Lithuania

The drive from Riga, Latvia to Vilnius, Lithuania took about 3.5 hours. There was no formal passport control at the border. During our three nights in Vilnius we stayed at the Mabre Residence Hotel which is a converted monastery. Once again we were staying in the Old Town which put us within walking distance of most of the sights. On our first afternoon we walked around town and then intended to take a small funicular railway to an old castle tower that overlooks Vilnius.  We missed the turn to the funicular and ended up walking all the way up the hill. We did’t really mind the extra exercise though since it was a long gradual climb. At the top we were treated to a lovely view of Old Town Vilnius and the surrounding city.

We ate dinner outdoors at a restaurant along one of the main streets of the Old Town. It was quite enjoyable watching people walk by.  There was a four piece brass band playing close to the restaurant so we were able to play “name that tune” for a while, at least until they started to repeat pieces.

We started our first full day in Vilnius with the hotel breakfast. Mom gave this breakfast high marks because there was smoked salmon. The local “breakfast dessert” was a small log of sweetened cream cheese with a stripe of  jam and covered with with a thing coating of chocolate. It was wrapped up for portability like a granola bar. After breakfast we set out on a three hour walking tour of Vilnius. Our guide was a Latvian who lives part time in the Netherlands. She was excellent and we really enjoyed the tour despite the fact that it rained for the entire time!

We started in Užupis which is a district of Vilnius with it’s own constitution. It sort of reminded me of Fremont in Seattle. I couldn’t really get a picture of the posted constitution (due to the rain) but I found the picture below here. My personal favourites are: 26. Everyone has the right to celebrate or not celebrate their birthday and 31. Everyone may be independent.

Then we headed into the Old Town and visited several churches, including the chapel at the Dawn Gate. We also walked through the University grounds and ended our tour at the Vilnius Cathedral. Interestingly vehicles are allowed in Vilnius Old Town while they weren’t allowed in Old Town Riga. This made navigation a bit more difficult but we managed. When we got back to our hotel we were soaked through. In fact the guidebook that was inside Mom’s purse during the entire morning was so wet that water ran out when she squeezed it!

I don’t recall what we did that afternoon so I can only imagine it involved a cryptic crossword and me trying to read The Hobbit but ending up taking a nap. During this trip Mom and I decide that we needed to underachieve. We’re used to being overachievers – in life and in travel. On this trip we were much more relaxed. We wanted to learn about the countries we were visiting but we didn’t feel the need to wear ourselves out each day. In fact our goal became “to underachieve a little more today each day!”

For dinner we went out to a mostly vegetarian restaurant which employed recovering alcohol addicts. We had salads and then dessert. We didn’t underachieve on desserts.

The next day was excursion day. Once again it was raining. We started with a trip to Grutas Park – an outdoor collection of Soviet era statues. When the Soviets finally left Lithuania they left behind thousand of statues and other pieces of propaganda. These statues were torn down and many of them eventually found their way to this private park. It was very interesting seeing statues that once sat in town squares now on display along a boardwalk in the forest. I think it shows both a good sense of humour in the Lithuanian people and a strong commitment not to forget their history. There was also a petting zoo but we didn’t visit that.

In the afternoon we drove to Trakai Island Castle. It was a quite a picturesque setting – a castle on an island in a lake. Of course it was grey and rainy but we soldiered on. The castle dates back to the 14th century and we quite enjoyed visiting the history museum housed within the castle. Especially impressive was the collection of coins that had been excavated from the castle grounds. We returned Vilnius, had a pleasant Italian dinner and then packed our bags for the next day’s flight to Poland.

Up next: Poland