Our Last Full Day in Vilnius

Day 24 - One good development in this type of travel is how easy it is to get hotel buffet breakfasts nowadays. People expect more than a bed now and this makes this type of trip very easy. We stayed in Ibis hotels in Berlin and Warsaw. Our time in Bialystok was in a Hampton Hilton. Now, we're in a boutique hotel called Ivoleta. The breakfast area is smaller but it is still a great way to begin a day of exploration.

 

It took us a while to get to the Castle Hill because our bus took an unexpected road.  We had to walk back across the river and take another.  However we were at Castle Hill in a short time and we were dropped off near the funicular.  

The breeze was a bit cool.  Occasionally the sun was covered by the clouds.  However, it was well worth the 2€ fee for us to ride up down.  In fact, I added one of this photos as my 'representative' single image of Lithuania in my Flickr album of Countries I've Visited.  It was great to head down to Cathedral Square in order to find the 'Miracle Tile'.

I can vaguely remember the Baltic Way. (Link to Wikipedia article.)  Jay and I would have been working in Bahrain when this took place and I'm sure that many people our age, from outside this area, may have forgotten about the fall of the Soviet Union. 

We did want to find the location here where the human chain of people 490 kilometers holding hands stretched to the capital of Tallin, Estonia. The so called, Miracle Tile can be found near the front of the Cathedral where the first person stood!

   

What a nice way to remember our time in Vilnius, Lithuania!

Exploring More of Vilnius

 

Day 23 - Today started with clouds and rain. One of the first things we did was visit the Old Town Public Market building as it's just a few hundred meters from our hotel. 

I'm putting the cat here for a reason. We had not seen a single roaming cat on this trip after more than three weeks. We have friends who recently took a Mediterranean cruise and provided a cat photo from every single port. We love how in Turkey cats are a part of public life, even in the cities. On the other hand, getting from Berlin though Poland seemed a bit of a cat-free zone. We noted cat food in the stores and on TV ads, but we witnessed none, except in a travelling box someone had on a train. So, this cat in the public market came as a bit of a surprise.

 

We used our transit passes a lot today.  Sometimes it was hard to figure out where we'd end up, but it was easy and a great way to look around.  We arrived by train and will leave on a bus, but ended up at the Vilnius airport today because of a bus we were on.  We also went far across the river out towards the modern sprawl of the city.

We always ended up being some place we wanted though.

We visited both new and old.

We got to some places in the evening that we'll take more time to explore tomorrow too.  This city really does have a lot to discover.

We have definitely needed three days just to get a 'feel' of the capital city here. Tomorrow will be our last full day in Vilnius, Lithuania.  We could easily spend a month, I'm sure!

A Few Glimpses of Our First Day in Vilnius

Day 22 - We started our first full day in Vilnius by returning to the train station. We only have three full days here and want to head to Riga, Latvia, our final destination of this trip. As Jay had seen online, the only daily train leaves at 6:30 am. Although that might work for someone having business, it was too early for us. 

So while at the station, we found the office for local transit and bought three-day passes so we can hop on the regular and electric bus system. We noted that the size of just Old Town is expansive. In smaller cities, we've sometimes relied on only walking but here we're sure it's going to be a combination of transit and exploring on foot. 

Next, we walked a short distance directly to the bus station. We got bus tickets for a 10:30 departure to Riga for Friday. 

 

We proceeded to find a bus going down towards Old Town.  Jay likes looking inside churches.  Here, there places of worship in every direction one turns.  Sometime when trying to take a photo of one facade, one can see two others in the background.  Some are Orthodox and others Roman Catholic as is about 75% of the current population.  Of course, other religions are here now and were in the past.  In fact, prior to the Holocaust, there were hundreds of years of a thriving local Jewish culture.  

 

 

Having unlimited bus passes meant we kept getting on buses even though we were a bit unsure of the destination.  Sometimes we got off near something important, other times we passed things that we'd read about online.  In the late afternoon we went out again exploring.

Białystok to Vilnius

 

Day 21 - We bought our Białystok-to-Vilnius train tickets in Warsaw and didn't realize what a bargain we would get. We boarded our Polish train at 10:30 am and it travelled to a town of Suwałki on the Polish side of the border. 

For some reason, perhaps track renovation, we had to disembark and board three buses. We were driven for more than one hour across the non-existent EU border with Lithuania. Mockava is not really anywhere. It was in the middle of woods on a dirt road. However, we were promised that a Lithuanian train would come to pick us up.

 

It arrived on the dot and we continued to our destination in the capital of Lithuania. 

 

We checked into Hotel Ivoleta at around six o'clock pm.  Oh, we had to change the clock an hour ahead for this part of our trip.  We were pretty tired although we hadn't done much except watch the scenery from train and bus windows today.  We couldn't help but walk a little about the Vilnius historic city center. (This is a Wikipedia link.)

 

We will have our work cut out for us seeing this city in three days!