I really liked Lithuania

We spent another couple of hours getting here on a bus but again it wasn't a bad trip and there is quite nice scenery. Odd thing about Lithuania is that they don't have fences (I don't think that I saw any in Latvia either). They just tether their cattle and goats and stuff and then come and move them to somewhere new when they run out of grass. Clearly no 600 head dairy herds here!

We quickly changed some money when we arrived and then headed to the hotel. It wasn't far to walk but then I ended up with the fourth floor which was a bit of a hike with my bag. We had a brief rest and then set off on an orientation walk.

We started at the Gates of Dawn which is one of the entrances through the old town's wall. The Gate also houses the Black Madonna icon which was stolen from the Crimea in the 14th century (they clearly weren't happy with bringing back souvenir teatowels!). The locals all walk in the gate, stop look up and cross themselves. You can go up into the gate and look closer but you can actually see her quite well from street level and they have the windows open all day. You then head down the main street past several large churches to the town hall which has its own square. Huge sections of the streets and squares are pulled up at the moment and are being relaid. Vilnius is the EU city of culture for 2009 and they don't have much summer to do repair work. Lots of the churches have scaffolding up at the moment too. We continued down the main drag to the university which is mightily fancy. It was built during the Reformation by the Jesuits to try and counteract the spread of Lutheranism in the Baltic States. It has several very large churches within the complex. At the far end of the main street is the Cathedral. It's a bit of a complex, with the Cathedral, a palace behind it (which is just being built at the moment to the original plans because when they first designed it they ran out of money) and the fortress on the hill. There is a large statue in the main square of Gedimino who was the founder of the original fort. There is some story about him having a dream about howling wolves which he interpreted as "build a fortress on this hill and make it really strong". It's an interesting statue in that he is standing next to the horse rather than sitting on it and he appears to be dressed as a samurai.

This was the end of our tour and it was getting to beer o'clock so I headed off with some of the others to find a pub that they had been given a two for one voucher for. On the way we had a quick look at the cathedral which is really really ugly. I don't know what possessed them. It's been done in the classical style with lots of ugly statues that just don't look right in Lithuania. It was a bit of a walk but we found it eventually in a hotel. It was tackorama with shiny everything and weird uniforms on the barmaids. We sat for a while and the boys had their free beers and we chatted for a while with a crazy Russian guy called Boris. After a while we got hungry, so we headed off to find one of the restaurants that our guide had recommended but unfortunately it was closed for renovation. We ended up in a place around the corner called Lords Steak House which was really really nice. We sat out the back in the courtyard and I had a good feed of vegies (something majorly lacking in the Russian diet). I also had some awesome cake with cowberry mousse and chocolate sauce. We even had a couple of guitarists to entertain us.

The next morning I had a really nice breakfast at Double Coffee. It was one of the few places open early on a Sunday in Vilnius. I suspect that most of the other people there hadn't actually been to bed and were having a fry up before going back to the hotel. After breakfast, I headed up the hill to look at the remains of the fortress. They have repaired one of the towers and it contains a museum on the inside and you can climb to the top of the tower to look over the town. It had some models of the old town from the 14th and 17th centuries and it really didn't change much, just got bigger. After that we walked through town to find the statue of Frank Zappa. It's totally random. In a park on the edge of the old town is a statue of Frank and a bit of a graffiti mural.

By then it was time to head back to the hotel to catch the bus to Trakai. Trakai used to be the capital of Lithuania and has  a 14th century castle and a large lake. It's also the home to the Karamai Jews. They were originally brought to Lithuania to be bodyguards and ended up staying. There were 100 originally but there are now only about 70 left. They can only marry people from their own sect so they are a bit limited and are slowly dying out. They didn't get sent to the camps during the war because the Jews don't recognise them as being Jewish and they don't have Rabbis or Synagogues so they got left alone. The village still has lots of little wooden houses that look like the Russian ones with the three windows at the front.

You walk all the way through the town to an island on the lake where the fortress is. They have had to do a lot of repairs on it because it sat in ruins for quite a while. Inside the castle courtyard they hold lots of concerts and cultural events. Most of the buildings have exhibits inside with things like coins, armour, old furniture, ceramics, clothing, a really really large number of carved pipes. There aren't many english explanations though.

We were going to go sailing on the lake but the weather was turning bad when we came out of the castle so we went back to Vilnius instead. Travelling through the suburbs on the bus you can see that Lithuania doesn't have the money that the other baltic states has. The old town may look fairly flash with its designer clothing shops and fancy cars but the suburbs are still full of shabby Soviet concrete box apartments in desperate need of renovation. I think that they will get there though because Vilnius is a nice town, easy to access, good food so I think in a couple more years it will have many more tourists. Of all the capitals, it was definitely my favourite.

That night on the way to dinner the skies opened and it absolutely bucketed. We were soaked despite coats by the time we got to the restaurant, only to find that they didn't have space for our group and we had to go back out in the weather to find somewhere else. We eventually ended up in a restaurant down the main street and it was a lovely meal so the extra walk was worth it. I had chicken in cowberry sauce and it was really nice. The cowberry is like an arctic cranberry with a little bit of blueberry thrown in. They aren't bitter like cranberries and can be eaten straight off the bush. They are usually made into jam or sauce and served with either sweet or savoury dishes.

The next day we had the morning in town before getting on the train to go to the National Park. Unfortunately Monday isn't a good day to be in Vilnius because lots of the museums and churches don't open. I went for a bit of a walk around town and crossed over the creek into the suburbs. The creek is a bit of a surprise in the city. Most cities have turned their creeks into canals but this one is just like a normal creek. It has a bit of park land on either side, lots of trees and it just meanders along the edge of the old town. It has lots of little bridges crossing over it which are covered in little padlocks. It's a tradition in the Baltics that when you get married, you have a padlock engraved with your names and the date and you put it on a bridge. The key then gets thrown over the edge into the river and the story goes that if you want to get a divorce, you have to climb into the river and find the key to unlock the padlock.

I went across the river into Usupius which had some nice statues but not really anything else to recommend going across. The buildings over there are much more shabby than the ones in the old town. I had a look at the outside of St Anne's church but it was closed so I couldn't go inside. I tried to look at the University but every gate that I came to had a sign telling me that I need to go to another gate to get in but I couldn't find it so after 5 gates, I gave up. So I headed up one of the side streets to the Church of the Holy Spirit which is impressive. It was originally a gothic cathedral but it has had a bad run with fires and marauders and things like that so it is now a late rococco church on the inside and something else on the outside. The entry is still gothic and has these scary pictures painted on the walls. You wonder if you are going the right way as you walk down this dark corridor with skeletons and demons on the walls but then you turn into the doorway and you are inside a large white and gold cathedral. They have really gone all out and have definitely tried for the award for the largest number of fat angels per square metre. They were fairly restrained with the gold though. I lit Nan a candle here, the first that I've managed in a catholic church.

Then I wandered back and used the internet for a while and then had some brunch before headed back to the hotel to catch the train.