Hotel Sudavija Kaunas

So, nachdem wir dann aus Trakai wieder weg fahren sind wir durch die REgenfluten nach Kaunas gefahren. Tomas hat dann abgecheckt wo wer hingeht und dann sind wir durch die Kaunasser Innenstadt spaziert.
Zur Zeit ist Vilnius zusammen mit Wien Kulturhauptstadt Europas. Aus diesem Grund sind Unsummen nach Vilnius geflossen, nicht ganz neidlos an Kaunas vorbei. Daher hat das studentische Kaunas ihr eigenes Kulturfestival organisiert und ...

... on with the boring stuff, like washing the kids and clothes.

We have crossed Europe, shedding socks as we go. I know we left a pair in northern Poland, and one on a beach in Latvia. I'm pretty sure we lost two more in Tallinn. Now, in Lithuania, I discovered I have gained a pair of Nick's boxers, which somehow failed to fly home ...

... in a mixture of languages not including English, but relying heavily on hand signals. He made it quite clear that the route chosen was wriggly and slow. He even used that internationally understood description "Scheisse".

I chose a new route with my new friend's help and set off. I had plenty of time, but I was still un-nerved when a few minutes later my phone bleeped to tell me I'd gone through a new time zone and I had one hour less to get to Kaunus airport to ...

... turned off earlier that morning. Triangulating our position we estimated that we still had 200 miles to drive on some very small roads !!! After a few hours of driving at high speed, Marie noticed a dodgy sound coming from underneath the car. We stopped and couldn't work out where it was coming from. Our simple analysis was "well as long as the brakes work, then it should be ok..." Our ...

As usual we were driving blind, but before we went, Lucy was told by a local Lith girl who she works with, "if you are in Liths, make sure you go to Trakai Castle". And being the tourists that we both are, how could we resist !!! Trakai Castle Set in a national park, the area around was really nice, and from a distance, the castle looked awesome, so we parked up and hit the pathway ...

... while a conversation in Lithuanian unfolded on the phone, and I didn't understand a single word. It all took a few minutes and then the girl finally addressed me in English, in that somewhat distant Lithuanian way: "There is a room with shower and toilet in the town centre for eighty litas, breakfast included." I nodded: "Fine." She got briefly back on the phone and soon the matter was closed. "How do I get there?" I asked. "Someone will come here to pick you up," she answered ...

... cigarette in 20 tongues - I just wish the word 'shower' was in any of their vocabularies. So, back to the topic at hand - this kebab looked shifty from the word go and in the end it tasted so bad I had to choke it down. IT HAD NOTHING ON THE KEBABS IN BERLIN. The other highlight of Kaunas was going to this medical university into their mini museum. They had so many pickled dead babies, it stopped being funny. I will spare you the photos I took ...

I got to Kaunas yesterday. Had booked a room in a guest apartment through Litinterp, a B&B/apartments agency, so I went to their office and got taken to an apartment right in the middle of the old town. Great location, nice apartment. There's an old dear there who doesnt speak english but babbles away quite happily in Lithuanian shows me how to use the shower etc and all is well so i dump my stuff and head out to see the sights........jump to further down ...

... was just a road and the trees disappeared into the distance. There were stretches of farmland but these didn't seem to last long. At 09:22 we arrived in Kaunas. Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania but it didn't feel like it. Perhaps because all I saw really was the old town. I did go down a lot of other streets that had high street brands of clothes and many bars but it still didn't feel like a big city or one so important. However ...

Located on Lake Galve, about 20 miles outside of Vilnius, is the 15th century residence of the Lithuanian Grand Dukes, called Trakai Castle. The whole place is Disneylandish in nature, as its this immacculately maintained orange/red brick castle, even though its from the 1320's, on an island in the middle of a clear blue lake...actually ...