Trakai

After visiting Vilnius, I went straight to Trakai, a little town 45 minutes away by bus. The main attraction there is a castle on an island in a lake. It sounds cool and it definitely is!

When I arrived at Trakai, I found out the castle was around 2 km away from the bus station, so I had to work quite a lot. The weather was ok and it was nice to walk by the lake. There were some boats by the shore. They were so colourful!




After a while walking, I started seeing the island castle far away behind another island's trees.



And finally, I arrived there!



The castle was beautiful and quite well preserved. At that moment, I noticed it was the cover of my guidebook! So it was a good decision to come here. Hehe... These are some of the pictures I took there.




And this is a nice panorama from the opposite coast.



After that, I came back to Vilnius, had a quick dinner and flew to Riga, in Latvia, where I slept.

Vilnius

Last Saturday, I visited Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. The weather was really bad when I arrived, with a big downpour... The Old Town, as usual was medieval and there were many churches. Lithuania was part of Poland for a long time and still has some remnants from that period: the main religion is Catholicism. Some parts of the city could be in Spain, Portugal or Italy: narrow streets with churches everywhere.



This is the main street in the Old Town, Pilies Gatve.



And this is the Cathedral.



This is Bernardinu Gatve, a pintoresque street going from near the cathedral to the beautiful church of St Anne.



This is probably the most important landmark in the city: St Anne's Church. Napoleon said he wished he could put it on his hand and carry it to Paris. He really liked it... me too :)



This is the Church of St Nicholas, very colourful...



And this is the main square. The city hall is on one side of it, just at my back. The colourful houses are the most striking features of this place.



And finally, St Theresa's Church and the Gate of Dawn, the only remaining original gate in the city.



I continued my way to the bus station and got onto a bus going to Trakai, a near-by town. That will come tomorrow!