Lighter subject for today!

This is pretty much taken directly from the cover of Lonely Planet, (no really, check out the current cover of the Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania edition) but it's such an irresistible photo, that I don't think I can be blamed.

This is the gorgeous Trakai Castle a little less than an hour outside of Vilnius. It's on an island in the middle of a wonderfully still lake. In the summer you can go rowing and sailing. The first castle at Trakai was built on the long and thin peninsula where the main town is now. That castle wasn't awesome enough apparently, and so another castle was built on the island by Vytautas, the founder of the Dutchy of Lithuania. After a number of wars and the growing irrelevance of stone fortifications, the castle was a shade of it's former self, but in the early 20th century, Polish authorities (Vilnius was only able to be Lithuania's official capital for the last nine years of the century, it was part of Poland until WWII) decided to restore the fort. They made quite a bit of headway, especially given the other events of the time period, and the project continued until 1960, when the Soviets decided that rebuilding the castle would be a symbol of Lithuania's feudal past. Finally in the 80's and 90's, work resumed, and the spectacular result has become one of Lithuania's top tourist attractions, if not the top. And deservedly so, it's a sublime spot.