is beautiful.

Lots of trees, farm land, and rolling hills.  And wildflowers.  Lady Bird Johnson would approve.

Logistically, it’s also mostly fine.  The roads are decent (fair amount of roadwork on the country roads, but it proceeds orderly).  Cousin Eglė warned us to be ready for aggressive drivers, but I didn’t find them that way at all.  People were very reasonable at roundabouts and intersections, stopping politely for pedestrians, and nothing too aggressive on the highways.

That’s not to say we didn’t encounter a few quirks:

1. Everyone here drives stick.  Ergo, our car rental was manual.  Which I haven’t driven in 25 years and wasn’t that good at even then.  So when we set off in our little Opel Astra, I knew we were in for some herky-jerky starts and a few stalls.  (Mom was freaking out).  What I didn’t count on was for the clutch to stink to high heaven 3 minutes after I picked up the car and continue to smell all day no matter what I did.  I still don’t know what I did wrong (if it was my fault).  I’m certainly not the smoothest manual driver, but I didn’t do anything overtly destructive.  There was a release button on the back of the stick, and maybe I was hitting it inconsistently, but that shouldn’t gork a clutch, I would think.  No?  After a smelly and nerve-wracking first day, I took the Astra back to the auto rental and got a lovely little VW Golf automatic, which I like a lot.  The Astra didn’t smell at all on the trip back to the car rental shop, so who knows?
2. Lithuania invites you to play “Guess the speed limit!”  WTF!?! Lithuania?  Our car rental guy said there were different limits for different roads, up to 130 kph on the highway, but I never once saw a sign posting the maximum.  There were signs telling you to slow down for this or that.  But you have to guess the max where you are.  And sometimes you also have to guess when the slow zone is over (some signs do say 70 kph for the next 800m and such).  I did my best to match the flow of traffic (which can easily vary by 30 kph between different drivers).  But it didn’t always work.  In one town, with no speed guidance, and as I slowed down to approach a speed bump that came up without warning, I saw a flash from a white box by the road.  A ticket is probably in the mail.  Grr.
3. They really like roundabouts here.  Washington state, too, so not too strange.  I think Lithuanians are better than Washingtonians at navigating them.
4. Cell coverage is generally very good here, even in the boonies.  Good enough for Apple Maps to do turn-by-turn in the smallest of towns.  It faded out at Žemaitija National Park, but then it does that in the U.S. at national parks, too.
5. Google Maps is AWOL.  Was really glad I had choices.
6. Apple maps horribly mispronounces each street name, but it does it in a way I can easily track.  “IN A QUARTER MILE, TURN RIGHT ON VYTAUTO GAT!” (rhymes with cat)  I guess someone abbreviated gatvė (street) as “gat.” in the database.  I was GAT-to-GAT all day.
7. Apple maps needs to take a chill pill.  Yes, little dude, I just turned one street too early, but you could easily re-calculate and get me over to the right place via one of the many cross streets I see in front of me.  Saying “MAKE A U-TURN AND PROCEED TO THE ROUTE” every time I deviate a little makes you seem inflexible, dude.
8. Turn-and-merge road design can be very disconcerting.  On some roads, another driver is headed right for you for a second while he merges.  At the last moment, the road turns and he has his own lane to go in.  It works, but damn if I didn’t think we were going to get side-swiped once or twice.  I saw this on our Basic Bitch Bus Tour, and the driver turn-merged with another car without batting an eye.  However, when it was my turn, those eyes batted, I tell ya.  Yet another reason to be in the country a couple of days and observe the scene before getting behind the wheel yourself.