A Brilliant Weekend in Vilnius!

All of us!
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We departed for Vilnius for a long weekend away from London, the experience started with a very crazy taxi driver that at one stage was driving along the footpath as the traffic was quite bad, and after almost running someone over we actually did arrive safely at the hotel...

The following day we got up early for breakfast and headed out to the city of vilnius!  We started at St Anne's Church and then headed down to the Cathedral to the 'miracle' tile which it is believed that if you spin around three times and jump three times and make a wish, it will come true..  Now  I am not sure if wishes actually come true but it was quite amusing watching everyone spinning and jumping around in Cathedral square...  Even a group of students that we overheard amused about the 'Chocolate Man' that was among us, which became a running joke for the rest of the trip..  Our next stop was the Observatory which gave amazing views over Vilnius, it was quite high up so we caught a cable car up the steep hill.  For lunch we went to a Lithuanian restaurant where we had an amazing traditional lunch and made a new friend, a cat that we named 'Dumplings' who hung around our table.. We were quite exhausted after our day so headed back to the hotel, Chris and Matt went in the hunt for somewhere to watch the England vs Macedonia match whie Jules and I had a power nap before heading out for the night.

Jules & 'Chocolate Man'
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The night started off at a bar called Prospekt where they were serving us doubles (you can imagine how that turned out), we even took a self breathalizer test that the bar provided and found out that we were all close to 2.0 when the legal limit is 0.4 - not entirely sure how that one works...  We headed off to an Irish bar before heading back to the hotel which was very busy and it was quite amusing to talk to the locals in Vilnius to realise that the only thing they knew about Australia is that is where 'Crikey' comes from....

Chris, Jules & Matt
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After getting out of bed quite late we took a bus out to Trakai which is about 45 minutes outside of Vilnius and home to Trakai Castle.  It was absolutely amazing, we had lunch at a restaurant right on the river looking out towards the castle.  We then thought it was a good idea to hire pedal boats as the castle was on an island and you could take your boats all the way around it.  We started off with a boat race, boys vs girls - needless to say that the girls were the winners and the boys blamed their 'doped dolphins' - any excuse...  Julia and I decided it was a good idea if we steer our boats into the reads, clearly not a good idea as we almost got stuck in there!!!  Was very amusing though and neither of us could stop laughing!!!  After pedalling around the castle and under a very small bridge that we had to duck under we thought we would return the boats and go inside the castle.  It was very amazing, the castle was built back in 1321 but was restored in 1966, there were many photos of the old castle basically in ruins in the museum.  We spent about 2 hours roaming about the castle and looking at the thousands of artifacts before heading back to the bus station.  The bus journey back was very amusing, it was like typical rush hour in London where everyone was standing, but with a difference - the bus drivers in London actually stop taking people when the bus is full...  Not this one though, at one point there were actually people squashed up against the door and everytime the bus stopped about 10 people had to get out to let the ones from the back off - interesting...

The 'Winners'
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We arrived back to the hotel and picked out a nice Steakhouse for our last dinner, we all had quite alot of Lithuanian money left that was pointless changing back to pounds, the place was so cheap that I didn't even spend £100 while we were there - and we basically ate and drank like kings & queens for four whole days.  We had another amazing meal at the Steakhouse which included starters, mains and drinks - the bill came to £12 each - I want to move here!?!  We even found Chris some 'Chocolate Girls'..

The 'Losers'
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As we passed the casino it literally sucked us in - strange how they can do that?!?  I actually found poker machines that are the same as the ones in Oz and not those reel machines so it was great!!!  I then tried my luck on the Roulette wheel, had some very good luck and won quite a few times!  I only managed to spend £10!

So the end of our trip finally approached and we had to head to the airport to head back to London, it was very sad, we all had a brilliant weekend!