Kaunas

Day One: Sep 26, 2024

We arrived at Kaunas from Luton Airport at around 3:30am having had our flight with Wizz Air delayed by almost 2 hours where it sat on the tarmac waiting to take off in what was some pretty extreme weather in England at the time, the plane was soooo hot too, we sat inside just waiting and the announcement that it was finally due to depart was like music to our ears, we had a 2.20hr flight to Kaunas so we had been sat in the plane almost 4.30hrs, not fun on an economy airline!

Upon arriving we made our way over to our apartment, it was a good 30 minute walk through some very dark unlit streets, but we finally found it and once we had figured out the rather complex entry system refreshed ourselves with a nice hot shower and had a coffee before going to bed at around 5:00am...checkout was 11:00am the same day! 🫨

It must be said though that the apartment was really nice, had an aircon unit which was very welcome as it was quite warm still despite the time of year, the apartment owner was lovely too, very informative and friendly so we would recommend it!

The following morning we then made our way to the nearest bus stop with the goal of going to Vilnius (and Trakai) and then returning back to Kaunas 3 days later with a view of exploring it too!

You can read all about the trip to Vilnius here.

Day Two: Sep 29, 2024

We had just arrived in from Vilnius via train after a few days exploring the capital and Trakai and wanted to settle down ready for the final day of exploration in a new city...unfortunately we had a bad experience in the 2nd apartment we booked in Kaunas (it's called Chill & Go Apartment by the way - avoid this place if you can as there nothing "chill" about it except how cold it gets in there I guess), it's a shame as the 1st apartment we stayed in when we first arrived 3 days prior was great!

You see, we actually had to book this apartment at the last minute as Bob had miscalculated the dates we needed to be there and had only covered us for the 29th when in reality we wouldn't be leaving until 30th, this was by far the cheapest apartment so we took it based upon needing something quick and cheap to get us through!

We got into Kaunas at around 1:00pm, and by this point Bob's shoes were causing him a lot of hassle having broken in Trakai so he had massive blisters on his feet through having to walk awkwardly to stop them breaking again over the past few days.

Check in for Chill and Go was at 4:00pm, which we found to be pretty late, and so we asked them politely if we could check in earlier on the count of Bob not being able to walk at all anymore, they declined due to wishing to clean it, we asked if they would let us check in a little earlier due to the aforementioned injury if they cleaned it sooner and Julija (the apartment owner) simply read it and ignored us, we were willing to pay for earlier check in but she didn't seem to be interested in facilitating anything for us.

So for the next hour we walked (Bob hoddled) around aimlessly until we found the bus we needed and headed to a neighbourhood not far from our apartment so we could at least have less walking to do, once we arrived there we grabbed some plasters and painkillers from a nearby pharmacy, dressed Bob's wounds and got him filled up on paracetamol and ibuprofen so he could walk a little easier and then made our way over to a nearby eatery called Doda Uzkandine where we had a pretty nice kebab, a local beer and waited it out until check-in was nearer, the workers there were very friendly and they played some Lithuanian pop music in the background which was pretty catchy to be fair!

Once the time to check in was nearing we went to the nearby Iki supermarket to pick up some bits as we knew we wouldn't be exploring today due to Bob's injury, so we would instead eat in and watch a few movies (Goodfellas and Groundhog Day if you are wondering 🙂) and let Bob rest up ready for the final day in Lithuania.

And so, we got to the apartment shortly after the 4:00pm check in time and we were surprised to see it looked like it was on a building site, Julija did not communicate this to us (which comes as no surprise as she was terrible at communication either way it seemed) and when we got into the apartment (which had a very steep and poorly secured staircase leading up to it) we were shocked by how bad it smelled in the bathroom, like raw sewage and how it clearly hadn't been cleaned despite the 3 hours she needed to do so!

There were dead bugs everywhere and Bob went to use a bowl to microwave some food and to his disgust when he started to tuck in noticed a dead fly in there too so had to throw it, we had a coffee instead and the water tasted odd so we had to throw that too...given the smell of raw sewage we decided not to trust it and drank the bottled water that we had from the train ride instead!

On top of all of this, the mattress was thin, they only provided one wafer thin pillow for each of us and to make things worse we woke up the next morning to a rather nasty surprise...

Day Three: Sep 30, 2024

The fourth and final day in Lithuania and it wasn't the best start...you remember when we said the building looked like a building site? Well, that's because it was!

At 8:00am we got awoken to a loud banging sound inches away from my ears, we peeked out of the crack in the curtain near the bed and there we saw a bunch of builders starting for the day inches away from the window where we was sleeping, it of course wasn't their fault, they were just doing their job, but we were disappointed in Julija as she had failed to mention any if this and had we known we would have paid a little more for a better place!

We decided to pack up early and head out to find some coffee as we wouldn't be able to drink in the apartment, it was this day the trusty ol' camera came out and we started vlogging!

We decided against going into the old town straight away and instead started vlogging about life in the city outside of the tourist areas, we met some great people, enjoyed a pastry and Bob even treated himself to a beer too.

Once we had wrapped up filming we decided to head into the old town and the city itself so waited for a bus, after a 30 minute wait we were on a bus to the old town and got off to find it was completely deserted! It turns out on Monday's a lot of places like museums and touristy places will close for the day to allow the workers to have a break, in the same way we do on a Sunday in the UK in many ways I guess!

Despite this we enjoyed a coffee and spoke to some more locals about life in Lithuania and continued practising the (rather difficult) language which got some smiles. We then headed to the castle and did some general sightseeing before heading to a nearby Lidl to grab some bits for the journey back to the UK that night.

We got back to the apartment at around 4:45pm and the builders were STILL there! We had hoped they would have finished but we just went in and hoped for the best, thankfully 15 or so minutes later they had finished and so we decided to relax and wait it out.

Our original flight time home was at 11:50pm on 30th which then got delayed until 12:50am a few days before we were due to go to Lithuania, then it got delayed until 2:35am on the day and then finally 4:15am a few hours later! Wizz Air sucks but its cheap I guess so what did we expect! Apparently there were issues back in Luton airport which caused such an extreme delay, no doubt the same issues that kept us on the tarmac for 2 hours on the journey in!

We found ourselves back on a bus to Kaunas airport where it all started at around 9:00pm and got there at around 10:00pm (for some reason we had to be there 2 hours earlier than our original estimated time despite the HUGE delay) ready for a 6.5 hour wait, during that time Bob built this website actually!

So all in all our trip to Lithuania was a memorable one, it was great to get back into vlogging after so long and despite the many delays and issues we had along the way with injuries, broken shoes and apartments which didn't live up to their expectations the country gave us so much and we honestly had an amazing time filming content there and look forward to our return someday!