Land of Churches and Crosses

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Here is a tip when traveling, don't extend your stay at a place before you see if the only way to get to your next destination is by bus that only comes three days a week and leaves at 11pm. That is what happened to me when I tried leaving Warsaw and go to Vilnius. I did some reading about my next stop of Vilnius, Lithuania and read that you had to get there by bus. I spoke with the lady working at the hostel and she told me that you have to take the bus to Vilnius because there is no train that goes up there, and that the bus does in fact leave at 11pm. She assured me it was safe and that people had done it before and come back. I guess she took my facial expression of disgust, from losing money on a bed that I would not be sleeping in, as fear for riding a bus. I did some research online and found that three companies had buses from Warsaw to Vilnius and there was a train but you had to get off four times and change trains so I bought my ticket for a 7 hour overnight bus ride. This wasn't the first overnight bus I had taken but by far this was the worst.

The bus ride there I think had an influence on my mood in the country it seemed nice and the people from what I could tell were fine, I just wasn't in the mood for any of it. I got in early and and walked around the city and in Lithuania they have this place called the Hill of Crosses, well don't be fooled, it's not in Vilnius. It seems like an interesting place you should Google it. I went to a place called Three Crosses thinking they had three to begin with and then people just started adding there own (expecting Hill of Crosses). Turns out I was wrong and I walked up this hill to see three crosses, they were there to remember three Christian missionaries who were martyred by pagans a long time ago. To be honest I didn't think it was worth walking up the hill to see what I thought I was going to see, so when I found out it wasn't even the place I figured it really wasn't worth going to another city to see the actual Hill of Crosses. The one bright point was a town outside the city called Trakia. It was a nice place and they have this really cool castle. I know I've been to a lot of castles but this one was more like a real castle and it had a shooting range for bow and arrows, crossbows, and old looking guns that shot pellets. They were having a medieval fair there at the time and it only cost like a dollar to get in, and I didn't need some audio device to tell me all about the place. It is in my top 10 castles for sure.

After spending a couple days in Lithuania I got out of there rather quickly and made my way into Latvia. And just like this blog entry Lithuania was a bit of a let down.

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