Friday, June 13
Despite the title, this isn't all about history. Breakfasts at our hotel are quite decent, but don't begin to compare with those in Riga. However, the setting is much nicer.
When Jim brought home brochures yesterday, Ardith zeroed in on one of them. She had been reading in our tour book about Trakai Island and its castle and wanted to go there. Taking public transportation would leave you with a nearly mile long walk to the castle. Ardith's ankle had improved after yesterday's rest, but she didn't want to push things. The brochure described a tour to there and even though Jim doesn't particularly like tours, he realized that was the most practical thing to do. That would be our main goal for the day.
The brochure listed a web site and a phone number. The website reverted to Lithuanian after the front page and we didn't have a phone. It was supposed to leave at 9:30, so we went to the tourist information office and had them call. She didn't get through, but suggested a different company that departed at 11 and we made a reservation for that one.
With some time to kill, we decided to explore the innards of the cathedral.
There are a lot of subtle connections to Poland in here. The main side chapel is devoted to St. Casimir and there were a lot of other Polish sounding names throughout. History lesson 1: Poland and Lithuania were united in a commonwealth from the late 1500s to the late 1700s. Casimir was Polish, ruled the commonwealth for a time, and is the patron saint of both Poland and Lithuania.
While we were walking along a side aisle, we saw what looked like a pulpit facing backwards. (Insert Polish joke here?), but seen from the main part of the church, it appears to be a platform for special dignitaries and is open to the front, back and center.
The confessionals were all open - not a chance for private sinning. Their woodwork was great, though.
We walked over to the Presidential Palace while we were waiting for our tour. Yesterday, when Jim passed by, there were several people down on their knees chalking in squares on the pavement. He thought it was an art project of some sort. Today, we saw that they were coloring in letters that faced the Palace. With some inquiry, we found out that it can be translated as "Listen To Us". It is an ongoing protest by folks who believe that the government is unresponsive to the people. It's good to see that the government tolerates at least some forms of dissent. One problem with doing 5 countries in just over 3 weeks is that you don't get a chance to wrap your head around political realities, other than a bit about Russia.
As we passed through the university area, we saw an interesting stack of books in a window.
History lesson 2: Mindaugas was the Duke who effectively created Lithuanian by uniting all the subtribes with the same ethnicity. He also was baptized and brought Christianity to the Lithuanians. This occurred in the mid-1200s. Legend says that he selected the site for a castle at Trakai because of its defensive position, being on an island. After he was murdered, the people reverted to paganism. This made them the target of Crusaders of the Teutonic Order. In the early middle 1300s, Gediminas transitioned Lithuania into a multi-ethnic state and began building an empire that would eventually become the largest in Europe, strecthing from the Black Sea to the Baltic. He initiated construction of two castles in Trakai, one on a peninsula and the other on an island. His grandson, Vytautus, brought an end to the wars with the Teutonic and Livonian Knights, both by battle and diplomacy. One of his great victories was here at Trakai.
The peninsula castle has been reduced to mostly just its foundations. The island castle had gotten into a state of major disrepair, but has been restored and can be explored.
The Ducal Palace (the rulers had the title Grand Duke) now contains a museum. Julia showed us where coals were heated and said that for the first floor, warm air was distributed through tunnels to heat rooms. Jim had a fuzzy picture of this until an illustration in an exhibit showed how these "tunnels" were created.
There was much more history explained in the museum. It was hard to grasp some of it because we Americans are taught almost nothing about eastern European history and there is an amazing amount of complexity. History lesson 3: Gediminas brought a lot of men from the Caucasus of the Tatar and Karaite ethnic groups to be his bodyguards and defenders of the castle. We had never heard of the Karaites before. Their religion is sort of Jewish, but they only accept the Torah as holy and reject the teachings of the Talmud. They also follow many Turkic practices. Their numbers have dwindled. There are just over 200 in Lithuania, with 80 residing in the town of Trakai. The museum showed their traditional dress. Later, we passed by their synagog in Vilnius.
They also had hordes of coins from just after the time of Vytautus that had been dug up, as well as cigar-shaped sticks of silver that were cut to make into smaller currency when needed.
Jim took a picture of a suit of armor. It took 3 men to dress another in one of these 100 pound suits. When he took the picture, he didn't notice the face. In the piture it looks like a live human female in the armor. Spooky?
A painting showed Vytautus' victory at Trakai
Ardith's ankle told her not to go to the 3rd floor, so she went down to the courtyard until Jim finished. She saw him taking picture and they ended up with dueling shots.
Trakai is not just a castle. It is a functioning town and a major resort area. Today had a record high temperature, about 85F. Normal for this date is 70F. This attracted lots of people to the water. One of the swans seemed to enjoy people watching. Jim needed to cool his heels, so to speak. Julia saw what he was doing and said that she had done the same.
We had a wonderful time chatting with the woman from Finland on the bus ride back. We wished that we would have taken her contact information. She was really interesting and interested.
We went looking for a nice outdoor place to eat this evening and found a place with one outdoor table left. A person sitting at one of the tables said that we really should look at the downstairs. Ardith's ankle bravely made it down a narrow spiral staircase into a totally charming room. She was hooked. This won out over outdoors.
Ardith had a terrible time getting to sleep tonight. Jim rarely does, but stays up much later than most folks. Tonight is midsummer - the longest daytime of the year. There were a lot of celebrations taking place. She fell asleep just a few minutes before midnight. There were really loud fireworks that went off at midnight, but Ardith snored on. She said that she was wakened by later ones, but Jim was sound asleep then and hadn't a clue.
Despite the title, this isn't all about history. Breakfasts at our hotel are quite decent, but don't begin to compare with those in Riga. However, the setting is much nicer.
When Jim brought home brochures yesterday, Ardith zeroed in on one of them. She had been reading in our tour book about Trakai Island and its castle and wanted to go there. Taking public transportation would leave you with a nearly mile long walk to the castle. Ardith's ankle had improved after yesterday's rest, but she didn't want to push things. The brochure described a tour to there and even though Jim doesn't particularly like tours, he realized that was the most practical thing to do. That would be our main goal for the day.
The brochure listed a web site and a phone number. The website reverted to Lithuanian after the front page and we didn't have a phone. It was supposed to leave at 9:30, so we went to the tourist information office and had them call. She didn't get through, but suggested a different company that departed at 11 and we made a reservation for that one.
With some time to kill, we decided to explore the innards of the cathedral.
There are a lot of subtle connections to Poland in here. The main side chapel is devoted to St. Casimir and there were a lot of other Polish sounding names throughout. History lesson 1: Poland and Lithuania were united in a commonwealth from the late 1500s to the late 1700s. Casimir was Polish, ruled the commonwealth for a time, and is the patron saint of both Poland and Lithuania.
While we were walking along a side aisle, we saw what looked like a pulpit facing backwards. (Insert Polish joke here?), but seen from the main part of the church, it appears to be a platform for special dignitaries and is open to the front, back and center.
The confessionals were all open - not a chance for private sinning. Their woodwork was great, though.
We walked over to the Presidential Palace while we were waiting for our tour. Yesterday, when Jim passed by, there were several people down on their knees chalking in squares on the pavement. He thought it was an art project of some sort. Today, we saw that they were coloring in letters that faced the Palace. With some inquiry, we found out that it can be translated as "Listen To Us". It is an ongoing protest by folks who believe that the government is unresponsive to the people. It's good to see that the government tolerates at least some forms of dissent. One problem with doing 5 countries in just over 3 weeks is that you don't get a chance to wrap your head around political realities, other than a bit about Russia.
As we passed through the university area, we saw an interesting stack of books in a window.
Ardith sat on a bench along the side of Cathedral Square where we were supposed to meet the bus for our trip. Jim was wandering, looking for more pictures. She chatted for a while with the person that did reservations. When Jim came back, he asked where to pay by credit card. She said they didn't take credit cards, but told Jim just to go down the main street and he would see lots of banks that could change dollars. We didn't bring an ATM card on the trip, partly to guard against possible loss, but mostly because Jim is a cheapskate and avoids as many bank fees as possible. After 3 long banks, he found a bank, went in and saw that there were about 30 people sitting on benches waiting for their number to come up. This wouldn't do, as it was 15 minutes before we were supposed to depart. Jim decided to go back to the place where he had changed money the day before. As he was zooming by near Ardith, she yelled to him. She had been talking with a woman from Finland who said there was a bank close by. At a near run, she escorted Jim to a place where she could point to the bank he had missed. He went in, changed enough money for the trip, and made it back to the bus with almost 5 minutes to spare!
Our guide was Julia, like Julia Roberts, she said. She was attractive, pleasant and very well informed. She also asked that we didn't take pictures of her. On the 40 minute ride to Trakai, she told us bits of Lithuanian customs and language, but mostly told us the history surrounding the place we were going.
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| Mindaugus monument |
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| Site of former moat |
They also had hordes of coins from just after the time of Vytautus that had been dug up, as well as cigar-shaped sticks of silver that were cut to make into smaller currency when needed.
Jim took a picture of a suit of armor. It took 3 men to dress another in one of these 100 pound suits. When he took the picture, he didn't notice the face. In the piture it looks like a live human female in the armor. Spooky?
A painting showed Vytautus' victory at Trakai
Ardith's ankle told her not to go to the 3rd floor, so she went down to the courtyard until Jim finished. She saw him taking picture and they ended up with dueling shots.
Trakai is not just a castle. It is a functioning town and a major resort area. Today had a record high temperature, about 85F. Normal for this date is 70F. This attracted lots of people to the water. One of the swans seemed to enjoy people watching. Jim needed to cool his heels, so to speak. Julia saw what he was doing and said that she had done the same.
We had a wonderful time chatting with the woman from Finland on the bus ride back. We wished that we would have taken her contact information. She was really interesting and interested.
We went looking for a nice outdoor place to eat this evening and found a place with one outdoor table left. A person sitting at one of the tables said that we really should look at the downstairs. Ardith's ankle bravely made it down a narrow spiral staircase into a totally charming room. She was hooked. This won out over outdoors.
Ardith had a terrible time getting to sleep tonight. Jim rarely does, but stays up much later than most folks. Tonight is midsummer - the longest daytime of the year. There were a lot of celebrations taking place. She fell asleep just a few minutes before midnight. There were really loud fireworks that went off at midnight, but Ardith snored on. She said that she was wakened by later ones, but Jim was sound asleep then and hadn't a clue.
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