Day 96 - Wednesday 7 August - Vilnius hills

Wednesday 7 August

In one of the amber stores I visited yesterday, the young lady gave me some ideas, so I went shopping early, with success. Then we tried to load translation apps on our phones and soon it was 11:00am. We went walking, because this town has some more 'up's.

 A clearer photo of the cathedral, and showing the tower and the crosses behind.

The Gediminas Tower is left from the 1409 castle which was built to take the place of Gediminas' wooden fort from pre-history. We got there by ... funicular (why climb stairs if you don't have to).

 
They are doing a lot of work rebuilding and landscaping, so you can't explore much.
 

 

 This was the grand hall of the castle.

 Behind the cathedral is the Duke's palace from a more recent time.

 The circle is the gate to our courtyard.  We couldn't be much closer.

 In the tower are a number of exhibitions, of archaeology, a timeline of the history of the tower, and the story of the Baltic Way. This happened in Aug 1989, as a public demonstration that the Baltic people wanted their independence from USSR that had been taken in 1944. 2million people made a chain from Vilnius to Riga to Tallinn, 650+km long.

 City people drove out of town, and some were bussed, even by their companies because it was a Wednesday.

The end in Tallinn

Then we went down and in 10mins were going up again, to the Hill of the 3 Crosses. The original C17 wooden crosses commemorated 7 Christian martyrs from C14 (maybe). A brick monument from 1916 was demolished by Russia in 1950, but then rebuilt in 1989 during the independence movement.

 Something was there, in 2 bygone times.

 At the crosses.

We walked down, and along beside the river,

 Homes to let, suit all sizes of occupants.

and came to Uzupis, a suburb of Vilnius which declared independence on 1 Apr 1997. It is an artistic, bohemian community which may or may not be serious about its own republic.  We walked in to the square where there is a small supermarket, then had a picnic beside the river.   We ambled around a little bit,

 past St Anne's ancient church

 Just to prove they are old, many renovations leave a hole so that you can see the ancient stones.

then on to the Toy Museum. We found it interesting that some toys we thought were old fashioned in the 1950s, were new here in 1970s and 80s. This was communism.

 

George was at work in the cathedral square, earning money to get to Greece.