Day 3 30th Jan 2023

 A day out in Vilnius

A slightly restless night so neither of us feeling too good this morning, however we eventually got our act together and having researched our travel arrangements walked down past Lidl to the bus stop at the junction near Kaunas Pilis. 

From there we caught the no 5 bus, a trolley bus, to Kaunas Railway Station. 

We had organised the tickets for the bus on the Ziogas app but struggled to use this as we didn’t quite understand the instructions. So for future reference the bus has a code like 161 and a QR code on a sign near the Wi-Fi scan unit. The code can be input into the app and then the app asks for the ticket to be confirmed. Now you have a limited time for your travel.

The bus journey took us through the centre of Kaunas old city and out to the station. At the station the lady at the ticket office was helpful but as the UK is no longer in the EU we were not allowed to claim the senior citizen discount! However the fare for our 1:15 hour train journey to Vilnius and back was great value at €35:50 for the two of us.  Today's sterling value is £/€1=0.88 so the total fare was £31.24. I don’t think we’d get that sort of fare on the UK network, especially in a 2 storey carriage with superb views of the snow covered landscape. 

One of the major facets of the railways here are the many extensive sidings at large industrial areas making their transport infrastructure much more efficient.

On arrival in Vilnius we exited the station in a bit of a snow storm and walked down towards our selected venue of the Palace of the Grand Dukes of  Lithuania. On the way Catharine noticed some really good looking charity clothes shops so we planned to call in on them on the way back to the station in the late afternoon, 

The cobbled streets and snow made walking quite tricky and we stopped off at another Caffeine outlet for a coffee to keep us going for the rest of the walk. Another 850m past the café was our destination which is a very spectacular building adjacent to the Vilniaus Katedra on a significant square. 

To the east lies the Ducal Palace of the Upper Castle. Due to my lack of research we discovered that the palace was closed on Mondays and so we decided to go on the funicular ride to the top of the hill on which the tower and associated fortifications stand.

The fort overlooks the river on the north and the older areas of the city on the south.