Day 6: Ignalina to Vilnius

There are only a handful of trains between Ignalina and Vilnius every day, with the first connection being at 12.48, so we were able to have a slow start to the morning in Ignalina. We decided to go for a walk around the lake at the bottom of our road, taking advantage of the fact that it was now daylight and there hopefully wouldn't be as many flies.

The lake looked beautiful in the morning sunshine and we saw a heron, as well as a large congregation of ducks.

It took us about an hour to walk a complete circuit around the lake.

We made the most of our final walk through the forest, before heading back to the apartment to pack and catch the train back to Vilnius.

The journey to Vilnius didn't seem quite as hot and sticky as it had on Tuesday, although it was still a very warm day overall. We arrived in the Lithuanian capital around 14.30 and had arranged to check into our apartment at 15.00. It wasn't a long way away from the station so it ought to have been easy to find, but the address details on the reservation were a little confusing. The address was given as "Šv. Stepono g. 8/11, Raugyklos g. 19/3" which was a rather baffling amount of numbers to work with. Šv. Stepono and Raugyklos were two small streets running roughly parallel to each other, so we decided to hang around the point at which they were intersected by a small side street and hope for the best.

By 15.10 there was no sign of anyone waiting to check us in to an apartment on either street, so we decided we would have to contact the owner. We sent a text message to which we received an instant reply, saying that they were waiting for us on Šv. Stepono. We eventually found them... in a courtyard behind a locked gate, so it hadn't been immediately obvious that there was were we were supposed to be! It then turned out that the apartment we were staying in was actually on the other street anyway, so we had to trudge back to where we had started with the case.

Once we eventually got inside, the apartment turned out to be nice, but definitely the smallest we have stayed in so far this holiday. It was mercifully cool though, which was a good start, and most importantly it had a working Wi-Fi connection We got to work posting blogs and photos from previous days, before going out for an evening walk in Vilnius.

It didn't take us long to find our way into the old town. The pink town hall looked very familiar from Tuesday.

We walked past the town hall and through the main square...

...passing this pretty church on our way towards the cathedral.

We soon had a view of Gedminas tower...

...as well as the iconic white crosses in the background.

We were fairly hungry at this point, having not had any lunch, so we walked back to a restaurant we remembered eating in last time we were in Vilnius. The service was a little slow - it seems to be acceptable in Lithuania to not serve everyone at the table at the same time - but the food was good, and cheap.

Tomorrow we are hoping to visit the nearby town of Trakai