Lithuania

Still having stomach discomfort I ended up skipping most of the breakfast but was definitely on the mend a lot quicker. By the time we had checked out and headed to the bus station, I was already starting to feel a bit better and the half hour bus ride was fine.

Trakai is located just outside Vilnius, and is a small town located on a thin strip of land between two lakes. At the northern end of the town on a small island just into the lake is a large castle. This castle has now become one of the icons of Lithuania and the whole area is surrounded by gift shops, cafés and boats for hire.

Little shops on the waterfront

Castle Walls

We weren't bothered about visiting the insides of the castle, but we did take a walk around the island outside the walls, and edge of the lake. If we had more time this would have been a nice place to spend the day. Having taken the mini tourist bus up there from the bus station, we walked back through the pretty village on foot, and caught the next bus back to Vilnius.

We had taken a short walk around the southern part of the city centre when we had arrived on Saturday, and today we went to explore the northern part, walking back past the Town Square, before the Presidential Palace and arriving at the Cathedral Square.

After sitting and enjoying the summer sunshine in this beautiful square, we then headed towards the Gediminas Tower, and luckily found the funicular was working, saving our already aching feet from a steep walk up the hillside.

At the top, a lot of the castle hill was undergoing renovation which meant we couldn't see the views of the south side of the city, but the views from the north and the tower were still nice.

We then headed back down, and walked passed the St. Anne's Church and through the bohemian Užupis area before finally heading back to our hotel to collect our luggage

Eventually after a busy trip we made it to the airport and without any delays headed home. Unfortunately due to our long delay on the way out it meant the holiday was a little more rushed than we would have liked, but nevertheless it was still an enjoyable trip.

The hill is a pilgrimage site for Christians, and contains more than 200,000 crosses of varying sizes. Three times in its history it has been destroyed, but each time it has been rebuilt. Once there the site was full with tourists, however most of whom had arrived on coach trips (a pity that with a bit better infrastructure many more people like us could also visit). We also decided that as we had quite a few Litas left over we would purchase a Cross and place it with a message on the hill.

Afterwards we made our long way back to the bus stop to wait for the bus, where we met a couple from Huddersfield - although my sister didn't understand anything they said, and it turns out they were doing the reverse of what we were..and were on their way to Vilnius from Riga and the rest of the Baltic states.

Once we made it back to the centre of Šiauliai, we decided to buy with the rest of the Lithuanian money we had left, food for breakfast and lunch in our next destinations - however miscounting exactly how much we had at the end meant at the tills we were short by 8 sentimas (about 2p), which luckily we let off for before boarding our minibus to Riga.

After two days of McDonalds, in Klaipėda this was not an option for us, so instead we bought dinner in a lovely supermarket going by the name of 'Iki' where they too have the same woman trapped inside the self service machines shouting "Problem in the bagging area" as in our own ASDA shops. We then took the food with us as we made our way to the beach.

After taking the short ferry across the river, we found ourselves on the Curonian Spit, one of the longest spits in the world and then we walked across the spit, which had become forested for 15 minutes before finding what can only be described as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It was so sandy and from where we were, we could just see the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

And on our way back to the apartment, we went looking for Klaipėd'a "top sight" - the tiny mouse that was about 10cm tall. Hunting around the streets trying to find it, we eventually found it right in front of our faces!

Eventually we arrived in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania at 1:30pm local time (2 hours ahead of British time) and took the bus into the city before walking to our hotel. Vilnius, like the other cities we were visiting were all on the small side, and so walking around them to see everything is an easy job. Having the rest of the first day and the whole of the second day in the first city meant we could have a relaxing start after our very early wake up, and so we decided to walk around the city centre which was the closest part of the city and then have an early night - little did we realise this meant 8pm local time!

Having had a very nice rest, the second day we woke to feel very relaxed and stress free - ideal for a long walk up a hill!

Having seen the town hall and many churches the day before, the second day involved us walking back through the city centre, past the parliament towards the Cathedral Square. Luckily today was a much nicer day with blue skies and the sun shining - ideal T-shirt weather! As yesterday it hammered down with rain as we were walking, leaving us drenched. After visiting the Cathedral, we walked up the main shopping street towards the Parliament building and the KGB museum.

The museum would give us the most saddening part of our trip, where we went down to the former torturing rooms that were in use until Lithuania broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991 - the year I was born. Although seeing the execution chamber and rooms used to torture people was not the most pleasing thing to look at, much like visiting the concentration camp in Germany I did in 2009, it is a very eye opening experience and definitely worth the visit.

After visiting the museum, we crossed the river and walked along the other side of the city, seeing what must have been our 7th bride of the day - we then crossed the bridge back into the city seeing a total of three on the same bridge! We still don't understand why...

After seeing the whole of the city our last place to visit was the Three Cross Monument on the top of the hill overlooking the city - Although it was a long walk in hot weather, the view was definitely worth it, as we could look over everything we had just seen.