Vilnius

Saturday, August 2, 2014

A move day combined with a number of tourist activities. In fact more tourist activities than we had planned. We left Riga and headed to the Hill of Crosses. Although the hill is modest in size, the number of crosses present on it is not. The place seems to be more of a tourist attraction than a place of religion. The Hill of Crosses was not really on the way to Vilnius, so we headed east along small dirt roads to regain the main road south to Vilnius. About 40kms before our destination, we took a little detour to the Center of Europe. There is much debate of exactly where the center of Europe is, with many places claiming to be this hypothetical point. Although the site we visited seemed to have a pretty good justification based on a study done in 1989. The last tourist activity for the day was a visit to Europos Parkas, which is an Open Air Museum of the Center of Europe. The park is full of outdoor sculptures and we wandered around enjoying it all. It was a lot of fun.

We stopped at a hyper-market to pick up some food supplies before making it to our studio apartment. An apartment where we can cook our own dinner, yihaaaa!

Hill of Crosses – Where one finds crosses
Hill of Crosses – Even more Crosses
Center of Europe
Europos Parkas – Television Sculpture.
Europos Parkas – Rocks

Sunday, August 3, 2014

We spent most of the day wandering around the Old Town of Vilnius, yet another UNESCO Heritage Site. The Old Town is very very nice. And being a Sunday it was not too busy. We had a list of Top 10 things to see and we managed to see the first 6 on the list. And along the way just enjoyed walking around a medieval old town.

Stephen cooked dinner and prepared a very special treat. Tinned Baked Beans mixed with tinned sweet corn kernels, heated and served over freshly cut bread with slices of cheddar cheese to provide both taste as well as a classy look. Very nice indeed.

Old Town
Vilnius Cathedral
“Man as a Masterpiece”
View from Vilnius Castle Complex
St. Anne’s Church