Lithuania - August 2005

Villainous Vilnius

The Guinness

We found Guinness at the Mano Kavine, a café bar. It was poured by cheerful Sveta who picked the next destination out of the hat for me – Tirana, Albania. This was greeted with a stunned silence from Margaret and the boys – I guess they wanted Paris or Amsterdam!

Enjoying a Guinness at Mano Kavine

Sveta picking out my next destination

Getting There

Flew Lufthansa from Birmingham via Frankfurt.

Team Makeup

A family trip with Margaret, Sean and Gareth

Accommodation

I spoilt the family and we stayed at the Ratonda Centrum hotel rather than a youth hostel.

Food

At Zemaiciu Smukli, a popular traditional western Lithuanian restaurant we had the zemaiciu blynai – a variety of stodgy potato pancakes filled with things like cheese and meat.

At the Yellow Submarine cafe, whose walls were full of Beatles posters, we went for the local dish of what turned out to be deep fried chicken, cheese and vegetables that any Glaswegians would have adored.


Sightseeing highlights

Churches galore.

A Russian Orthodox topped with its emerald green onion roof.

St Anne’s, a red brick building completed in 1582 in a heavy Gothic style.

Church of St Peter & Paul, full of two thousand mouldings from floor to ceiling, some not the sort you’d expect to see in a church.

Going to the revolving restaurant at the top of the 325 meter tall TV tower

Out of the City

We went to Trakai on an ancient bus to see the attractive red brick castle.

Trakai Castle

Trakai is also home of a community of Karaim people, originally from Turkey, who practice a branch of Judaism. They were originally invited to the area by the Lithuanian Grand Duke to act as his guards in about 1400.

Quirky moments

Wooden scaffolding

A statue of Frank Zappa

Bumping into, almost literally, Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas and his wife, being asked to stand aside by the biggest minder I have ever seen. It’s been quite a year for seeing Prime Ministers. In the past 12 months I’ve also seen the Bulgarian premier driving into the parliament building, the Faroe Islands Premier making a state of the union speech and Tony Blair driving past with the Queen driving up the Mall.

Algirdas Brazauskas and his rather large minder behind

Coming down with a villainous Vilnius virus on the last night, struggling home and spending the next week in bed with gastroenteritis.

Memories

The slapping noise car tyres going over the cobbles.

Hen and stag parties wandering the streets.

Being invited to dance by a Lithuanian folk dance band (fortunately there are no pictures of my efforts).