Sightseeing around Vilnius

September 25th, 2006 by Mark Rittman

Although I was up at 5.00am this morning to catch my flight,
it did mean I got in to Vilnius, Lithuania just after lunch giving me a
few hours this afternoon to do a bit of sightseeing around the Old Town.
Vilnius Old Town is one of the last surviving medieval old towns in
East Europe and was about 5 or 10 minutes in a taxi from the hotel I’m
staying in.

I started off by the Cathedral Square and had a quick look
around. There was a shopping street just opposite with a bunch of
upscale boutiques, cafes as so on, where I got a few more Euros changed
and had a quick drink.

Vilnius Cathedral

After that it was a walk over to the main
bridge, and then along to Gediminas Castle – a medieval castle right on
top of a huge hill behind the cathedral, a place that you’ve got to
visit (and climb up) if you visit Vilnius.

Gediminas Castle, Vilnius

The picture doesn’t do the walk justice
actually – it’s a good twenty minute steep uphill walk up to the
castle, but when you’re up there the view is worth it. Apparently the
castle is the landmark that everyone occupying Lithuania has had to
capture, over the years there have been many flags flying there and now
it’s the flag of the Republic of Lithuania. Well worth the climb (on a
very hot day, actually…)

View from Gediminas Castle, Vilnius

After that (and finding the fenicular
railway, on the way down….) I had a half hour walk around the
historic old town, around by the university and down towards Pilies
Street
– a very pretty area, a nice place infact to go on a
weekend break if you get a chance.

Around the Vilnius Unversity district

Anyway, that’s enough of the tourist bit
now. Time to go up to my room and start working through the examples
for tomorrow’s seminar, in particular the ones on Slowly Changing
Dimensions and Automatic Corrections that I want to show off in a bit
more detail that last time. All the photos are on flickr,
and I’ll be hopefully be back tomorrow with an update on the seminar.

Comments

  1. Niall Litchfield Says:

    watch out for the bandwidth challenged complaining about multiple 100+k pictures on one page.

Website Design & Build: tymedia.co.uk