Vilnius; Monday, 28 May, 2007

Despite the pleasant finish to the evening, another storm moved over Vilnius during the night with yet more thunder and rain, and yet still by Monday morning the humidity was quite high, and rising. I left the hotel and started the walk towards the station. Stopping only briefly to buy some stamps and postcards it took well over an hour to reach the station, so I also purchased some additional bus tickets for the journey back to the hotel in the evening.

Today’s destination was Trakai, its about 25 KM south west of Vilnius, yet it takes the train almost 40 minutes to make the journey. From the station at Trakai it was a 5 minute walk to the bus station, another 10 minutes on to the tourist information office and a further 20 minutes on to the main attraction of the town the Island castle. The castle, as it's name implies, sits on an island in the largest of the three lakes that surround Trakai, and is reached by two bridges, one to a small intermediate island, and one onto the castle. The castle is very impressive, though there is not very much to see inside, and only a limited part open to the public. After having a look around I wandered back across the bridge to one of the café's on the town side of the lake to stop for a late lunch.

After lunch I had a wander through the town, being Monday the majority of the town was closed, but the remains of the other castle, the peninsular castle, are open to have a look around.

After looking around this castle I was pondering on what to do to fill the 90 minutes before the train, I had a quick look up and realised the most likely activity would be getting very wet as the clouds of today’s storm were forming. I walked back towards the bus station to see if there was a bus back to Vilnius, arriving at exactly the same time as the Vilnius bus pulled up. I paid my fare and boarded, the bus pulled out of the bus station and started on it's journey towards Vilnius.

At the first bus stop outside of town the driver pulled over and closed both of the roof lights that had been open. Less than 30 seconds later we were driving through another spectacular storm (thankfully the driver, deciding that on this occasion safety was more important than the timetable was, was taking it very slowly).

By the time we arrived back in Vilnius, an hour later, the storm had stopped and it was another beautifully clear afternoon! Having experienced the walk in the morning I caught the trolley bus back to the hotel, which itself took over 20 minutes.

I had a quick break to freshen up, before heading back into town for the evening.