We made it to our final Baltic country of Lithuania so I can officially say we have completed the Trifecta. It seems like everyone we met here were visiting all 3 Baltic countries so it doesn’t seem that unique or unusual. Many people were also visiting Finland which is where we started our trip this year. Vilnius is a nice city but it doesn’t have quite as much as the old town charm of the other Baltic capitals of Tallinn, Estonia and Riga, Latvia. It is still another UNESCO World Heritage Site and has a lot of beautiful old buildings, churches and history. We greatly enjoyed it!
The city is also working hard to make it even nicer. The sidewalks in the historic district seemed brand new and were a big improvement over the cobblestones we tripped over in the other 2 capitals. The ones that didn’t look new were under construction. It seemed like there were crews everywhere working on the making better sidewalks, roads and squares. The town hall was right out in front of our Airbnb but it had scaffolding all over it. When everything is complete, this town should be able to compete with the other Baltic capitals for the tourism crown.
In the square near the town hall is a video portal that is connected to 6 other cities, this was actually invented and started in Vilnius. We first saw one of these in Dublin and it is a fantastic idea. There was a steady stream of people that would stand in front of the portal as it switched between all 6 of the other cities. Everyone was waving and smiling and the people were from many places around the world- Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Philadelphia, England and Manila. People were fascinated by it.
August is the best time to visit the Baltics and many of our nomad friends know that. We have been having several meetups with old and new friends. In Vilnius, we had dinner twice with other travelers.
One of the interesting neighborhoods is the artistic community of Uzupis along a small river near the old town. A bunch of “creative” people declared independence on April Fools day a few years ago and created their own “free country” . It reminded us a bit of the Free Christiana neighborhood in Copenhagen. Lots of art everywhere and some interesting laws for their neighborhood. It is all a big joke but it is still a cool neighborhood to walk around with a lot of low brow art galleries. We really liked the swing that someone stealthily installed under the bridge and has become really popular.
We did the “free” walking tour, saw a couple of art museums but our biggest outing was to the Trakai castle outside of town. It was just a 40 minute bus ride to visit some restored castles from the 14th century. It is a popular stop for Lithuanian visitors and we didn’t want to miss it. The main castle is on a little island which makes for some good photography. It also had a museum of sorts inside with some of the normal stuff you usually see in castle museums…. and also some fun torture devices.
As usual, we are really glad we visited here, but we are ready to move on. We are leaving the Baltic countries and heading to our 5th new country of this trip – Poland!!!!