Vilnius, Lithuania

Each of the Baltic capitals is slightly different, but similar enough that we were getting restless by the time we got to Vilnius. There’s a lot of grand churches and cathedrals in Vilnius. The old town is less distinct from the city proper here as well, which has pros and cons - you feel like you’re in a city rather than a disneyfied historic centre, but it’s also less photogenic. If I had time for just one, I’d recommend going to Riga, but that’s just my preference. You can’t go wrong with any of them :)

Over our three days here we saw the main tourist sites, including about a dozen churches, went up the Bell Tower of St John’s, and walked to the top of Gediminas Castle Tower.

We did all four tours of the National Museum of Lithuania, which was very extensive and in a great setting amongst the excavated walls of the old castle. Tour I covered the history, archaeology and architecture of Lithuania. Tour II was through reconstructed rooms of the castle. That took us about two hours, after which we had lunch in the museum café. We walked quickly through Tour III (weaponry, music) and then took our time with Tour IV, a special exhibit featuring old churches from Poland and Lithuania (which were a combined country around 1700’s ???). There were very few other people. The museum path winds around like an IKEA showroom and there was a possibility we might get lost and never find the exit. In the middle of Tour II you go up to the 6th floor observation deck which has great views of the city.

We also went to a couple art galleries, including MO Museum, which was designed by architect Daniel Liebeskind.

We had booked dinner for the three evenings we were in Vilnius, although as it was Sun-Mon-Tues the restaurants were mostly empty and we didn’t need them. We had the 4-course tasting at Ertlio Namas (pretty good), a 3-course set menu at Lauro Lapas (meh), and lastly at Sonnets, (our hotel restaurant), which we really enjoyed.

The weather cooperated for us here - it was comfortable and sunny the whole time. There was a heat wave coming in when we left, with temperatures going over 30C. (We’ll get the heat in Minsk and Kiev).

We didn’t get the Vilnius Card. The 72-hour pass was 35 EUR and we spent about 20 EUR on admissions. Unless you’re speeding through everything, it would be hard to make the Vilnius Card worthwhile.

Overall we liked our time here in Vilnius. We spent more time relaxing than in the other capitals as there was less on our list to see, there’s a nice vibe here to just kick back and do nothing.