Day 64: Kaunas

JUNE 6 - Our apartment is on the sixth floor of the building (no elevator). It is newly furnished and clean, with a great view of the park to the east. The only bother is all the stairs, no fun with heavy packs. The host claims that Emma Watson stayed here while filming the mini-series Chernobyl, for which an older apartment, lower down, was used to model as a flat in Moscow related to the story. I will probably not be able to verify if that is truly the case.

Kaunas is fairly spread out, but the historic old town is concentrated on an area in the west where the Neris River (same as the one flowing through Vilnius) converges with the Neman River. It is descriptive of the flat topography of the country that the Neris, as it flows south into Kaunas, is oriented 180 degrees to its flow in Vilnius, after meandering all over the intervening countryside.

The old part of the city had obvious strategic advantages, being enclosed on three sides by wide rivers. A fortress was established here by the 10th Century and withstood many attacks by the Teutonic Knights, before falling to them in 1410. It served as an important city for centuries, and became the capital of Lithuania during the 20th Century interwar period (1920-39) after Poland seized Vilnius. It is currently the second largest city in Lithuania, with roughly 400,000 inhabitants.

House of Perkunas (Thunder), built in the late 15th Century, and owned by many since then. It is in the late Gothic style,

Modeling children’s travelwear in a Kaunas pedestrian underpass.

In the old city plaza, with the Jesuit Church of St. Francis Xavier (left), and the Kaunas Town Hall (right).

The Cathedral-Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul, one block away from the previous photo. Pope John Paul II also visited this one in 1993,

Interior of the Cathedral-Basilica, quite an elaborate one overall.

A bit of votive candle action from Odette.

Kaunas Castle. Heavily reconstructed, there really isn’t that much left of the original fort, and I felt like there wasn’t a lot to see here compared with other castles we’ve looked at over the last few weeks.

In the garden next to the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, built in about 1400 and the earliest known church in the city.

From the old town, walk east along a wide avenue that has been converted into a long pedestrian mall. Again, I am impressed the Lithuanian use of open spaces to create a quiet, traffic-free expanse in the middle of a busy city. The mall goes all the way to the St. Michael the Archangel Church.

In front of a theater on this street is a sobering, large format photo exhibit of the war in the Ukraine. It focusses on families hiding out in the subways in various cities in the Ukraine, places of relative safety from bombs.

This clearly Russian Orthodox Church was commissioned in 1895 by the Russian tsar. During Soviet times, it was converted to a glass and sculpture gallery.

One of the doors of St. Michaels.

Head to a hilltop park after this, to spend some time in the woods on this warm sunny afternoon.

This was hidden away, almost in the backyard of our apartment building. The sculpture is called ‘Motherhood’, created in 1972 by local artist Leonas Strioga.

COST SUMMARY:

This is our final full day in the three countries of the Baltic States.

The costs are in on daily expenses for the Baltic States portion of the trip. I expected it to be significantly cheaper than the previous two segments (about $150/day), and it came out close to that:

Projected daily cost from the pre-planning phase = $150/day

Realized daily average costs for May 17 - June 6 = $134/day

The share of this cost apportioned to lodging and food was about the same at 37% each, with about 20% for transport.

Lithuania Poland