Lithuania’s magnificent little capital has come a long way since the Soviet Army pulled their tanks out a quarter of a century or so ago. Brimming with life and looking more and more like Barcelona every day as long as you're prepared to squint your eyes a bit, surplus to its genuinely exquisite Old Town which brings the tourists in on an increasingly busy schedule of low cost flights are bars galore, restaurants that wouldn’t look out of place in Manhattan and museums to rival any city. Bitterly cold during the winter and surprisingly hot for a good three months of the year, the place is a veritable wet dream for any historical novelist worth their salt and possesses an unexplainable magnetism that brings people for the weekend and finds them well and truly dug in with a local spouse and three children several decades later. Whatever way you like to enjoy yourself and experience a little culture along the way, Vilnius has it in spades.