Tuesday 2 July we packed up the van and headed south towards the capital of Lithuania - Vilnius. We were actually staying about 30 km's out of Vilnius in a little town called Trakai. This is quite a popular tourist area - everyone comes here to see the Island Castle. This fairytale castle is built from red bricks and dates back to the late 1300's. It sits on an island in Lake Galve and you get to it via a footbridge.

The caravan park we were staying at is on the other side of the lake and you can see the castle from the lakeside beach. We set off the next morning to visit the castle. We had a walk around it and stopped at a restaurant further up the lake for some lunch. After that we headed into Vilnius to have a look around. We found the old-town fairly quickly, parked and had a walk through it. Vilnius is a very lovely city and I wish we spent more time exploring it. While we were there a storm came across and drenched us. We took shelter under some archways between the buildings and waited it out while Cara stomped in the puddles and ran around singing rain rain go away - entertaining everyone there.

Our next stop was an hour and a half drive away to the thermal spa town of Druskininkai. We stayed here for 3 nights and the day after we arrived we visited the Druskininkai Aqua Park, which claims to be the best in Europe, and I think they are probably right. We stayed here all day and hopped from pools to spas to saunas to slippery slides to the kids area with a miniature wave pool and baby slippery slides. The big kids (Loche especially) had a great time going down all the slides and managed to burn his arm on one. They were so very quick, it's scary (or maybe we are just getting old). It wasn't long before Loche was complaining of a sore neck and it lasted for about 4 days! Cara had a ball and we were considering going back the next day but through the night she woke up with terrible pains in her legs and feet. We were not sure if it was cramps, growing pains or sore muscles from all the swimming we did, so we decided to take it a bit easier the next day. Loche took her for a ride on her bike to a lake nearby where she could paddle in the water and play in the sand. I drove down a bit later in the day and picked them up and after that we headed to a restaurant a German couple had recommended to us the day before. The food there was lovely and we had a very relaxing afternoon overlooking the river.

The next day we said goodbye to Lithuania and headed over the border back into Poland.