Vilnius

25/10/13 - 27/10/13

Vilnius - Lithuania 

After a 9 hour bus ride on a comfortable Simple Express bus complete with personal multimedia screens and WIFI, we arrived in the Baltics for the last leg of our journey. We stayed in a homely- like hostel where we were treated to free waffles for breakfast every morning. We went out for a traditional Lithuanian meal that night. We started with some beer snacks, which included some delicious fried black bread with lots of garlic, local cheese, bacon and smoked pigs ears (we were not too keen on those). We then had the local dish of potato dumplings filled with meat drizzled with a sour cream and crackling sauce. It tasted good but left us feeling stuffed and unhealthy for the next 2 days.  That night we went out to a few bars with the people from our hostel.

sliced pigs ear anyone?

The next day, Arvi was a bit worse for wear and wanted a bed day so I ventured out for a walk around Old Town. I walked up the hill to the Castle, one of Vilnius’s main attractions. From the top you can enjoy a beautiful view of old town and the rest of the city.  After a long afternoon nap we headed out at around 12am for some food and a look around.

On our last full day we spent the day sight seeing. We visited the castle again, walked through the beautiful parks and visited Užupis, a district of Vilnius which became an independent republic in 1997. As well as being an UNESCO heritage site it also has its own constitution that is printed in many different languages. Some of the articles are quite strange such as ‘A dog has the right to be a dog’ and ‘Everyone has the right to love and take care of a cat’.

Constitution of Užupis

We spent our last night in Vilnius eating sushi and watching foreign films with some people in the hostel.  Next stop, Riga

- Leah