Originally the Jewish quarter of Kraków, Kazimierz was pretty much destroyed during the Second World War. For decades the area lay neglected, but over the last 20 years or so it has begun to reinvent itself. Myriad shops, restaurants and cafes have opened and some of the Jewish community has even started to return. There’s …
To be honest, we only chose to stop off for a couple of nights in Częstochowa to break up the journey between Łódź and Kraków. We hadn’t realised until we arrived that the town is actually a site of pilgrimage for around 5 million Catholics annually. Believers come from around the world to see the …
After three weeks travelling around Lithuania we arrived in our final city, Kaunas. It’s the country’s second largest city after Vilnius and there’s a healthy rivalry between the two. Last week in the capital we’d heard how Kaunas was just like Vilnius, but worse. Of course, once we arrived in Kaunas the locals there told …
Before our trip, Vilnius was one of the cities we were both most looking forward to visiting. Admittedly, our reasons weren’t exactly the same; I was excited to try out some of Lithuania’s best-rated craft beer bars, while Poppy was more eager for the WW2 and Soviet history. Lithuanian beer had been a bit hit-and-miss …
Panevėžys, Lithuania’s fifth largest city by population, is not a place you’ll find in most guide books. I don’t think they get many British tourists out this way; even the local tourist information office only offered maps of the city in Lithuanian, Latvian and Russian. Nevertheless, we booked a couple of nights in town and …
We arrived in Šiauliai from Klaipėda on a very comfortable Lithuanian Railways train – UK train operators could definitely learn a thing or two from them! Šiauliai is a university town but is best known for the Hill of Crosses a few kilometres away. Most people just visit for the day apparently, but we decided …