It was our last day in Vilnius, and our last day in the Baltic states.  To commemorate this, we had breakfast in Double Coffee (we can’t recommend them enough, they’re cheap and they’re all over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.  Special offers include adding a Double Cappuccino to your fry-up for 20p…).

With not much left to see, we leisurely strolled up the hill (funiculars are for wimps) to Vilnius Castle for midday.  Enjoying the sunshine, the views and the replicated suits of armour, we completed our sunny, tower-top photo-op and wandered back down the hill.

The tree-clad Gedeminas Hill was no match for my hardened battle-trainers, but traction proved to be a problem on the way down for the be-flip-floppèd Mr. Manners.  Alas, another hill was on the horizon in the baking heat, and onto the outskirts of the city, sweaty money-belt strapped to our backs, we climbed to see the Three Crosses Monument.

The Three Crosses were…uh…three crosses to commemorate the first Christian Missionaries to arrive (and get promptly killed) in Lithuania.  Unperturbed, the Vatican sent more envoys until Christianity was as ubiquitous as Double Coffee.
Another important landmark recommended by the Rough Guide To Europe On A Budget was safely ticked off.  Next up, St. Anne’s Church and a miscellaneous Orthodox Church where we might’ve accidentally interrupted another wedding. Every good wedding photo needs a man with a dSLR and a man in shorts in the background, right?

Before we could reward ourselves with beer and lunch, we were determined to have an amble through the self-declared independent republic of Uzupis.  Yep, this small region of Vilnius, in an action which can only be due to the carbohydrate-drunk diet of Lithuanians, has drawn up its own constitution for their little bohemian district.

Oh, and there were some padlocks engraved with various proclamations of everlasting (and marital) love on the bridge as well.

Well-deserving our lunch, we generously ate and drank before heading to the hostel to militarily-check and re-pack our bags. (PostScript: NM forgot his shower gel.  Court-martial date TBA.)  Before we knew it, we were stocking up on pancakes (again) and off we trotted to the crummiest bus yet for a journey to Warsaw.  It wasn’t too bad, but if ain’t got wi-fi, I ain’t interested.

Oh, and thanks to the wonder of time-zones, the journey is an hour longer than I anticipated.  On the upside: it’s an hour longer to sleep.  Sweater expertly fashioned into a travel-pillow, seat reclined enough to break the knees of the person behind me, and it’s over and out from Vilnius.

After another night out, we took the customary lie-in until about 1030. Waking up refreshed I had to wait an astonishing 40 minutes for a shower, despite being next in line for the bathroom (turning the handle at regular intervals so ignorance of the occupant was certainly not an excuse).

Up, up, up and away to Double Coffee we flew for the usual post-drink breakfast of excess egg and meat and then onwards we went to the Catholic Cathedral that boasted a beautiful interior with many paintings and some lovely architecture. Outside, between itself and the belfry, there is a tile with the Lithuanian for ‘miracle’ on it. This is where the two million person ‘Baltic Chain’ started from Vilnius, going through Riga and all the way to Tallinn, as a way of showing unity against the USSR in the late 1980s.

At this point the heavens decided to open and my fliopflops showed themselves to be woefully inadequate in the rain, so umbrella in hand me and NS made haste to the KGB museum (after a quick spin past the Presidential Palace – he wasn’t in).

The KGB museum/Museum of Genocide Victims is the Lithuainian equivalent of other Baltic States’ occupation museums, but this was by far the most haunting. The museum itself is located within the old KGB headquarters/prison and features many in-depth displays from the partisan movements during the first Soviet occupation, to the deportations of thousands of Lithuanians to work camps in Russia right up to the 1991 independence.

For me, however, the most moving part was the prison cells in the basement – these included solitary confinement cells, cells that were filled with a layer of cold water and a padded cell (to muffle the sounds of torture and the anguished screams of those who had eventually cracked under the mental pressure of such treatment).

The prison also included the execution chamber – standing in a room where so many had lost their lives was an extremely harrowing experience and I’m sure I’ll get that feeling again when we visit Auschwitz in about a week or so.

Coming out of museum the rain still hadn’t stopped, so onto full wets it was (i.e opening the umbrella because we still hadn’t got anything waterproof) and off to Double Double Coffee Coffee.

[INSERT PANCAKE TO CONTINUE SIGHTSEEING]

Refuelled, we decided to continue the rest of our sightseeing tomorrow, but still managed to see the statue of Frank Zappa on the way back. Frankly, this was a massive disappointment, being a small bust on a tall metal pole, but I guess you must take the good with the bad.

Dr Oetker again kindly provided us with pizza (via the supermarket) and after the dodgy oven failed to heat up for about an hour, we finally managed to sit down in our kitchen among various other intrepid travellers. At this point we were party to a frankly riveting conversation between an African gentleman and a Dutchman. Although this sounds like the beginning of a joke, I can assure you it was not.  Basically, the Dutchman was a vegetarian and had just refused the African’s generous offering of chicken. However, this somehow lead to the African announcing to the entire room his fervent belief in God and then grilling the Dutchman as to why he was a non-believer (via a small detour about the divine right to kill animals).  After the African told the Nederlander why he was going to Hell, I was sitting in the corner hoping desperately not to get involved (”I’m technically Methodist, we play acoustic guitar and let children make macaroni pictures” – I don’t think that was this man’s idea of a religion)…

After slipping away unnoticed we went in search of Tarantino’s bar/club. Named after the director himself  and rumored to play only songs from his films, we found it to be completely empty. After last night’s escapades we did not have too much of a desire to go out again tonight so we weren’t too disappointed.  We briefly admired the film stills on the walls and returned to the hostel for some well earned blogging.

Dragging ourselves out of bed at about 0600, we struggled the short distance to Riga’s bus station with the sad news that our penultimate bus would be our final ‘Lux Express’ journey.  While NM went to buy a distinctly dodgy chicken sandwich from the terminal kiosk, I admired this wheeled black beauty (this ebony chariot, this dark diesel carriage…) for one last time.

Four hours later (with a brief stop for a charming Lithuanian man in combat fatigues to check our passports) we were in Vilnius – European Capital of Culture 2009.  Apparently, though, due to the credit crunch and the bankruptcy of the national carrier, tourism and investment this year was at an all-time low, which meant fewer tourists and more travellers like us.  We had reached our final stop before storming Central Europe, and personally I was excited at the promise of completing our Baltic Bingo.

Winding through the pretty cobbled streets, we found Hostelgate to be a pleasantly accomodating place.  Grabbing a map and dumping our bags, we went round the corner to sample some Lithuanian cuisine for lunch – we were starving.  Seeing as carbohydrates are standard fare for the Baltics, we knew what to expect & ordered ourselves some meat dumplings.  Nicknamed ‘Zepplins’, these things are freaking huge.  And gelatinous.  I couldn’t finish mine, and I was absolutely ravenous when I’d started.

To kick things off in a leisurely fashion, we wandered around the generically-named Old Town square, had a walk down to the monasterial Holy Trinity Church, saw the perimeter governed by the Gates Of Dawn and went inside the magnificently-Baroque Jesuit Church of St Casimir.

Less impressive, however, was Vilnius University, which had a pricey entrance fee  (much like UK universities, then…) and the Vilnius Defence Wall Bastion, which probably couldn’t withstand an attack from two Surrey guys.

Before returning to our hostel, we managed to find another local pancake house for an evening meal.  The oven looked like a giant pancake, there was pancake-themed décoor on the tables and walls, and the ceiling had lampshades in the exact style of….our Young Enterprise moodlamps, circa 2007.  Yep, for those who remember ‘thinkbright’, tesselating quadrilaterals and all, the ceiling was adorned with precise replicas of these things.

I had a pork-filled pancake, followed by one with banana and chocolate, but could barely contain my outrage when, upon being presented with the bill, it appeared these pancakes were almost £2.  That’s a whopping £1.50 more expensive than Riga.

Suppressing my rage, we trundled back to find our roommates – two Slovenians, an American man and a British (yep, one of us) man about to go on a pub crawl hosted by an Australian who’s been living across the street for nearly three years.

For ten litai (about £2.50) we got into a club at the end of our four-bar-tour, with no free drinks.  Our host blamed the fact it was a Thursday, everyone else just blamed him.  It was pretty sub-par, as we marched from bar to bar, raising our hands for beers and being instructed as to how long we had left in each location.  The club was little more than an oversized TGI Friday’s, with a Lithuanian man half-heartedly stripping as part of ‘Ladies’ Night’.  The Australian and Danish ladies who were part of our group weren’t particularly impressed.

We made a hasty exit soon after, straight to the kebab house where NM again braved the unknown meat and I settled for some paprika-fried chips.  Then, predictably, we turned in for the night, dreaming of what starchy-treats and stories of Soviet oppression might await us.