroVelo route appeared unnecessarily drawn-out, we opted to follow the route suggested by our offline Organic Map app. We enjoyed cycling the last stretch of road in Poland. Everything changed as we got closer to the Lithuania border. Our Organic Map route guided us to a non-existing path through a farmer’s field on the Poland side. Although our crossing from Poland to Lithuania’s first road was only 300m, it was very demanding to push the tandem through the farmer’s plowed field. It was further stressful as we kept thinking a farmer might show up to force us back as we were clearly trespassing. We finally reached our first road in Lithuania – a loose gravel road. We struggled further along some narrow paths in order to reach the Eurovelo route. To our disappointment, the road we had finally arrived at was made up of a loose gravel/sand surface. It was very challenging to cycle on this road. We eventually reached a busy paved road with no shoulder. Just when we had recovered from our earlier gravel experience, our route brought us again on an even worse loose sandy/gravel road. We even had to walk alongside the tandem on some sections. We managed to wrap up our day’s difficult journey with the last 15 kms on a paved road. By then, we clearly preferred to deal with vehicular traffic than to cycle on the loose gravel/sandy roads. We kept on having flashbacks from some of our early days cycling in New Zealand. Upon finally arriving in our destination town, we discovered that it was a famous tourist town offering mineral-rich waters and spas. We did a self check-in into our hotel at 3:15pm (1 h timezone difference from Poland). Later, we visited a grocery store for some snacks before taking a well deserved shower. In the evening, we walked to one of the many restaurants in town – namely one recommended by our LP travel guide. Moving forward, we realized we would need to better investigate our route using Google Street view in order to avoid, as much as possible, the gravel roads in Lithuania. We returned to our hotel under a light rain after dinner.
2025.05.29 – [LT] Druskininkai ==> Alytus (60 kms | Total: 556 kms)
We had a surprisingly good breakfast at our self-check in hotel. We left town at 9:00am as we expected a longer cycling day. As we were enjoying our first few cycling kms, we were alerted by two small size white dogs barking at us from across the road. As we got closer to their house, the dogs jumped into the middle of the road to start chasing us but sadly a car coming in the opposite direction was unable to avoid hitting one the dogs. It was a very deplorable incident. We were pretty confident that our day’s journey would be done solely on paved roads. We were shocked and discouraged when we encountered the start of a stretch of sandy road. We opted to take an alternate gravel road but we quickly learned that the surface was too soft(sandy) to ride on our tandem hence we had to walk 3-4 kms beside the tandem. The remainder of our route was on a paved surface but proved to be quite boring and fairly busy. After checking into our apartment at 2:30pm, we promptly did some grocery shopping for our dinner and next morning’s breakfast. Jenny prepared a good dinner with the modest staples we purchased. She even managed to do two loads of clothes washing with the apartment machine. We were both quite tired by our long cycling day. In the evening, we ended up reserving a different accommodation for our next night as we realized our original accommodation was fairly remote and required cycling on a, most likely, challenging gravel road for a few kms.
2025.05.30 – [LT] Alytus ==> Aukštadvaris (50 kms | Total: 606 kms)
We both had a very deep night sleep. Jenny prepared a good breakfast. We brought down the tandem from the apartment to the outside before loading our panniers and cycling out of town around 10am. As we had spent a lot of time last evening looking at different road surface conditions, we opted to stay on the main roads today while knowing there would be more traffic to worry about. The cycling was generally enjoyable as we benefited from a tail wind for a good part of our journey. We arrived in our destination town by 2:00pm. Our modest guest house room felt cold. Although we had access to a shared kitchen, we opted to have dinner at a local pizzeria for some so-so pizza. Another German cyclist was also staying at our guest house.
2025.05.31 – [LT] Aukštadvaris ==> Vilnius (62 kms | Total: 668 kms)
We had a modest breakfast in our room before getting back on the road shortly after 9am. We were hoping for less traffic on the road as it was Saturday. Although there were fewer large transport trucks on the road there were significantly more cars speeding by us. We had to watch both the traffic behind us as well as the cars coming towards us as often some drivers would try to overpass other cars on their rush to go somewhere. At mid-journey, we opted to follow the EuroVelo route. It was a wise decision as traffic was much more bearable. As we got closer to the city, the bicycle infrastructure improved and we were able to safely cycle without being in the traffic. We stopped at our first McDonald’s in Lithuania some 8kms before our accommodations for a well needed rest before tackling the urban streets. Surprisingly we managed to continue cycling on designated bicycle paths and sidewalks right up to our accommodation. After checking into our apartment for the next three nights, we promptly visited a large grocery store nearby. Jenny and I felt like kids in a toy factory. We restrained ourselves in our purchases knowing the store was nearby. Clearly, we won’t need to eat at any restaurants in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, during our stay. In the evening, we relaxed and started to reserve our next segment’s accommodations.
2025.06.01 – [LT] Vilnius ==> Vilnius (0 kms | Total: 668 kms)
We had a lazy morning wake-up. Later, Jenny cooked a full breakfast for us. We spent the afternoon sightseeing the old town of Vilnius. We took in a few shows from an International Folklore Festival which was wrapping up today. We stopped at our beloved grocery store before returning to our apartment. We had a plentiful dinner in our home-away-from-home. In the evening, we again relaxed and reviewed photos and text for our upcoming blog post.
