All the roads were closed today because of the marathon. It was a little strange to be walking around this city where half the country's population lives and see no cars or people. We did a very long walking tour this morning first of the art nouveau buildings around our hotel and then the old town. The art nouveau buildings were unique and random in their architecture. The old town has squares surrounded by narrow streets and tall buildings. Much of the city was...

Left Lithuania this morning after visiting the Hill of Crosses. This is a hill in the middle of nowhere that people put crosses to honor the fallen freedom fighters and connect to their Lithuanian roots during soviet occupation. Soviets did try briefly to remove the crosses but they were always replaced. There are too many crosses to count. After bus ride we entered Latvia and our first stop was at an 18th century castle built by the same architects that designed...

Today we visited the Curonian Spit, a unesco site. A sand dune peninsula shared by Russia and Lithuania. We took a ferry to the Nida peninsula and walked the beach on the Baltic Sea looking for Amber. We didn't really find any Amber but walking on a Baltic Sea beach was neat. We then walked through a forested area known as the Hill of Witches. There are about 80 wooden tree structures depicting Lithuanian fairy tales. Our guide,Vita, told us some of the fairy tal...

We left Vilnius this morning. Our first stop was Rumsiskes, what they call an open air museum. Picture a 400 acre Sturbridge. We had a guide takes us through recreations of the highlands where we saw recreations of more well to do house and then a poor family house. Next was the lowland recreation which were basically farms. The farmers house was quite nice while the workers lived in bunkhouses. Most houses had many people living in them. The poorer people had no...

Morning begins with short ride to city of Trakai, de facto medieval capital because Duke Vytautas the Great preferred landscapes with scenic lakes and islands over Vilnius. After short boat ride around the lake we explored the Trakai castle built. To fend off German Knights. The castle was once an. Island but today is a peninsula. We then had lunch at a restaurant owned by local Karims, who belong to the oldest Turkish tribe, Kipchaks, who were brought from Crime...