Neringa Vilnius Scandic

... shops, craftsmen's workrooms, nice cafes and restaurants which are often times hidden and difficult to spot<br>- Vilnius Old Town, the historical centre of Vilnius, is one of the largest in Europe The most valuable historic and cultural sites are concentrated here, creating a blend of many different architectural styles.<br> - take a bus and go for a day trip or even few hours outside the town to more rural areas

... find the castle so I searched for it. Too bad I'd walked by it a few times already and had no idea it was the castle. It's SO tiny. You have to walk through a park to reach the pathway to the castle, and the park was literally a sheet of ice. I walked as slow as I possibly could, but I still wiped out. I wish someone was there to laugh with me, but I was alone and just embarrassed. Now I have a huge bruise on one side of my body. I finally made ...

... telling them, they just wanted to play. They were all piling down steep, steep curly concrete staircase, which I would probably think twice about if I was their teacher. She was even scared to go down herself and let me go first. There were also hordes of Japanese tourists snapping pictures of absolutely everything, from a brick in the corner to the castles only resident, a friendly and hungry puppy running around. It was hilarious to watch the Japanese tourist ...

... was no Asia by any conceivable standards and one couldn't say there were as many people as ants here, but it was day, the weather was sunny and people came out to bathe in the sun. So, for all those who had had their doubts earlier, Vilnius was inhabited after all. I didn't plan to visit National Museum of Lithuania. Not now, at least. I decided it would be a shame to miss such a gorgeous day and not first go to the Gedimino Hill. I had already seen how fast the sun can flee ...

... here? Lukiski&#371; aikst&#279; too saw its share of history, executions and destruction. According to good old Soviet custom, it too once bore the name of Lenin square with a huge Vladimir Ilyich monument. However, that statue got the boot in 1991 and would've certainly been consigned to a dump-site somewhere, or molten into a liquid metal, had someone not come up with an idea to open up a quirky theme park with relics from the communist past on a locality in southern Lithuania. So ...

... more comfortable, and certainly faster, to go by car. And that's what we did. Having come full circle around the Castle, doubled back the same way we had arrived, across two wooden bridges, we drove to the other side of the Galvë Lake. Uþutrakis was the estate of a certain Count Juozapas Tiðkevièius, who lived there until the Second World War. Uþutrakis manor was built 1896 in the neo-Classical style, with a romantic terrace view on the Island Castle. There is also a specially ...

... of "Forest brothers" (Resistance forces against the Soviet Union) who were killed in the building carved in them. I then entered the building and its "Museum of Genocide Victims", I was told it was free that day (which was very good timing) and went through a frankly brilliant exhibition about the Forest brothers who had gone into the forest (obvious, given the name) and fought the vastly superior Soviet forces. Thousands of the brothers, and their ...

... And, hey, if everyone else is doing it, right? (like that's ever a standard justification for me) Trakai is, in fact, quite lovely. The scenery is extremely pretty, set amidst rolling countryside liberally sprinkled with lakes and forest. While there are actually considerably more ugly concrete apartment buildings lining the road in than I expected, most of the town consists of rustic, but colorful, wooden houses. The two churches in the town center are really nothing of note, but ...

... all of the expectations for IBI. We were all so exhausted that after a 15 minute meeting we all just got on our laptops and sent out we're not dead emails and then hit the showers before crawling into bed. I would love to say that I slept like a rock but as many of you know that is rarely true. My body was actually so confused that after an hour or so I woke up ready to do whatever I needed to do next. Then i realized how early it was and that not only was there a loud group out in ...

... was finally only granted independence in 1990 after Gorbachev's perestroika. Wow - I was seven years old then. This happened in my lifetime, yet feels so far away. Its insane to think how so much has changed...but that nothing has really changed at all. We still have secret "interrogation" camps and our governments still spy on normal people using the best technology indeed. Is this the democratic West or the opressive Soviet East???