Lithuania? Sure, why not?

Terri was a little thrown by the idea of visiting Lithuania, she had just shot down our going to Russia. She did some research and agreed: Lithuania should be on our list.

Sometimes first impressions are a bit scary. Our Lithuanian Airbnb was that way:

We were on the top floor of the apartment complex, no elevators – good thing we had backpacks!

We had arrived in Vilnius a little after 5pm and after settling in it was time to find dinner, relax with a libation and write in our blog.

I found a local bar, with great ratings, aptly named, “The Local Bar.” The bars in Europe almost always have good food and a family atmosphere. In this one, we met Matteo, a local boy about 5, who was riding his bike throughout the bar despite his mother’s continual admonishments.

We were covering all of the typical sightseeing spots and ventured into the bell tower at The Vilnius Cathedral. As we climbed to the top, with no other visitors around, one of the bells rang for it was the one o’clock hour. Upon exiting, I asked the docent if the other bells were rung as well, (there were 8 bells in total). She told us that the 5pm ringing was especially nice. We decided to come back for it. We had lunch and meandered Vilnius old town for a few hours. It was worth it!

Another unexpected high-light of Vilnius was the money museum. It presented a history from inception to current day. Terri was especially intrigued by the one hundred trillion dollar note issued by the country of Zimbabwe. Terri had a lot of questions that I had no answers for.

Uzupis is a self-declared sovereign artsy/hippie/foodie community. They have their own immigration department, one guy that wanders the community (sometimes) and offers to stamp your passport. This has created real problems for people as you need to have him stamp it twice, once to enter and again to exit. We never saw him.