waking up today wasn’t as painful as yesterday. perhaps the four star treatment soothed my tiredness. the breakfast at daniela’s was the best so far. in addition to the usual fare, they also had crab tempura. weird breakfast food. course, i tried it. nothing special.

today we would be on a guided tour of kaunas, have free time to explore, head to trakai (pronounced trah-ki; ki as in kite) castle, and then into vilnius with plenty of time to explore the capital.

we loaded up into the bus, luggage and all, and drove to the start point of the tour, kaunas castle. much to my surprise, the tour guide for the kaunas tour was already on the bus and began talking about kaunas over the speaker system.

kaunas was once the capital of lithuania when poland annexed vilnius as part of poland. currently, vilnius is the capital, and after being in vilnius for a day, it is obvious the government is pumping more money into vilnius than kaunas. kaunas is the second largest city in lithuania and features an interesting old town with a partially rebuilt castle, cobblestone streets, decaying buildings, and many cathedrals. also, kaunas has the world’s only devil museum.

once again, my hopes of seeing a real castle were diminished when we arrived at kaunas castle. what remained of the castle was one tower and what looked like a moat at one point. the tour guide led us around the castle and through several courtyards of very old buildings dating back to the 14th century.

as we came into a large square with a big cathedral in the middle, we saw several wedding processions. adam mentioned saturdays in august are popular wedding dates, and since kaunas was a popular place to be married, we would probably see some. we certainly did.

the wedding parties were lining up at the door of the cathedral. the newlyweds came out the side, rang a big bell and were received by the waiting cameras and attendees. as one left, another went in. they had a system and it went like clockwork. the tour guide said the wedding was planned several months before, and the wedding party could not be late due to time constraints of other wedding parties lining up.

some bridesmaids had matching dresses, other it seemed was a variety pack of colors. sorry, that’s about all i noticed clothing wise. i don’t pay attention to that sort of thing, although john did mentioned he didn’t see any wedding dress he liked. i didn’t notice. white dress is a white dress.

we walked around a bit more. it was cold and the tour guide did more leading than talking. i was happy when the tour concluded. the tour guide didn’t have much to talk about in kaunas, but she didn’t have much energy to make the place sound more interesting.

john and i left the group in search of coffee to warm us up and give us a boost. after a quick coffee break, we headed for st. michael the archangel church, which was the big cathedral at the end of a wide sidewalk shopping area. the outside of the cathedral was more impressive than the interior. one peculiar aspect of the interior was that there were heat towers you see at restaurants scattered in the pews. it must get awfully cold in there during the winter to warrant such a device.

after the cathedral, we decided to head up to a lookout point located on top of a very tall cathedral. in order to get there, you have to ride a train type contraption called a funicular. it is similar to a cable car where the train is pulled up by cables. in this case, there are two trains, as one comes up, the other goes down. this was my first funicular experience so i was jumping around taking a bunch of pictures of this interesting train system.

as we entered the church, the bride was being led down the aisle for a wedding. whoops, we quickly left but not before snapping off a photo of the interior, which was priceless. the huge jesus from the hill of crosses was painted as the background behind the pulpit. the scene of the bride being led down with this enormous jesus looking down on her was a bit scary and intimidating. looked more like a sacrifice than a wedding.

we found the side entrance where the elevator was which took us to the top of the cathedral. as we were waiting for the elevator, more wedding parties came down the stairs and out of the elevator. the town is going to run out of single women at this rate!

the top of the cathedral was alittle anticlimatic since the best view was being blocked by a church spire, but it was still cool to see the town from above.

we made our way back down to the main strip to find food. throughout the journey in the countries, we saw a place called hesburger. looks like a burger king and it kind of is, except for the fact that you have to pay for ketchup! i was shocked. thank god the lady behind the counter spoke english cause i kept saying really? really? if i pay, do i get as much as i want? nope, one packet. wtf! i bought fries. shouldn’t it be part of the package like dressing on the salad? i wrote off hesburger after that experience.

after lunch, we went to the devil museum. since it is the only one in the world, it deserved a visit. the devil museum was filled with wooden statues of demons, witches and what people portrayed real people as devils. the photo depicted below along with the caption is one of hitler and stalin since they killed millions of people. after taking a bunch of photos, a lady appeared and said no photos. that’s ok. i just took all the photos i want. the devil museum is definitely a must see if you are ever in kaunas.

our time was up in kaunas and we boarded the bus to head to trakai castle. trakai castle turned out to satisfy my craving of seeing a real castle. it is a huge red brick castle on an island in the middle of a large lake. surrounding the lake was a quaint town. several sailboats sat in a small dock in front of the castle. there were many wedding processions going on in the small town and around the castle. as we approached the castle on the wooden bridge, the castle loomed large and we entered through a drawbridge chamber. inside the castle was a huge courtyard and a large inner castle with a drawbridge that held several exhibits with armor, furniture, and the history of the castle. john and i walked through the exhibits and down spiral staircases. the place was packed with tourists. in the courtyard was the device where people being punished had to place their heads and hands in the wooden structure called a stockade. check out the pic below for what i’m talking about.

we walked around the castle grounds where we encountered more wedding parties. it was unbelievable how many weddings we saw. the parties were drinking champagne and eating appetizers. the parties were quite small compared to the enormous parties we have in the states. looked like the bridesmaids and groomsmen were couples that knew the newlyweds as they were arm in arm and holding each other. more like bracing each other for what may come.:)

john went to grab a coffee while i went to explore another castle ruin that was further down the road. the castle had one, may two, towers, but it did have a working catapult, which made the journey definitely worthwhile.

i met up with john, and after taking too many photos of trakai castle with the sailboats, the bus arrived and we headed for vilnius. the ride was uneventful and we were soon pulling into the panorama hotel located a bit out of old town. the hotel was in a prime location; next to the bus station, near the old town, and the top floor provided a panorama view of the town, hence the name.

we dropped our stuff, tested the wireless and discovered no available wireless. dammit. we left and went to explore the old town of vilnius, another unesco world heritage site. we crossed through the gates of dawn where church was ending. as people left the church, which was on the other side of the gate, they would turn to face us as we were walking through the gate, cross their bodies and bow towards us. please, please people, thank you but that isn’t necessary. haha. they were facing a virgin mary above the gate that we were unable to see until after walking through the gate. the church had the organ playing and created a very church-going experience.

we walked down to the town square and through some side streets. being a new place to understand and navigate made the experience a little exhausting. must i pull out my camera again to photograph another square, cathedral, narrow street. i was becoming tiresome of the usual fare, but i quickly regained my perception and understood where i was. snap, snap, snap. i was back to enjoying a new city and a new old town. we walked down to the cathedral square (shown on the left) where there were a bunch of people hanging out, people on skateboards, a breakdancing crew surrounded by people, music eminating from the crowd, and people on bikes. i felt like i was in union square in nyc.

we were pretty hungry and started looking for food. we ended up eating at a place on pilies gatve called forto dvarus, which had authentic lithuanian cuisine. as we were sitting outside on the terrace doing some serious people watching, an old woman started setting up her “flower shop” on the side of the street. her face was so mournful that i almost walked up and bought one of her bouquets. however, people started stopping by and the pitiness went away. this wasn’t her first time setting up shop.

another weird occurrance happened where a group of guys were parading down the street yelling something in latvian. they came to the table behind us, whew! not us and started cheering in latvian and photographing this guy in a white coat who was holding a red pitcher filled with something. he was offering the people at the table a shot of whatever was in the pitcher. it turned out to be milk. he was trying to earn money by making a big deal of offering shots of milk to people. weird stuff. thankfully, they headed in the other direction.

now that’s what i call a beer. the place offered a litre of beer. i had a litre of kalnapilis grand. the beer glass was bigger than my head. it was decent beer, but my overall impression of lithuanian beer is that it is basically budweiser. i ordered the pixies fry. chicken breast with mashed potatoes. pretty good. nothing special or different than US cuisine.

after dinner, we went back to the hotel. john left to locate the sauna. he found it but in an industrial area that was kind of sketchy. meanwhile, i found wireless in the lobby of the hotel and stationed myself there for the remainder of the evening working on the site.

so, kaunas was somewhat boring. the trakai castle was surreal and i could have stayed there for several days just being in the proximity such a beautiful place. vilnius with another old town to explore exhausted me and it shouldn’t deserve that. it turned out to be a beautiful place with more alleyways, cathedrals, and clean streets.

tomorrow, we take a tour of old town and then have the rest of the day to explore vilnius. i am surprised that we will not spend as much time in vilnius as we spent in the other capitals so, we will have to see as much as we can of vilnius before we leave on monday.

btw – i may not have internet as we are entering a national park tomorrow for the next day or so.