Vilnius

Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, lies at the confluence of two rivers: the meandering Vilnia, from which the city takes its name; and the fast-flowing Neris. When I was a child, my grandma had told me about a river where she swam on hot days, and although our rental car should have been returned an hour earlier, it was such a hot day that I couldn’t resist a dip in the Neris first. And of course I was further enticed by the romantic notion of swimming in the same river my grandmother had swum in as a girl. On that sweltering day, the river had a current so strong it would have swept me away if I had stopped paddling for even a moment, but there was a sandy beach on one side and a steep, lush bank on the other, making the Neris feel like it was in the middle of nowhere, rather than so close to a city.