On Saturday we rolled into a small village and picked up some breakfast at a corner store. While we were eating it in the square, an old woman with a very cute obedient dog sat near us. Even though we made it pretty clear we didn’t speak any Lithuanian, she proceeded to talk to (at?) us for about 15 minutes. She may have told us her entire life story
We stopped for supplies at a large grocery store. Part of the fun of a trip like this is that even buying groceries is an adventure. I still can’t figure out why they had pine cones for sale next to the limes and peppers. I also had my first taste of kvass, which is essentially sweet bread-soda – it’s pretty good!
We visited a cool historical town – Merkenës – and visited the museum there. A lot of it was the same story we’ve been reading over and over again: there used to be a lot of cool stuff here, but it was all destroyed in one of the many times this region has been invaded. Also, all of these cities and villages used to have large Jewish populations… One thing we learned was that in the 11/1200s there were christian crusaders invading this region trying to forcibly convert the locals
Met a German father/son cycle tourist duo who were appalled by how much stuff we were carrying. Also when I tried to tell the dad what their route ahead looked like (they were heading where we came from), he replied “yes I know. I can see it on the map”
We ended the day at a gorgeous campground next to a lake. Only trick was they didn’t take credit cards, and we hadn’t seen an ATM to withdraw euros yet, so I had to spend a bunch of time on a poor cell connection setting up a bank transfer app just to give the guy 10 bucks
On Sunday we decided to try and do a longer day of riding (around 70 miles) to make it to Vilnius that night
At a corner store I discovered the amazing Baltic treat that is basically a block of sweetened cottage cheese. Delicious!
We had lunch at a cool hotel restaurant that had an upside-down glider built into the ceiling. We shared the room with a party of about 20 people, but we couldn’t figure out what the gathering was for
We made it to Trakai, a cool old town with a castle on a lake. We decided to take the easy way out and hop on a train for the last 20 miles into Vilnius. The train was super easy to navigate, even with our bikes.
In Vilnius, we met up with my good friend Dress who happened to be traveling there the same time as us – he had already been there a few days and showed us around
We had dinner at a nice cafe on the river in Uzupis, an artsy neighborhood that declared itself an independent state in the 90s. We got a fight of tasty aromatic bitters
We got a room at the same hostel as Dress – pretty nice, and great location in the old town
Vilnius is a really cool town with lots of public art – there was a giant Tony Soprano statue at the train station – and also a million churches. The old town has that perfect old European feel of lots of narrow cobblestone alleys (though the cobbles don’t make a very smooth bike ride)
