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Published: August 31st 2012
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After a comfortable four hour bus trip from Riga we arrived into Vilnius at around midday. I had drawn a rough map of where our hostel was located in relation to the bus stop. We walked for around 400 meters downhill until we realised it was uphill in the other direction, you would think we would be good at this by now! We did make it to our hostel; a small apartment located in the old town however and met up with the owner and some other people staying at the hostel. The owner was extremely welcoming and informed us on all the main sites to see and spots to hang out at in the city over a local wine.
After settling in we set off on foot to explore the city, after getting such good information on the city we decided to skip the free walking tour and do our own. The central location of our accommodation enabled us to walk everywhere we needed to get to during our four day stay in Vilnius and we were able to see the majority of the sites and hang out at some cool places.
We found Vilnius to be a
sort of mini bohemia; it is a really cool arty city with an interesting and rich culture. We were able to see a wonderful view over the city from the university tower, beautiful Cathedral Square and many of the nice old buildings within old town. It is also nice to point out that Vilnius is much cheaper than Riga so we were able to eat out at some swanky bars for next to nothing which was nice for a change and the lack of touristy feel was a welcome change.
One thing that Vilnius has become famous for is vintage boutique shopping with stores littered throughout the city; Mikaela was in heaven and found some great stuff for next to nothing, apparently this stuff would cost a fortune back home, who am I to argue? We also went to a few markets and one in particular was really interesting, the collectors markets which was on a hill overlooking old town. It had many Soviet era items and also a great collection of Nazi gear, I was able to get a few photos, this was probably the first time I have enjoyed a market purely for the items even though
I still did not manage to buy anything.
The old town was also really nice and had a more genuine feel then Riga; it was actually our favourite old town in the Baltics. On our second day we made our way to another part of town called Uzupis which is a neighbourhood that has declared itself a Republic and has been recognised by the government. Uzupis is a bohemian neighbourhood with its own president, constitution (which is hilarious) and is run by artists who basically wanted more freedom. The place has some really funky art work and buildings and was interesting to walk around. Another neighbourhood we visited was Žvėrynas which is one of the older neighbourhoods in Vilnius with unique older architecture mainly consisting of wooden structured buildings.
Although Vilnius had many things for us to see and do we seemed to save the best for last, without really knowing it. We were not even going to go to the KGB museum as we had already been to two in our previous stops but decided to as we had a free afternoon. Well it really was something to remember, there were the normal displays we had seen
in Berlin and Riga but what set this place apart is that the building was actually situated on top of an old KGB prison. We ended up spending the majority of our time walking through the prison, seeing all the rooms and reading the captions explaining the atrocities that happened there. It was an eerie feeling seeing the rooms and you seemed to be able to imagine what the prisoners must have gone through during those times. Whether it was the tiny holding cells, to the padded room of torture with the straight jacket in it (see photo) to the small exercise area and finally the death room which showed a video (remake) of what a prisoner went through leading up to, during and after an execution. It is one of the best museums we have been to and I would recommend it to anyone going to Vilnius.
We also walked up to the castle district which had some fantastic views of the city and the hill of three crosses. On our last night we went to a cosy Spanish restaurant that we had to book three nights in advance as it is so popular. It was a little
house with lots of funky art, served local wine and beer and had an open kitchen, the atmosphere was great and it was a nice way to finish our time in Vilnius.
We are now on our way to Warsaw on another night bus….not really looking forward to the travel but we are very excited to be visiting Poland!
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Curious
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Hello
Hey, wonderful blog, would you mind telling me the location and/or name of the collectors market, it looks fascinating!