Pastries and parks, the cheap and cool way to see Vilnius

Zagan the motorhome is still parked up in the shade at Downtown Forest Hostel and Camping (N54.67793, E25.30221), and with the midday temperature around 27°C, he is very glad of the shade. Yesterday evening our washing was in and out more than the hokey cokey, as thunder rumbled in the air and rain spat down intermittently in an attempt to cool the hair-dryer hot air. Once it had finally settled into a beautiful evening we headed off for another look around the city. As we’re only minutes away from the old town it would be rude not to.

We’d picked up a great map from likealocal.com at the backpackers which has loads of hints and tips of things to see from locals. So as well as the usual churches and museums, it lists other great stuff to see; we’ll be certain to get these for other cities we visit. With the setting sun turning the sky pink, the city became cooler, both in temperature and people hanging out in the bars and restaurants. We set off in search of a cool American rock star and found him hanging out in a glorified car park – where else.

Frank Zappa – it seems his non-conformist attitude got him on the Soviet banned list, so in Lithuania he became more popular and a symbol of freedom!!

We followed our map to an English pub complete with mini-coopers and a red phone box. We stopped short of buying an ‘Admiral’s pint’ of beer which is actually larger than a UK pint, before heading back home and over the bridge to the other side of the river, or in Lithuanian the Uzupis district. As it was still too hot in Zagan, I slept on the bench with the side window open all night, which we wouldn’t have been able to do if we’d free camped in a car park.

You are now entering the republic, be arty and smile!

This morning Jay made the most of the free coffee before another walk around town. The sun was already high in the sky and the temperature rising, so I worked out a few things to see from the map and we built our tour around the parks. We started at the Bastion, which gave another skyline view of the city, this time it included the skyscrapers of the new town.

We then wandered over to the Gates of Dawn, which sound like something from Game of Thrones, but is in fact the only surviving gate of the old city walls and one of the most important religious monuments in Lithuania. The church there has a painting in it which is believed to have miraculous powers. I wouldn’t say anything miraculous happened to us, but we were certainly fortunate as we walked under the chapel to the sound of pilgrims singing hymns to the painting of the Virgin Mary.

Feeling peckish our next stop was Hales Market, a huge place full of wonderful-smelling fresh fruit where knock-off handbags sit side by side with herbs and cooked meat. I bought us a Kibinai, as we didn’t get to try them when we were at Trakai (chicken and mushroom – so not entirely sure it was authentic Karaite cuisine) which we took to the nearest park and found a bench in the shade to eat it.

Outside Hales Market

I love how they list their opening hours

After that the rest of the day was spent grabbing snacks, pastries and drinks and chilling out in the numerous little parks around the city. Our map took us from little courtyards that lead to the back of the Presidential Palace (couldn’t imagine that happening at Buckingham Palace) to tiny alleyways adorned with pieces of art that pay homage to writers and poets who have influenced Lithuanian literature.

Looks like the president isn’t big on gardening – he’s had the place block paved

Literatu Street

After an hour or so we are back at Bernardine Gardens which is where we started from yesterday. Rather than walk around we made the most of the shade and chilled out there to watch the world go by.

Once we had decent grass marks on our legs we wandered back to Zagan and went to the bar of the backpackers for a well deserved cold beer (and cider for me). Around us people half our age were lugging huge rucksacks and laptop bags – when did that start? – into taxis to continue their journeys, tomorrow we’ll just put our stuff away and let off the handbrake. While the backpacker lifestyle is great, and we may do some of it in the future, at the moment I am thoroughly enjoying being a motorhomer.

Old farts pretending to be backpackers

Ju x