A Lithuanian Blowout!

Day 92 

Despite being very close to the centre of town, it was a quiets nights rest in our secured car park in Vilnius. 

A day earlier we had dropped into the local tennis courts to see whether it was possible to hire rackets and a court. The young girl informed us that it was possible and would only cost about 10 Lithuanian dollars (about £3), which was extremely cheap. 

We headed back to the courts early that morning and a different girl was on and we soon discovered that the other girl failed to tell us the cost of hiring a court, which was another 65 LITS (£15) so we decided to give it a miss and take a bike ride out to the Vilnius TV Tower, which could be seen a little way off in the distance from the city centre.

We rode down the edge of the river, however, I don’t think the Vilnius town council has decided to spend to much money on the embankment, as it was quite a bumpy ride and in certain places had caved in all together, or the concrete had worn away so much that the reinforcing metal was exposed.

Who would have thought a bit of Pienas in
your morning coffee could taste so good?

The dodgy river embankment in Vilnius.

The whole point of visiting the tower was to see the memorial to the 14 people that were killed by Russian soldiers there in 1991, after the peaceful uprising in Lithuanian. 

We finally made it to where we thought the turn off was and could see the tower directly in front of us, but a fair way off in the distance. We rode through a Vingis park, which was just on the outskirts of Vilnius and had a large amphitheater and sporting grounds. 

Despite looking at the park maps and taking a number of routes, we couldn’t physically get to the TV Tower, although it appeared only 500-1000m away from us!

With that failed attempt we headed back to the van through the clogged Vilnius traffic and then set off on our way out of the city towards a small town called Trakai.

Trakai is famous for its large red brick castled, nestled out in the middle of a lake and also the Karaite people, who originated from Baghdad and practice strict adherence to the Torah. About 380 Karaite families were brought to Trakai, by Grand Duke Vytautus in around 1400 to serve as bodyguards and since then there numbers have fallen with only about 280 believed to survive in Lithuania today. Given they came from Baghdad though, I’m not sure they would have been around much longer anyway.

Across from the Trakai Castle.

Claire was quite excited about
walking around the castle.

Bridge over to the Trakai Castle.

The Trakai castle was in very good condition for it’s age and we took a walk around the outskirts of it. There were a number of people renting out boats and also selling fruit, mushrooms and berries that had been picked from the local forest. One quite amusing seller was a young girl who didn’t look to be any older than about seven or eight flogging raspberries while talking on her mobile phone! The next ‘Apprentice’ maybe?

With Trakai done and dusted, we then decided to make our way out of Lithuania and start heading south through Poland and the Czech Republic so we were on time to arrive in Munich for the 2^nd September to collect Claire’s Mum and Sister.

Rather than exchanging our LITs for Zloty or Czech Krones we decided to stock up on supplies at one of the cheap Lithuanian supermarkets. It’s quite difficult trying to use up extra currency, when you don’t think you need anything, but after about an hour we managed to spend every last cent and then continued south to Poland.

As we got further and further south the weather got a lot better, with blazing sun and much warmer temperatures. As we were travelling down a single lane highway near the border of Poland, we had one of our rear tyres go off like a shotgun.

Thankfully, the tire blowout happened just 100m from a bus stop, so we were able to quickly pull off the road and into a safe spot without doing too much damage to the rim. Despite her initial shock, Claire quickly got excited at the thought of using the European Vehicle Safety kit she had purchased months ago and donned the high visibility vest and put out the reflective triangle – mandatory equipment in the EU.

One shredded tire.

Yep, that's pretty much buggered.

Finally getting the spare tire out
from under the van and on.

Claire ensuring safety standards are upheld.

Claire also took it upon herself to get out the VW Crafter safety instructions and read through each step on how to change a tire. With a bit of huffing and puffing to get the spare wheel out from under the car, we finally got it on and were back on our way through Lithuania.

Our destination for the evening was not really known, just that we were heading towards the Mansurian Lakes. This was now the third time we have visited Poland, but on this occasion we had never entered from the north eastern side and it was a dramatic change to what we have seen of the country before.

Beautiful rolling hills, covered with crops of wheat and corn filled the windscreen and we were so surprised that such a scenic part of Poland existed. The landscape changed again as we got closer to the Mansurian Lakes, and we entered thick pine forested areas with a dabble of swampland here and there. 

After about and hour and a half of driving through the Polish countryside, we settled on a town called Gizycko as it was right on one of the larger lakes and also offered a lot of boat rental operators as we were hoping to take a motorboat out the following day. 

Our guide book had said Gizycko was a fairly run-down town, however, they must have had a fair bit of money pumped into the town in the past three to four years as it was in a far better state than ‘run-down’. Of particular note was the brand new marina and camping facilities. In need to empty our van of things and fill up with others, we decided to camp for the night at the low, low price of £7!