Discover The Baltics: Kaipeda to Kaunas, then onto Vilnius

 

Travelling from Kaipeda to Kaunas, yesterday included a one-hour guided tour of the Cold War Museum in Plokstine, a former Soviet Union ballistic missile base. The tour took us into one of the silos where the nuclear missile would have been stored, as well as the control room and living quarters, to get a feel for life on site.

An hour and a quarters drive later, we stopped for lunch at a little café stop on the main dual carriageway en route to Kaunas. It was £3 for a bowl of hot, spicy soup and a cup of coffee, plus a large Lion Bar from the neighbouring petrol station. It was raining and very cold, the worst weather we'd experienced since we'd been here. Not only that, but it was another hour and a half from there to Kaunas to check into the hotel.

4.30-6.00pm was a walking tour of the town which included the Presidential Palace, Vilnius St (the main street), Kaunas Parochial Archcathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, the outside of the Thunder House, Town Hall and the Lithuanian Cross Crucifix with the sun and saint of Lithuania, Kaunas Castle and St Georges Church with Bernadine Monastery.

Tired, cold, hungry, and it started peeing it down, so we headed for dinner with Andrew and Helen at 'Avilys'. They made their own beer on the premises – unfiltered and unpasteurised, flavoured with honey and in a medieval cellar. One beer, like a hot toddy, comprised honey beer with extra honey and lemon heated up. As the Baltics countries appear to eat a lot of port and I hadn't tried any since I'd been here, I had a pork steak with roasted veggies (parsnip, pepper, courgette, garlic, onion) and baked spuds with a tomato-honey sauce, similar to a salsa, It was followed by a lemon pudding, pretty much the only thing on the menu without nuts but absolutely delicious.

Today it was onto Vilnius via Pažaislis Monastery and Church and Trakai Island Castle. The monastery and church were on the Kaunas Lagoon and formed the largest monastery complex in Lithuania. It is revered as one of the finest examples of Italian baroque-style architecture in Northern Europe, apparently, but I was 'churched out' and the free time would have been better spent at the next stop. Plus, it was cold.

Trakai Island Castle in the former capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a restored 14^th Century castle situated on a small island in the middle of a lake. Although we had rain, and it was still a bit chilly, the weather improved. We had a tour round the castle, then some free time to explore and grab lunch – which today was a "Klevinas" – a pork mince pastry though there wasn't much filling, so it wasn't very filling. It was named after a small tribe of people that date from Mesopotamian times and, although few and not all in Lithuania, still exist today. Not sure how complimentary being the same name as a disappointing pie is. Then it was back on the bus for our final stop of Vilnius.

After checking in and waiting out a hail storm, we wandered into the city. Although we had no set plans, our wanderings did take us past the Cathedral Basilica in Cathedral Square, the official start of the old city. In the same square was the Clock Tower. The lower part comprised one of the old watch towers from the original town wall that had been built on later to create a tall tower that resembled a lighthouse and looked a bit lost in the middle of the city. There was a statue of the founder of Vilnius, the first Grand Duke.

We found a chocolate shop-cafe that had an amazing display: a scene from a lounge made completely out of chocolate. Here we sampled an assortment of drinks and cakes. I had a ginger tea with lemon plus an 'Orange Drop Cake', Sharon had the same cake and a hot chocolate while Andy opted for a Chocolate and Brandy cake with a frothy latte.

There were some nice buildings including churches in our meander and long detour back to the hotel via some souvenir shops. There was the Iron Wolf statue by the hotel, which was from a medieval legend of the founding of Vilnius, the capital city of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania and modern Republic of Lithuania.

We rounded the day off with a Lithuanian style Chinese including noodles with vegetables, rice, battered chicken, duck and local beer. Again. Of course. We washed it down with a beer from the hotel bar; we felt it had been a busy evening, and we'd earnt it.

Discover The Baltics: Latvia to Lithuania

Our journey from Latvia to Lithuania started with a visit to the 'Versaille' of the Baltics; Rundale Palace, designed for the Duke of Courland in the 18^th Century by the same architect who designed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

After lunch, we crossed the border at Eleja into Lithuania. Our first stop was the 'Hill of Crosses', a remembrance for all those people who are 'missing' whether deported to Siberia or possibly murdered but never seen again. There we had an impromptu and unusual chat with a Franciscan monk before the long drive to Klaipeda. During the orientation walking tour of the town, we visited the harbour and old town.

We had dinner on the Restoranas "Meridianas", a restaurant on a former sailing training ship, moored at the quay of the River Dangė. It served European cuisine with Mediterranean highlights, to "emphasise the maritime identity of the port city". I had Zander fillet with purple sprouting, asparagus, carrots and local beer.

After dinner, we went up to the 12^th floor of the 2^nd building of the Amberton Hotel (we were staying in the 1^st building) for a drink and dessert and views over Klapeida. Apart from the dinner experience, we weren't too taken with the city; there were holes in the pavements, things broken in the room and dodgy lifts.

However, it was the gateway to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Curonian Spit, and that was a completely different kettle of fish. The national park is a spit of land 90km long. 50Km of it is in Lithuania whilst the remaining 40km is in Kaliningrad (Russian province formerly East Prussia). It separates the freshwater Curonian lagoon from the Baltic Sea. The lagoon is 93km long varying in width from 390m in Lithuania to 46km in Kaliningrad and ranges from 400m wide at its narrowest point on the Kaliningrad side to 4km wide at its widest point; the ferry journey is across the narrowest point.

The first stop was at the Hill of Witches; an ancient parabolic dune covered with century old pines to its 42m summit. There were lots of wooden sculptures alongside the path carved by Lithuanian artists since 1979: good on one side and bad on the other. The figures represented characters from regional folklore and included The Story-Teller, Health Chair, The Happy Fisherman, their version of George and the Dragon, Lucifer and the Gates of Hell and the card players. We had a walk along the seafront, past the cormorant colony and over towards Parnidis Dune and the Sundial, a viewpoint to the Great Dune, the second highest in Europe. Lunch was at 'Tik Pas Jona', eating smoked fish: half a butterflied mackerel and half a seabass, as fresh as anything and exceptionally tasty.

In the afternoon, we took a boat trip on the lagoon to look at Parnidis Dune and the Great Dune from the water. We could see the border with Kaliningrad marked by poles in the dunes, buoys at sea and patrolled on either side by Lithuanian and Russian Coast Guards respectively. On the way back to Kalipeda, I had another dip in the Baltic Sea, and we stopped at an Amber Museum.