Vilnius

Day One: Sep 27, 2024

Having arrived from Kaunas by Train we had a rather long wait for our apartment to be ready as it was a pretty late check in time, as such we decided to head to the rather beautiful Vilnius cathedral to take some photos and see some of the city along the way.

We encountered a pretty annoying reoccurrence of people trying to sell us photos they took of us with some big, old victorian style camera, we found ourselves politely declining this offer several times over as there was a person doing this practically each block on the way to the cathedral!

By the time we had got to the cathedral and hung about for a bit the apartment was ready, and my word was it was a hard place to find! Tucked in a quiet courtyard we had some trouble finding it, but once we did we were pleasantly surprised with how unique and rustic it was in its design, as a bonus it was also very close to the old town too.

We ended up resting there for quite some time as we had little sleep the previous night as we had arrived at our apartment in Kaunas at 4am and had to checkout by 11:00am so had very, very little sleep as a result!

Once we had rested we finally started our first vlog, the first vlog abroad in almost 4 months would you believe! You see Tammy had recently passed her driving test so we decided to explore more of the UK and created content from both England and Wales so she could get used to her new found skill! After 4 months of driving, exploring and saving up we finally embarked on our trip to Lithuania...so to say we were a little out of practice when it came to vlogging would be an understatement!

Alongside this, this first vlog would be the first attempt at filming a new, interactive style of vlogging where we would keep the camera rolling for our interactions with the locals and have less cuts between shots to keep the action going and the videos more interesting.

Bobby was nervous about filming this way as he was worried he may offend people by having a camera pointed at them, but at the same time was happy to stop filming immediately if asked to do so, so armed with this new perspective we set off to a rather unique part of the city called Užupis.

Užupis (pronounced ooz-sh-oop-iss) is a pretty bohemian, artistic neighbourhood which on April 1st 1997 jokingly declared independence from Lithuania so we thought this would be the best place to start our new vlogging style!

We arrived into Užupis and kept the camera rolling as we explored the neighbourhood, looking at the constitution they created when they formed their democracy and demonstrated some of the Lithuanian language skills that we had been working on practising.

After this we headed into a local bar to speak to some locals and try our first Lithuanian beer (or Alaus as it is known locally which is pronounced ah-loos) which Bobby liked but Tammy did not, so he had to take two pints in one sitting!

After this we explored a local art centre which concluded our first vlog!

Immediately after we decided to film our next vlog which was a food tour of Lithuanian cuisine! We went on a hunt for the national dish Cepelinai (which are meat filled potato dumplings which are served with a really nice creamy sauce) as well as Šaltibarščiai (which is a cold, cream based beetroot soup served with an egg, a potato skewer and some dill) and Bulviniai Blynai (which are potato pancakes, similar to a Rösti and served with a variety of sauces, we choose a mushroom sauce) we filmed our first experience with Lithuanian cuisine and had a great time doing so, the food was hearty and full of flavour, we would absolutely recommend trying it if you get a chance!

With full bellies we retreated back to our apartment at around 10:30pm ready to rest and take our trip into the nearby city of Trakai the following morning!

Want to see the trip to Trakai, you can see that here.

Day Two: Sep 29, 2024

After spending most of the 28th in Trakai we decided to do something a little different with our last day in Vilnius, and so we visited a part of the city called Fabijoniškės (pronounced fabi-yon-ish-kes).

We actually ended up getting up super early to go there too as it was a 30 minute bus ride from where we were staying and checkout for our apartment was it 12:00pm so we needed to fit in the time to visit Fabijoniškės, get the bus home (an hour long round trip) and then get back to the apartment to make sure everything was ready to go, we spent the previous evening packing in advance so we would have enough time to get everything done and check out at the allotted time too.

We will say that this place is a LOT different from the grand buildings, cosy cafés and old statues of the centre, this place was in fact a filming location for the mini-series Chernobyl and played the part of Pripyat in it due to its striking resemblance to the city before the terrible accident which occurred there back in the 80's!

You see the architecture here is a lot more akin to the old Soviet era architecture you would have seen in Lithuania before its independence, this intrigued us, and so we decided to visit it as it was somewhere a little off the beaten path and we wanted a different experience away from the hustle and bustle of the more touristy parts of the city.

We arrived into Fabijoniškės and were greeted with towering blocks, we got the ol' camera out and started to capture what we were seeing, we wanted to capture the raw experience so walked around and headed to a supermarket to grab some breakfast and a coffee where we met a lovely young lady working at the coffee shop there who told us about life in Fabijoniškės and Lithuania in general.

Time was limited so we didn't manage to finish up our breakfast before we were leaving to head back to the apartment ready to check out. We were also warned that it's not a particularly safe place to film we decided to head off rather than tempt fate and got a bus back to the apartment after a little more filming, back at the apartment we had just enough time for a final coffee before jumping on a bus back to the train station where we took a train to Kaunas to finish off where it all began!

All in all Vilnius was a great place to visit, it has been on Bob's bucket list for as long as he can remember and it did not disappoint him, Tammy fell in love with the city too but her highlight was by far Trakai as she loved the traditional buildings there! 🏫

Want to read about the rest of the trip in Kaunas? You can find it here.