The first week of my 'vacances' was affected by an all-too-common French tradition: a strike. My friend from university, Megan, was supposed to be arriving on the Wednesday, but unfortunately french air traffic controllers had different ideas and decided to protest that day, meaning that Megan couldn't get to Sète until the Friday! After collecting her from the tiny Beziers airport, I managed to take her on a very quick tour of Sète - we even managed to fit in an ice cream as the sun went down!
Less than 24 hours later we were on the train to meet Emily in Bordeaux. I ended up staying with Emily and Megan for several days in Angoulême, and we had a lovely time enjoying the sunshine and catching up with each other.
During the second week of the holidays, Amy and I had booked to go to Vilnius, Lithuania, and Stockholm, Sweden because Amy has family heritage from Lithuania, and Sweden just looked fun!
As Amy spent the first week on holiday in Madrid, we arranged to meet at the airport in Paris, so I took the opportunity to visit Elliot and his flatmate the night before, which was fun, and I finally got to see the Eiffel Tower glitter, so I was very happy!!
The next day Amy and I were reunited and caught our flight to Vilnius. For a capital city, Vilnius was relatively small, but it had a beautiful and quirky old town which was full of different coloured buildings (apparently because in the past they didn't use house numbers, so used colours to identify buildings instead).
Our hostel was also very pretty and quaint, right in the centre of town which was perfect, and the staff were so lovely and welcoming, and happy that we had chosen to visit Lithuania. It was much colder there, so we were back in our winter clothes which felt odd after the beautiful weather in the south of France! On our first day we went on a walking tour of Vilnius which took us round the beautiful Old Town, with its many Baroque style churches, and also into the self-declared mock Republic of Užupis, which had a great constitution including 'Everyone has the right to be happy'! We also walked down Literatu Street, which had art pieces on the walls dedicated to Lithuanian authors and poets, and basically anyone who has ever written about Lithuania! Later on in the day we went into the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, and climbed up the hill to the Gediminas' Tower which gave us amazing views over the city.
Trakai is where the Dukes of the ancient Grand Duchy of Lithuania used to rule from, and the island castle there has been fully restored, and looks very impressive, with tiny wooden Lithuanian houses next to the lake surrounding it. We were also given a traditional Lithuanian restaurant to try out, which was delicious, and unbelievably inexpensive!
Our trip to see the Hill of Crosses was equally as successful, as we managed to navigate the Lithuanian train system (it was a lot smoother than the rickety bus ride we had the day before!). Arriving into Siaulai? we managed to find the right bus, and ended up being dropped off in what felt like the middle of nowhere, an empty road surrounded by fields. Fortunately, just a short walk later we found the impressive Hill of Crosses, and spent several hours wandering around it, and putting down our own crosses.
The next day, after we had eaten our last delicious breakfast of warm Lithuanian pastries, we were off to the airport to catch what turned out to be a very small plane, to Stockholm, Sweden.
Stockholm felt so much bigger and modern after our time in Lithuania, but it was a very cool city. In our short time there we managed to explore Gamla Stan (the old town), eat Swedish meatballs, go on a walking tour of the city (which included seeing the bank where the hostage situation that brought about the name 'Stockholm Syndrome'!), see the changing of the guards at the royal palace, visit the ABBA museum, the photography gallery, Fotografskia, and see the famous City Hall where the annual Nobel prize dinner is held. Not bad for 48 hours! I was also very excited to discover that one of my favourite fictional characters as a child, Pippi Longstocking, actually originated from Sweden!!
Yes, this actually happened...
Changing of the guards
The City Hall
Gamla Stan
Anyway, that's all from me now after a busy few weeks of travelling! My next blog will be one of my last as I leave Sète - I can't believe it's already the end!!
Au revoir/iki/adjö!
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