The next morning, after a quick trip to the grocery store near our hotel for pastries and water, we met up with Ramūnas at the Vilnius train station.
As a side note, the train station was my first experience with seat-less toilets. At first I thought I had mistakenly went into the men's room, but then I realized that the hole in the floor was all I got. Grossed out, I did manage not to fall in, but I will be more than okay if I never see a hole in the floor toilet ever again.
This was my first train ride ever (Heber Creeper does not count.), so I was kind of excited that Kevin had agreed to go to Trakai by train instead of bus. I think I gave Ramūnas even more reasons to think I was crazy by my excitement for the train ride. He rides one every week to get from Vilnius to Šiauliai (pronounced like Schow-lay) so that he can attend to his branch president duties. The train was fun, but I expected it to go a lot faster and not make any stops.
Our train
Ramūnas
I think this is one of the only pictures of Kevin. He likes to take pictures, but not have pictures taken of him.
About an hour later, we arrived in Trakai. However, we still had to walk a couple of miles from the train station. While we took the round-about route, it was fun to see parts of Trakai that we otherwise wouldn't have. During our walk it started to sprinkle a little bit, but we just barely got wet before we were able to make in the castle.Inside the Castle
The history of Trakai
The Castle. It is on an island, so you go across this bridge to get to it.
I guess this area would be called the outer courtyard. We were inside the fort, but not the castle at this point.
The drawbridge into the castle
Inner courtyard of the castle. I think the castle was four or five stories high, including the basement.
In the room that used to be the treasury, there were displays of money hidden in clay pots. Apparently back in the day, when the farmers were afraid they were about to be ransacked, they would hide their money in these pots. Later, when people were building their homes, they would come across these pots. Since the coins are so old and not worth anything anymore, they donated them to the National Museum, which has a very large collection of money pots.
This room was formerly the chapel. Important documents are still signed here. When foreign heads of government come to Lithuania, nearly all of them visit Trakai. Ramūnas had control of the camera here. I think he told us to look natural. The paper we are looking at contained the explanation of the room in English, German, Polish, and Russian. Most of the displays in the first part of the castle were labeled only in Lithuanian, but later they were labeled in English too. Also, as you can see in the picture, I found the camera bag to be a very convenient place for my sweater. It seemed like my body could never decide whether it was hot or cold. It kind of drove Kevin crazy to be carrying a pink jacket, but oh well.
A view of what used to be the barracks or servants quarters (can't remember exactly what it was used for) from a window in the chapel.
A goblet. The next part of the castle included displays of what life was like back in the castle's heyday. There were some large groups (including one that looked like priests in training) behind us, so we went through this area quickly.
Kevin and Ramūnas chose to go down a narrow spiral staircase (which I don't like even when my knees are happy), while I chose to go down the same way we went up. I'm still amazed I didn't get splinters on the railing.
Trakai History Museum
The Trakai History Museum was housed in the part of the fort where the soldiers/servants lived (its actual name is the casemates) lived. It was interesting to see all of the valuable artifacts and relics. I honestly love that kind of stuff. Below are some of the exhibits we saw. Each room had a theme, as you will see below
The first room was the ivory room.
The glass room
Both these goblets and the carriage below were in the porcelain room
The furniture room
The personal effects room
I just really liked this picture. It was taken through a really small window, which at one time probably was where they had a cannon or gun to protect the castle.
A view of the castle from the museum
The pipe room
The requisite sign explaining the museum
We found the leopard in the wildlife trophy room. Kevin didn't want to take a picture of it because it wasn't a native Lithuanian animal. I told him he had to take the picture because it was a leopard and my favorite animal. I won.
After we had finished visiting all of the rooms in the museum, we had to go back out and brave the rain, which was coming down quite a bit harder than previously. Kevin and Ramūnas decided that it would just be best to walk towards the bus station (we took the bus not the train because they came more often) and hope that we found a taxi. Apparently we were out at a bad time for taxis, and we finally got so soaked we just crawled into an empty vendor's booth so we could get out of the rain. It was so wet and muddy that the bottoms of my pants are still dirty. We finally saw a taxi pull up, but someone got to it first, but Kevin did ask the taxi driver to call another taxi for us. The other guy seemed worried for a bit that Kevin was trying to steal the taxi. However, the taxi never came and the rain stopped, so we walked some more until we found a taxi.Once at the bus station, we had to wait a while for the bus because it was late, but we did eventually make it back to Vilnius. Once back, Ramūnas suggested we eat at CanCan Pizza. We had a hard time deciding which pizza to get, plus they had a special where you could get one pizza at a better price (possibly free) if you bought two at the same time, so Kevin being the bargain shopper he is, decided we should order two huge pizzas plus salads for all three of us. The pizza's were so large that the two of them pretty much covered the table. I wish we would have gotten a picture. Surprisingly, we almost ate both of them. The joys of thin crust pizza.
By the time we were finished we were stuffed and just wanted to relax in the hotel, which is what we did after bidding farewell to Ramūnas.
