Practicalities

Books and Guides

There were not many up to date guide books available prior to our trip. In fact the only one that seemed worth buying was the Vilnius and Trakai City Guide which I ordered from Amazon. I saw this publication in several museums in Vilnius printed in various languages.

The Visit Vilnius Website is informative and they have a Mini Guide that you can download and print out. The Vilnius In Your Pocket Website also have a guide that you can download and print off, ours was a little out of date but still very helpful. The staff at the small tourist information office at the airport were excellent and provided us with maps of Vilnius and of Trakai. There are also tourist offices in Vilnius.

Airport Transfer and Getting Around

Getting to Vilnius from the airport is a doddle. You can get a train into Vilnius or a taxi if you want but we hopped on a bus [3G] and we were in the city centre within half an hour and then it was only a short walk to our hotel. Before Covid you could pay the driver as you boarded but this was not possible on our visit. The best thing to do is to download the Trafi App to your phone and you can purchase and activate tickets easily when required. A half hour ticket only costs 65 cents! You can use Google Maps and put in where you want to go it will tell you what buses or trains to get. The City buses and trolley buses were efficient and we used them loads to get around the city quickly.

We used the train to get to Trakai and again it was cheap, clean and efficient. The train was a double decker too – it made our British trains look a bit of an embarrassment.

Accommodation

There are plenty of accommodation options to suit all budgets, the hotels in the old town normally cost more. We stayed at the large and not particularly attractive [on the outside] Art City Hotel which was about a 20 minute walk into the old town which was not a problem for us. Our room was spacious and comfortable and the breakfast was fine too. One morning they even had lasagne on the breakfast buffet! We got a special deal -5 nights for a double room with breakfast cost us about £144 through Booking.com.