Vilnius, Lithuania

Treas and Me in Vilnius

What is there not to love about Lithuania and in particular Vilnius. It has a lovely old town with cobble streets and is nicknamed the Northern Jerusalem. It also has a monument to Frank Zappa!




It also has some really weird art!

We started our day in Vilnius by seeing Frank and then visiting The Cathedral which had been rebuilt after the war and I did not like it as much as St Anne's Church. However it does have a very special tile near it. Next to the Cathedral there is a small coloured tile that say 'stebukla' (miracle). This title marks the spot where in 1989 2 million people from the Baltic states formed a human chain that stretched from this tile to Tallinn, Estonia to protest against the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States! How amazing is that! A human chain that covers three countries! The protest did not work as the Baltic states were not granted there freedom until 1991.

The Cathedral, everyone in the right corner is standing around the stebuklas tile.

St Anne's church!

I am not the only one who likes St Anne's, apparently Napoleon wanted to take this little church with him back to Paris. It is made out of something like 30 different types of brick! That means the pretty little patterns on it where not cut into the brick after it was built but the bricks were made like that. WOW!

After looking at churches we went to the Upper castle for a view of the city. It took us a while to find a way up the hill but the view was wroth it.

The next day we took a bus to Trakai. It was the former capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and wroth a visit. It is located on a peninsula between two lakes. It is home to two castles the better of the two being the Island Castle. It was great. We spent the day looking around Trakai and the island castle and timed it perfectly to get our bus back!However everyone else also decided to take that same bus so we could not get on.

The Island Castle

I swear I didn't do it

Both Treas and I had been talking about how much we wanted to go hitching and how eastern Europe seems like a good place for it so we hitched a ride with these two guys in a five seater Ute. The younger one spoke a bit of English and we chatted to him for most of the ride. They then dropped us off in the city and told us the best places to go and see in Vilnius. They were so nice!

After our ride back to town we went to see the old Russian church. I still love the look of Onion domes.

That night we took another night bus this time to Riga, Latvia!!