Our final country of the Baltic's Lithuania. If there was to be a hierarchy to the Baltic's Lithuania was definitely at the bottom. Upon crossing the border it immediately felt poorer. Much more like Bulgaria or similar, whereas Estonia and certainly Latvia had felt more wealthy. The roads in Lithuania certainly felt a lot less cared for as well. Which is surprising given its the largest Baltic country. It was also very clear that religion played a huge part here with it much more openly visible and the people spoke a lot less English, at least in the rural areas.
On our drive through Lithuania we took a few detours into random unpaved back streets and down dodgy lanes to forest parks. But our first stop was to be the very religious and
over the top Hill of Crosses. It was a crazy sight to see and certainly my first to see quite so many crosses perhaps thousands all planted / laid at the top of a small hill.
We didn't quite know the rules of bringing crosses here, but there were many from all over Europe.
Next we stopped at the Puntukas Stone in the Anykščiai forest. The stone was once believed to be the largest stone in Lithuania. The stone was more of a gimmick stop, but while we
were here we enjoyed a walk around the raised walkway through the forest to a lookout tower. We also had a nice lunch here. After this was headed towards Vilnius stopping on route
at what is claimed to be the geographical centre of Europe. We were the only tourists to seemingly know about this place or bother stopping here. But the sight does have a large
marble plaque, monument and a bunch of European country flags. If anything it reenforced the fact that Lithuania had the weirdest / quirkiest stops for sights.
Vilnius, another Baltic old town. Another difficult drive to find the place through tight streets. A quirky Shakespeare themed hotel.
On arrival the weather was beautiful and we headed straight out on a walking tour of the main sights. Beginning with the a very steep, hot and sweaty climb up
to another hill of "three" crosses this time. Before snaking our way down through the park grounds alongside the river to the self identifying "Republic of Užupis".
This was a cool place with its own constitution and rules and claims to be independent of Lithuania. It seems the Lithuanian's encourage and enjoy this and it is
naturally separated by the river from Vilnius. It's certainly a fun place to visit. From here we ventured into the old town, drank local spirits, enjoyed a meal
before finding a wine bar back near our hotel on the main tourist strip to drink wine at till the end of the night. We ended up drinking them dry of wine first
though while buskers played on the street in front of us.
The next morning having exhausted Vilnius and with time to kill before our flight we headed to Trakai Island and the Castle. It was a sunday and this site was
far busier than we had expected with most of Lithuania it seemed having come for a day out shopping and using pedlow's on the lake. It was a nice last stop before our
flight home and we managed to enjoy nice weather before heavy rain moved in on our final drive to the airport.
We knew little about the Baltics before this trip and planned little for the trip. We just wanted to have some fun and get out and see some new places and the Baltics seemed to be a slightly different area of Europe. It was certainly a good place to unwind a bit from some of the stress. Good food and good wine and being affordable helps too. Would we go again? Probably. I wouldn't seek it out as a top place to go but there was very few negatives to them.
