Baltic trip (1): Vilnius

I had my summer holiday (finally!) three weeks ago, this time I had 12-day traveling in some Baltic countries: Lithuania (Vilnius-Klaipeda-Curonian Spit), Latvia (Riga), Estonia (Tallinn-Laheema National Park), and Finland (Helsinki, but well I am not sure whether Finland is included to what so called Baltic countries...but at least it's still in the area :-P). This year I visited some Eastern Europe countries which are just recently included to Schengen agreement (meaning no additional visa needed for me, it is kind of my celebration :-P). I still miss Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia though... hopefully I can visit Budapest this year, keep my fingers crossed :-).

Remko, my Dutch friend who is just recently returned back to the Netherlands after working in Indonesia decided to join me for this trip. We started the trip with a flight delay (yeah what a start :-P), but I was so excited with the idea of having 12-day holiday... so I did not really care at that time.. We should have been departed at 08:45 but the flight was delayed to 10:10...quite a long delay actually...I only thought that I could sleep longer :-P

We arrived in Vilnius at 13:30. After getting the free map and advices from the Tourist Information, we walked around the old town. Vilnius has a lot of churches....I mean really a lot... I can not remember the names, only one church that I find a bit different than the others: the St. Anne church which is a bit gothic. That day we had a nice dinner in Balti Drambliai, a cheap vegetarian restaurant in the old town.

The next day, we started early and went directly to the bus station for Trakai. We took bus at 09:15 and arrived in Trakai around 10:00. Trakai is a very nice small town (or village?). It was quite important place around 13th century as the Grand Duke of Lithuania lived in the island castle of Trakai for some time. Before reaching the island castle, we passed through some colorful timber houses a long the main road. Trakai also famous of its Karaite sect people. They are originally from Baghdad and were brought by Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas from Crimea in ca. 1400 to serve as bodyguards. There were about 380 Karaite families at that time and now only around 63 remain in Trakai.

The island castle is beautiful, though it's really obvious that they just recently renovated it. We visited the Trakai museum inside the castle and then we visited the ruin of Peninsula castle and had a light Karaite lunch on the way back to the bus station.

We reached Vilnius around 15:00 and visited the Gediminas hill and castle to see the view of the old town from the top of the tower. Our next destination was Uzupis area. It is kind of artist district of Vilnius which in 1998 unnofficially declared the district as a breakaway state called Uzupis republic with their own president, anthem, and 41-point constitution (zoom in my pic below to read a bit of their constitution). During April Fool's day, they even stamp the visitors' passports. We had dinner in Uzupio Kavine just by the river of the Republic's main gate. We left Vilnius the next day for Klaipeda.