I was told Kaunas could be visited in a day. My four Couchsurfing hosts showed me just how much there was to do. Spending a full week in Kaunas was definitely a highlight in my travels. I had no idea there would be so much to do there or how many great friends I would make. But my arrival the previous night was the real story. In my post on Warsaw , I mentioned my adventure of buying a ticket in the wrong direction. After a few hours on the bus, the driver stopped and told me we were in Kaunas.
I looked out the window and saw nothing. No bus station, no city, no lights, nothing. Just empty fields beside the highway. Yeah, I got a little worried. Luckily, my internet had already kicked in for the new country, and Google Maps showed me I had been dropped off on the very outskirts of town, but I was less than a kilometer away from my first Couchsurfing host, Rasa.
So the adventure had a happy ending. The next day I set out to find the free walking tour, which is the first thing to do in each city you visit. There was no walking tour. I realized another big, white church was a few blocks away, St. No walking tour. At this point, I came to the conclusion that the walking tour was no longer happening, possibly because the school year had just started and the guides were back in university. The most recent post on their FB page was also several months old, so I set off to explore the town on my own.
Otherwise, you need a lot more time than that for all the things to do in Kaunas. There are two main streets to explore: Liberty Avenue and Vilnius Street. They are technically one long street separated by an underpass.
The first street is primarily shopping, while the next is restaurants. Just making it from one end to the other and window shopping can take a few hours. I got to see a folk dancing festival, local crafts and sweets, and many of the beautiful churches scattered around the Old Town. Kaunas seems to have donuts as one of its specialty foods. I walked into the Donut Lab which had recently opened. The selection was overwhelming. After the streets, I went through Confluence Park.
