Vilnius

27 July- Must remember not to visit Europe in summer- it is very hot again and sunny. Must be high 20's . What were we thinking- I think a bit of snow in Moscow would have been more tolerable. Enough complaining. We had a very interesting day. This was day one of our private guides segment. We were met at hotel and taken for a walk around the old city. Cannot really list everything we saw but essentially we went to a large baroque church  in cathedral square first up.  Sa tells me it is the basilica of St Stanislavsky and St Vladimir can neither confirm nor deny this because just noticed my tourist map is in Russian Cyrillic. Anyway was plain but rather beautiful inside. Just checked and it is called Vilnius Cathedral- should have guessed. It was first built as a Christian church in the 1200's on the site of a pagan temple. The guide said that Lithuania came to Christianity relatively late and was basically a pagan country before then. Anyway it was closed by the Soviets and used as an art gallery which was fortunate as at one stage they were thinking of using it as a garage for truck repairs. It now largely dates from the 18th century. A lot of their architecture seems to date from then. Given there were a lot of wars, invasions and fires in the 17th to 18th centuries, not surprising very little medieval architecture has survived. We stood in Cathedral Square for a bit and were told that certain coloured stones marked where the wall around the original castle stood. There is also a marked spot that was the beginning of a human chain linking people across the 3 Baltic States in 1989 at the start of the Soviets eventually leaving. We were told that 80% of the population is Roman Catholic and they have very many churches. They used to also have many synagogues. We were told that about 7%  of the population was Jewish but 95% of them were wiped out in ww2. We were also shown where the 2 Jewish ghettoes were behind essentially what was the main market square in medieval times.its where the Town Hall now is. Typical medieval place where there used to be executions, markets selling goods etc- the usual. A number of the buildings date from the 16th century here and there used to be a city wall with 9 towers. The city basically grew beyond the wall so it was left to crumble. We walked under the one remaining tower which has survived because there is a chapel in it. It has some wooden effergy of mother Mary which they apparently all genuflect in front of when walking under this tower. It is called the Gates of Dawn. Just remembered that the parts around the Town Hall were built by Polish and Lithuanian nobles. Also a reasonable number of Poles or those with Polish ancestry live here. We also got taken to the House of Amber and given a short lesson on where Amber comes from and the different types of Amber. We mysteriously then finished the tour in a shop selling.... Amber. We were quite surprised. We did learn though that real Amber floats in water that is 10% salt and if you rub it very hard eventually you will smell pine. Mmm so apparently we need to either carry a small glass of salted water with us or pick up any proposed purchases and rub rubbing them vigorously. Either that or only buy Amber in an official looking store that will issue you with a verification certificate.

We got an hours break for lunch and then got driven out to see Trakai which is an old village really that has an old castle on a lake on it. The castle has been reconstructed from its 13th century origins but a very good job has been done. It is located on one of 21 islands on Lake Galve and built as a 'seat of power' by one Vytautas the Great. We were told about the Lithuanians and Poles uniting to defeat the Teutonic Knights - around that time seems to have been the hay day of Lithuania. The castle was then destroyed by the Cossacks when the Russians invaded in the mid- 1600's.There are also some Crimeans brought over to fight basically who have remained. They live in these little wooden houses always with 3 windows in the front. They are called the Karaim. They seem to be some unusual mixture of Turks and Ukrainians that practice some Old Testament religion that is like Judaism. For some reason they were not considered to be Jewish in ww2 so survived. Think I'd better look this up. Some Tartars were also brought in but our guide dismissed them and said there were none remaining. I thought there may be some descendants?

We were also shown this beautiful White pavillion on one of the islands that was a spa for the KGB. It is referred to as the Soviet era post ww2. Trakai is a bit like Lake Balaton in Hungary- a place to go swimming, sailing etc on in summer. People apparently ice skate here in winter. Oh yes also learnt Lithuania is very flat so no slopes for skiing on in winter- they do ice skate though.

When we drove back into Vilnius we noticed lots of Soviet- era apartment blocks. This is where most people still live. Looked pretty grim to us. We suspect our guide was either very little or not yet born when the Soviets last left. She spoke quite dispassionately about the protests that occurred, the number of people shipped off to Siberia by Stalin etc. frankly I was surprised there was anyone left alive after Stalin and then Hitler turned up. They seem to take it for granted all the various invasions, alliances etc which I guess you would . Oh also saw their main University- the oldest one in the Baltic States. They have some ridiculous number of Universities given the relatively small size population wise.- 3million and some 23 Unis. Not sure why.