In September I spent more than 2 weeks in Lithuania, it was an adventure, lots of food, people and moving around the country.
Kaunas
We started by flying into Kaunas Airport, a tiny airport outside the countries second city. Landing at midnight you don’t really see much. We jumped straight into a taxi and headed out to our hotel. Monte Pacis is a converted monastery that is still home to a number of nuns, but also functions as a hotel and a restaurant.
Its a strange place on the outskirts of the town, you can get Wine and Beer but not much else, the bar is outdoors only. Fantastic if you want a relaxing couple of days
Comfortable room, decent food, peace and quiet. Pretty soon though it was time to go explore and meet some people, but being a few kilometers outside the city we had to choose, taxi or “Trolley Bus”
So we walk down the road, see this old electric trolley bus and decide to ask the driver if this is going to the part of town we are interested in. Bad call! She practically had a meltdown that someone had the cheek to ask her a question. From the banging of doors and shouting I guess that customer service was not high on her list of priorities. After she chased us away, we waited for the next bus driver who gave us a free ride just 3 minutes down the road to a bus station and told us to get on the number 9. That guy was much nicer.
So we got the number 9 trolley bus for €0.80, and that took us into the town. I got a lot of funny looks from the locals, they seemed to be wondering why would someone from somewhere else want to be here on this bus. Most of the next couple of days in Kaunas were spent visiting people. After that we moved to Panevėžys for a few days.
Panevėžys
The fifth largest city in Lithuania was our home for a number of days, we spent a lot of time in peoples homes and visiting people, and a little bit of time in the city center. We had great weather..
As it was September 1st, all students where dressed up for their first day of school, suits and dresses everywhere, the town was full of people looking their absolute best, great atmosphere, every restaurant was packed.
Rokiškis
My fiancee’s home town was next, a town with around 16,000 people only, we spent some time in family homes, visiting the gardens where people grow wonderful food and enjoy the great nature and weather as much as possible. We spent some time at the Tyzenhaus building a site which has traditional Lithuanian buildings and crafts on display.
More to come in part 2..
