Our strategy for today was simple, get into Belarus! As our flight wasn’t until the evening, one had plenty of time to visit the Old Town one last time. After spending 5 days in Vilnius, I think we came to know the lay of the land far too well!
The best bet if you are a wheelchair user is to contact the ‘Maltieciai’ service (who we transferred with when we arrived in Lithuania) as it is unknown what size vehicle to expect (even for a manual wheelchair!) if one chooses to use Uber.
Now, when one thinks of airports i.e. Bristol or Heathrow, I envisage them being surrounded by hotels, car parks etc, not an airfield located around the back of a conventional industrial estate, oh, and an IKEA to peruse whilst waiting for check-in! Vilnius airport with its Soviet styled exterior isn’t the biggest airport in the world but it has all you need plus a number of disabled toilets!
We flew to Minsk International Airport (or airfield as the hostess put it!) with Belavia (a Belarusian airline) with a flight time of just 35 minutes. Seeing the airport from the air confirmed my expectations of it being an ‘end of the motorway’ structure surrounded by fields and trees. The air quality was pleasantly nice stepping out from the marble and pristine terminal! As mentioned originally, there are no publicly known wheelchair taxi services in Belarus so your options are to catch an accessible bus OR to catch a conventional taxi. One opted for the latter taking 40 minutes and costing a mere 150 Belarusian Rubles!
Tomorrow is our only day in Minsk so let’s see how that goes…