The last of the Baltic states I’d yet to visit was Lithuania!

Guide to Vilnius

• Currency: Euro
• Location: Eastern Europe
• Cost to Visit: Cheap!
• How to get there: I took the Lux bus from Riga, Latvia for less than 10 euro. It took around 4.5 hours. The bus station is far out of town, you’ll need to get a taxi or Uber to your accommodation. You can also get buses from Poland, or fly into Lithuania (Vilnius Airport)
• Languages spoken: Lithuanian. If you only speak English (like I do), you don’t need to stress, Restaurants waiters understand English
• Main attractions: hill of 3 cross viewpoint, parts of the Chernobyl TV series were filmed here, KGB Museum
• Local foods: rye bread, potato pancakes, Kibinai (this pastry can be savoury or sweet)
• Supermarkets: Rimi
• Safety: There weren’t many people around but I didn’t feel unsafe walking around during the day and at night
• Temperature: I visited in late September. It was already cold (needed long sleeve top puffer vest and thick jacket). Snows in winter.
• People: The tour guides was very friendly, knowledgeable and spoke perfect English

The old town is very small. If you only have 1 day, that’ll be enough to see the main streets and a few viewpoints

I made this map using Google Maps, see this post for a tutorial.

What to see and do

• Chernobyl TV series filming locations tour
• KGB Museum
• If you want to kill time, take a walk along the Neris river
• Wander the cobblestone streets of the Old Town
• Gates of Dawn
• Office of the President of the Republic of Lithuania (for a photo of the outside)
• Šv. Kazimiero gatvė – a narrow street with arch – not that exciting but something different to photograph
• Ghost tour
• Užupis neighbourhood
• Viewpoints
  • Hill of 3 crosses
  • The Bastion of the Vilnius Defensive Wall & Artillery bastion of Vilnius
  • Subačiaus apžvalgos aikštelė
  • Vilnius Cathedral Bell Tower
  • Gediminas Castle Tower

This is the square where they hold the Christmas Markets – if you Google images it looks quite nice done up with a huge Christmas tree!

You can pay to go up the Vilnius Cathedral Bell Tower but it’s not that high, it’s paid entry and since I’d already seen other viewpoints, I skipped it.

Viewpoints

For being such a small old town, there are quite a few viewpoints. My favorite was the Gediminas Castle Tower.

Gediminas Castle Tower

One of many cobblestone streets with Gediminas Castle Tower on the hill

Here is the view from the top:

There is a funicular you can take for a few dollars, but we opted to walk (there is a paved road / walkway off Trispalvės al. near the river). It was a very steep walk to the top. You can pay a few euro to go up the tower but the view was already good from the bottom so I skipped it.

Straight after I went to the Hill of 3 Crosses viewpoint which also had a good view, but I regretted not going up Gediminas Castle Tower – it would’ve had a better view over the old town. The above photo was only take from one side (the other sides were blocked off due to construction).

Wandering the streets of Vilnius…

Day Trips

Trakai Castle

If you only do 1 day trip, make it Trakai Castle. There’s a cute village with timber houses nearby and you can also try a Kibinai (this pastry can be savoury or sweet) – of course I tried the chocolate filled one!

Kibinai pastry – surprisingly not sickly sweet at all

Other day trip options

• Hill of Crosses – exactly what the name says… this hill has crosses. 100,000 apparently. Didn’t seem that exciting and we didn’t have a hire car so skipped it. Plus this is actually closer to Riga than Vilnius
• Rumšiškės Open Air Museum (Lithuania Folk Museum) – I considered going to this museum but had already seen one in Estonia so left this off the itinerary
• Kaunas – 2nd major city in Lithuania – it looked similar to Vilnius so again, I left it off the itinerary

How long do you need?

• Day 1: I arrived on the bus from Riga around 2pm. Looked around the main streets of Vilnius, and did half of the viewpoints
• Day 2: Trakai Castle day trip
• Day 3: Chernobyl TV series filming locations tour (half day) + walking around the outer areas of Vilnius & various viewpoints

Definitely don’t need more time that this. You could do another day trip but I felt these 3 days were sufficient. If you’re visiting for Christmas markets, you can do this in the afternoon and evening, I don’t think you need to add an extra day. We did 9am to 4pm most days – a much more relaxed pace than usual.

Where to eat

Etno Dvaras restaurant (underground!)

We went back there twice because it was only a 5 minute walk from the hotel, there are limited food places in Vilnius and they filled up fast (waited 20 min for a table here on a weekend). The food wasn’t that great. There is a lot of potato dishes in Lithuania (I think even more than the other Baltic countries), and this restaurant basically had potato upon potato with a bit of sour cream. I love potato, but even I thought it was too much.

As a side dish in about half the size, this would’ve been ok but on it’s own, far too much potato

These fried things (forget what they were called) were so gross, I couldn’t finish them

I forgot to take note of the restaurant name or take a photo of the other restaurant we ate it. I’d had a big lunch so ordered some pancake things wrapped in ham (with a large helping of sour cream as seems to be the norm). The food was ok but it was pricey for what you got, especially relative to the price of eastern European food. I wouldn’t eat there again.

Soprano gelato

This place had decent gelato with a decent serving size for a decent price – would recommend.

The chocolate selection in Lithuania was ok – they had plenty of well known brands like Milka, Kit Kat, Snickers, Twix etc.

I tried these 3 plus Pergale. They were all cheap, but all too sickly sweet for me.

Where to stay – Shakespeare Boutique Hotel Vilnius

I was travelling with one of my sister’s and both my parents. After spending the past few weeks in hotels and it being a month-long trip, we wanted a bit more space and opted for a 3 bedroom apartment. It was awesome! Massive couches, heated floorboards (which was great unless you had chocolate on the bottom of your suitcase which melted), a full kitchen, 2 big bathrooms, and a washing machine and dryer too. The only con was that, like most of the older accommodation, there was no lift, only stairs. The concierge did help us carry our bags up and down.

This apartment was in a good location and cheap (cheaper than getting 2 hotel rooms for the 4 of us).

Would I go back to Vilnius?

Not having many touristy things means there are no queues, very few attractions you need to pay for (usually just the viewpoints) and food is cheap. But it’s very small and I’ve seen everything I wanted to see. If you wanted to do a few day trips then you might stay longer, but the 2.5 days I was there was enough for me.

There’s just no major attractions so I don’t feel the need to go back. As it’s not really on the list for most people, the day tours are expensive, but it did mean that our group of 4 were the only people on both the Trakai Castle tour and the Chernobyl tour (i.e.private tour).

If you’re intending to visit the Baltic states, here is my recommendation / order of which I liked best:

1. Estonia
2. Lithuania
3. Latvia

More on the Baltic States

• Guide to visiting Tallin, Estonia
• Guide to visiting Riga, Latvia
• Lux Express Bus Review (best way to travel between the Baltic countries)

Planning your next itinerary? Download my travel itinerary template here

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