Friday, October 23, 2009

hill of crosses - day 6



From Riga we drove to Vilnius, which is about a 3 or 4 hours journey on a direct route. I had planned, however, to make a detour near Siauliai, so it took us most of the day to get there. Above is a photo of our lunch that day - I think it's cepelinai, only of course they were fried. The filling was made of seasonal wild mushrooms, very, very yummy.

The reason for that detour was to visit the Hill of Crosses (Kryzių Kalnas), located about 12 km N of Siauliai. It's sort of a national pilgrimage site, containing hundreds of thousands of crosses of all sizes. During World War II the site was repeatedly destroyed but the crosses would always be replaced by the local people and pilgrims. It's certainly an impressive site and quite worth the detour we had to make.

Hill of crosses























Later for tea we stopped at this really nice coffee place by the road and lake side, a perfect spot to rest for a while. I wish I'd taken note of its exact location, because when we returned from Vilnius we couldn't find it anymore, but I think it's somewhere on the main road between Panevėžys and Vilnius.









More photos here

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Erin, a Chinese friend from work was in Lithuania with her parents a month ago, or so, and she showed me pictures of the Hill of Crosses. It is an unbelievable place!

I am curious: did you knit that cross that is hanging beside the wired cross, or you just found it there?

Cheers from Toronto

likeschocolate said...

Amazing! I want to go there now! What a fantastic trip!

Anonymous said...

O lugar é intrigante e ao mesmo tempo interessante, não imaginava que existiria um lugar assim...