Date: 09- 10/09/2017
From/To: Vilnius – Przewloka
Distance: 501 Km
Total Distance: 15152 Km
Weather: Sunny
Road: Paved

We left Vilnius relatively early and had lunch break just before the border. There was a Doener shop, with American touch. The interior was like an old American Dinner and opposite was an old American school bus parked. We enjoyed the little break and continued to the border.

Well, I passed the sign but Sigrid stop just in time, so I turned around and could take the border shot (no, nothing to drink).

The next stop was at a road house. Sigrid mentioned it on her Facebook, what is missing here. Well it’s not that my ice is bigger than Sigrid’s, and the bikes are not parked in the shop and we are outside, no, we didn’t wear raingear at all and instead of having a hot drink we had iceceam J

At the evening we arrived at the Village Andrew was living in, he picked us up from the chapel and guided us home. The right picture is a bit short, Andrew is on the left hand side, just outside the picture J

Next day we visited with Andrew his home church, quite interesting. It is in an imarcular condition. We witnessed a service, and the church was so full that people were standing during the whole service.

After visiting the church, we had lunch and picked Margaret up from the bus stop. She had visited her Mother first before she joined Andrew. On Andrews farm is still a well, here is Sigrid trying to fetch some water without getting knocked unconcious.

After a short rest we visitd the part of forest that belongs to Andrew. He had the exact measurment, so we counted the step and found his section. During the walk we talked about what to do with the forest. Wood harvesting is the obvious answer, but I wouldn’d have a clou how to do it, so Andrew explained how he has done it hundreds of times with his dad. I was keen to participate in it, unfortunatelly harvest time is in January/February, so at this time we will be at home in Australia.

Andrew pointing out a field that belongs to him as well. Back home Andrew started a BBQ and we had some meat and some ‘Moonshine’. Well the night was long, and the morning too early.

The next morning we packed ‘slowly’ our bikes, said quitely good bye to Margaret and Andrew and left ‘slowly’ J

Date: 07- 08/09/2017
From/To: Riga – Vilnius
Distance: 295 Km
Total Distance: 14651 Km
Weather: Sunny
Road: Paved

We found a spot to stop on the border.

The ride into Vilnius was much nicer as Riga, it seemed to be more wellcoming and the drivers seemed to be less stressed. We arrived at the booked accommodation and our host gave us some hints what to see and some nice traditional restaurants.

Since there was still daylight, we had a brief walk to the edge of the old town. Sigrid started to feel unwell, she must have gotten a stomach bug. Close to our accommodation we found an Easter egg sculpture. It signifies the restoration and revival of this part of the Old Town.

We had a look around and found a couple of old churches. Since we didn’t had a guide, we wouldn’t have any information about them, but still the looked quite nice.

The next day we organize a map and off we went. First we found the ‘Oldtown’ pub, it seems to be a pub for bachalor parties J

We had a guide now, so at least we could look up the churches we came across. Here are some pictures of the ‘Church of St. Casimir’, the first and the oldest baroque church in Vilnius.

Some street with nicly restored houses and some art on he side of the road.

At lunch we went to one of the recommended restaurants. Sigrid ordered a soup, I liked the plate it was served inJ. When finished with the soup, eat the dish J

And there was some pork with beet root and some cabbage, it tasted quite good particular the crackling.

After lunch we went to the ‘Cathedral Square’, where most of the attractions were located. On the left is a picture of the ‘Bell Tower’ and on the right the main entrance of the ‘Cathedral’

There was an option to climb the bell tower, so we did. On one of the level there were bells hanging with a clople to play with them. Sigrid couldn’t resist, well I couldn’t either, but there are no pictures of me J. The small bell on the rigth if from the 15^th Century. On the right is the view up into the bell tower. This is the wooden structure we would walk up.

Here are the wooden framework form the top. You can see the bells on the top and right of the picture. To put it in perspective, these bells were around half a tone each. The biggest bell did weigh more then 1.5 tones.

The view from the top was great. We could the square and the castle..

The old clock work was still there and the small bell, which rung every quarter of an hour.

Next we had a look inside the cathedral. It was quite impressive, but we had seen so many beautiful churches, that it started to feel a bit like same old, same olde.

Next we had a look at the ‘Vilnius upper castle’, which included a steep incline.

Th view from the top was better then from the bell tower. The tower is on the right picture.

We could see the ‘Church of St. Anne’, which is one of the most intersting Gothic churches in Lithuania. Our accomodation was close to the Vilnius Choral Synagogue, which we could see from here.
From here we could even see where our accomodation was

And Sigird dicovered the Vilan and by zooming in with the camerea, there is a coffee shop at the river.

So we went down and were headding straight to the coffee, were sitting in the sun and had some ice cream. There we were sitting for a while, enjoying the sun.

After it started to get a bit cooler, we walked home. Passing a carpark, that was covered with a screen with pictures from waterfall.

And we saw some rings hanging under a bridge, not sure if this was art or had some other functions. During the time we tried to figure out what the rings were, a Wiking boat was passing by J, looks like a boat tour on the Vilna.

And here Sigrid got framed J

Well, we forgot the map at our accomodation, and as it turned out, I made some additional sight seeing on our way home. I thought we had to visit the ‘Gate of Dawn’. As you can see, we made it and it was sort of on our way J.

Tomorrow we will leave for Poland, to visit our Australian neighbour at his farm in Poland.