Bling in Vilnius

Day 19 - bling in Vilnius

We had a very peaceful night opposite the palace. A Dutch caravan parked up to be hidden by a hedge and a camper van pulled up beside us.

I’m trying to take my time with my last book, The Garden against time by Olivia Laing. It’s fascinating on so many levels and full of interesting stuff. It might seem random and tangential but ties in and is relevant. I must be a bit of a geek to be so fascinated. For instance I didn’t know the origins of the word paradise. I thought paradise gardens, which emerged in Persia 6 centuries before christ, and must be enclosed, and include elements of water such as a pool or rill, were being compared to biblical paradise. But no. The roots of the word are in Avestan, a Persian language from 2000 BCE. The word pairidaeza means walled garden, pairi for around and daiz for build. We saw lots of those on our trip to Iran.

It was straight boring flat scenery to Vilnius. We parked up at Camping Vilnius City. It’s a car park with hook up points and waste disposal, steep at €32 but that was all there was. As soon as we’d had a sandwich we called a Bolt which took us to the far end of the old town for €6.90. We saw a bit of the modern glassy high rise buildings on our way.

My connectivity isn’t good here, whichever company EE has linked me in to but I’d photographed pages and map from my Insight Guide so we managed to identify what we were seeing. There is free WiFi on the site.

We wanted to climb to the Gediminas Tower but the walking route up the hill was closed and you had to get a funicular which we decided against. We walked to the cathedral, white neo-classical dating 1777-1801. A belfry was built across the way. We couldn’t explore all of the cathedral which has interesting votive offerings as a wedding was about to take place. There weren’t a lot of guests, nor were they very dressed up, though most of them carried bunches of flowers. At 2pm a gong went and the priest walked from the alter to the door where the young couple where waiting. He welcomed them in and led them up the aisle - none of the archaic father giving his daughter into the hands of another protector. The couple walked together to the alter. The priest started intoning so we left.

From there we went by the university and presidential palace (Napoleon stayed there on his way to Moscow in 1812) walking in Pilis gatve where there were numerous old buildings and churches.

We continued to Town Hall Square, which is actually a triangle, and St Casimir’s, the oldest baroque church in the city built in 1604-15 and named after the patron saint of Lithuania. Under the tsars it was converted into an Orthodox Church and the crown of the saint was replaced by an onion dome, then during WW1 the Germans made it a Protestant church, and next the Soviets made it a museum of the history of religion. Finally it re-opened for worship in 1989.

Unfortunately the concert hall was not open and had no concerts today. On our way to the only remaining city gate, the Gates of Dawn, in the courtyard of the only Russian monastery operating in the Soviet era, we went into Vilnius’s most important Orthodox Church the Church of the Holy Spirit. It was built in 17th century. Some young women were lighting candles and praying in front of a glass vase containing what is said to be the well-preserved bodies of saints Anthony, Ivan and Eustachits, martyred in 1347 because of their faith at the behest of Grand Duke Algirdas. My book says they are dressed in white at Christmas, black during Lent and red at other times though on 26 June, the bodies, believed to have healing powers, are left naked. Today they were covered in green to match the church and had little green slippers over their white socks.

We were ready for a drink so sat near the Gates of Dawn, looking down the street. The waiter was a friendly young man who spoke excellent English. He said all the large tour group we had seen were Polish coming to look at all the churches. It’s quiet in the city as it was a holiday weekend for the national saint. He chatted for a while. Apparently Estonians are renowned for their cool demeanour and people don’t usually greet each other unless they know each other. He said his family lives near the Belarus border but to cross it can take 12 hours and you aren’t allowed to take even water. He said he thought the LBGQT law here would change as the civil partnership law failed by only 1 vote. Also he thinks because they are in NATO and EU they will be safe from Putin though it is a worry the corridor to Poland is so narrow, with Russian Kaliningrad and Belarus so close on either side.

We called a Bolt which came in a minute and got whisked back to camp for €5.10.

It was good to see a bit of the city but we didn’t find it as interesting as Kaunas. We agreed that Riga won easily as favourite capital with Tallin in the middle.

153 miles today