Kaunas - Lithuania

 

Travel is the element of my life that I'm most passionate about, however it's the hobby I find the most difficult to blog about due to the time taken to put a post together. I'm about to change that as I want to share all my adventures with you so be prepared for plenty of travel related content. I am fortunate enough to have travelled all over the world, whether it be on family holidays, with friends and even on my own. Every year I try to visit a new country and I spend hours upon hours looking at maps and planning new trips. I've been on big trips and small weekend breaks but the thing I really love doing is city hopping in Europe. Apart from the depths of Southern-Eastern Europe I think I've been to almost every country on this continent which is a feat I am very proud off.

Last week I undertook a 10 day trip around the Baltic states with my boyfriend where we would visit Hanseatic cities, bewitching national parks and revel in Nordic design. We would encounter plenty of disasters on the way but this only added to the excitement. Whilst I've been to Helsinki in Finland before Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were entirely new regions for me to explore.

I'm going to start my little series of posts in Kaunas, a small city in the south of Lithuania about 100km from the capital Vilnius. We only spent one night here which was plenty of time as the city is very small with not a huge amount to see.

We started our journey in Stansted which truly is an awful airport and I honestly hope I never have to go there again! Getting through security at 7am was a nightmare and to make matters worse we were flying Ryan Air however our tickets to Kaunas were about £30 each so I suppose we can't complain too much. Once we arrived in Kaunas it took 45 minutes from getting off the plane to arriving at our guest house in the old town, I couldn't believe how fast it was, with the airport being 10km from the city the taxi journey only took a matter of minutes. We were staying in Kauno arkivyskupijos SVEČIŲ NAMAI which is a guest house run by the Catholic Church of Lithuania. The rooms were basic but they were cheap, clean and in a great location which is all we were looking for at this stage. I'd definitely recommend staying here if you want something budget but be aware of the unhelpful staff.

We had most of the afternoon to explore the city and we were able to see everything we wanted to from the Museum of Devils to the Ciurlionis Gallery. We managed a couple of funicular rides to see over the orange roof tops and we climbed to the top of Christ's Resurrection Church which was quite a site to behold. The city is full of fascinating street art, randomly placed sculptures and beautiful medieval architecture.

Dress - ASOS
Trainers - Nike Air Force
Sunglasses - Ray Bans

 

We walked around the castle ruins in the evening and had a delicious dinner at Senieji Rūsiai which included the most incredible beef carpaccio I've ever tasted. Props to the herring, halibut and pork too.

 

I loved Kaunas a lot more than I expected to, there's a great cafe culture scene and the Saturday market is the perfect spot for picking up breakfast. The food is cheap yet terrific quality and in the summer it's the perfect place to sit on the street with a cold beer watching the world go by with a beautiful backdrop. Whilst it's probably not a city to travel to exclusively I'd definitely recommend visiting if you're in Lithuania as it's easily reached by train and bus.

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