Lithuania Highlights

A very important Virgin Mary, whose canvas allegedly healed a boy who had fallen out of a window. Displayed in a cathedral in Vilnius.
People are said to have been planting crosses on
the Hill of the Crosses, near the city of Siauliai, since the 13th century. The Soviets bulldozed the crosses down, but every night people would sneak up and put new crosses up for martyrs, mosly victims fo the Soviet Occupation - those families sent to Siberia, political prisoners etc. People come here now from all over the world to add their crosses and to hang little crosses on the big crosses.























Me in front of Trakai Castle, from the time of the Teutonic Knights. It must have looked very different before its restoration in the 1950s. I'm not sure since the museum was on weekend the day we came, but I feel like only that bottom part survived.
We didn't get off at the right stop at Trakai and had to find out way back using this dandy hand written and obviously outdated posted bus schedule.
On the right is Nathan, my travel buddy for Lithuania (met him on the bus to Vilnius and he dragged me along to the coast since we were both eventually heading to Riga in a few days). Here we are in Juadkrante, a little fishing town on the Curonian Spit. We bought this freshly smoked fish out of someone's kitchen and she sat and ate it with us on her porch. She told me I spoke Russian like a gypsy. By that I think she meant I was obnoxious and spicy.






















These are the dunes I biked to today on the Curonian Spit, from the town of Nida, on the border with Kaliningrad. the Curonian Spit is a thin peice of land off of the Baltic coast of Lithuania. The northern half belongs to Lithuania and the Southern to Russia as part of Kaliningrad. The body of water here is called the Curonian Lagoon.