Journey to the Centre of the Europe

Once Europe's largest country, Lithuania is now its most Lithuanian. Entering from the North we made our first stop at the Hill of Crosses.

It's a hill with over 200,000 crosses which were placed originally as a protest and more recently as part of a pilgrimage. It's quite an incredible sight, and also had a pleasant jingle when the wind blew.

The Curonian Spit is a 98 km long, thin, curved sand-dune spit that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea coast. At its widest point it is 3.8km wide.

We explored the spit by bicycle covering 35km of the Lithuanian half (we were too lazy to get a visa for the Russian half).   

Yaz ate more berries.

The sand dunes which once destroyed a village. To the left of Josh one can see the raging Baltic Sea and on the right the tranquil Curonian Lagoon.

Some of the dunes are up to 60m high.

Mmmmm... Steak with herring.

Vilnius

It's a beauteous place with too many churches, colourful buildings and many green spaces.

The Vilnius University

The castle at Trakai.

The castle was once guarded by the fierce Crimean Karaites, in brief Jews who only accept written law and deny oral law. Now it is guarded by amateur archers...

and crossbowmen.

While in Lithuania we arrived at the centre of Europe, 26km North of Vilnius. Since so much of the continent has been hogged by Russia, we are actually spending most of our trip in what could be considered South-Western Europe.