Blogs from Vilnius, Lithuania, Europe - page 8

We arrived at the bus station in Vilnius in the late afternoon. The station is just south of the old town which is rather dodgy and unfortunately we are staying at an apartment quite close to it. We eventually find the apartment which is in a gated community along with some crumbling, falling down little huts which we later discover are old soviet wood storage huts. The apartment is actually quite nice and new and modern luckily. We then walked through the old town, past many of the 65 churches in the old town to find a nice restaurant for dinner, and surprisingly there is plenty of choice. After dinner we took a walk up to the top end of the old town to see the imposing Vilnius cathedral and walk up the hill to Gediminas ... read more

It's the last day and we all had a sleep in as we weren't expected until 11am at Green Hall to pick up the bikes - which was nice as the last few days had left their marks on different parts of my body (those dratted Mosquitoes didn't help!). We decided to walk and took advantage of the fleeting sun as we wound our way down one of the main streets. At least a dozen Lithuanian riders (mostly from Barclays) turned out including Karolis and Vitas from my team. Gintares was still the photographer and escort for the day so he was driving up front. We attached Rugute flags to the bikes and gently approached the Rugute house after about 5km ride through Vilnius. We were met by the familys and friends of Edita and Dianoras ... read more

We had a very early start this morning. We had breakfast at 07:00 and were on the road for 07:50 heading out of Kaunus and south. The starter was a real wake up call, firstly over a load of cobbled roads and secondly up a fairly steep hill away from the river that runs through Kaunas. Then we entered some typical country roads with gentle climbs heading for the Baltic Highlands where Vilnius resides. We had about 90+ miles to cover today and needed to be in Vilnius for 17:00. The day started well and got better, we made excellent time and with regular breaks had soon put 30 miles under our wheels. This ensured we pasted Preniai very quickly and headed out on the A16. We hit the highlands with a vengence after about 30 ... read more

So here we are. The journey out was pretty smooth. The flight was about 50 mins late taking off. Arrived in Vilnius to a very warm welcome with tradditional bread and a yoghurt / sour milk drink. Putting the bikes back together went quite smoothly with minimal / no damage to the bikes and bags. There was a slight panic at the airport when the carousel stopped and the shutters came down with 3 keen men waiting for luggage left standing scratching their heads, but the belt started up again and the bikes came out to everyones great relief, well done wizzair. Once we had been welcomed and had a bite to eat at Barclays head office in Green Hall we set off. An initial few hills soon levelled out to become a steady ride to ... read more

Okay, so we landed at Vilnius International airport at 13:15, 30 minutes later than planned. Not an issue with WizzAir, more a problem with Luton's ground crew. Never mind, such is life. After waiting for ages for our bikes to arrive at luggage reclaim we had almost dispaired of them ever turning up. Then the last three bags came off, our lovely bikes. Dragging our bikes along we staggered out of the airport to be met by Vitas, Gintaras and Vija, our colleagues from Barclays. They had a arranged plenty of transportation and shipped us effortlessly to Green Hall, our starting point. This was where we had our first surprise, a crowd of staff, their families and (it turned out) Rugute families were waiting to great us, together with more Camera and Camcorder wielding folk than ... read more