Could we BE any more festive?

What do you get when you put together a family of 3 avid travellers, plus Aidan who's always happy to come along for the ride? You get a third family holiday of the year, that's what! Last year, on the run up to Christmas, I found that the UK Christmas markets just didn't hit the spot in terms of getting me feeling festive and I was watching stories longingly of those who had gone to markets in pretty Europeans cities. Naturally, I felt like it was a must for us this year and so I briefed Dad on the requirements (2 nights, Friday-Sunday, good flight times) and then left the planning to him and waited to find out where we were off to...

The destination of choice turned out to be Vilnius, Lithuania. Cute, snowy and famed for often having the most beautiful Christmas tree in all of Europe, it felt like the perfect choice. We'd been to Lithuania once before when we were staying in Riga and exploring a couple of neighbouring towns, but we'd pretty much just gone across the boarder so Vilnius was a brand new city for us to explore. As always, Dad chose a fabulous hotel (I leave the planning of family holidays mostly to Dad because he's an even bigger control freak than me over holidays). We were staying at the St. Palace hotel and the rooms were beautiful and had a terrace with the most amazing sunset view!

It was early evening by the time we got into the city and it was starting to get dark, which made it the perfect time to go to the main Christmas markets in Cathedral square. When booking the holiday, we obviously made sure that the markets would be open, but funnily enough, we managed to arrive on the day of the light switch on without realising! So TV crew were setting up while we had a look at the stalls and enjoyed some chimney cakes and mulled wine (which they simply call 'hot wine' there). 

We'd considered hanging around to watch the light switch on but since it was fairly quiet still, we thought it could easily not be for a while yet and headed off for a drink instead. We made the right call on two counts because it did turn out that the light switch on was about 2 hours after we were there, and also look how many people there were and how busy it got!

We ended up finding the cutest tiny wine bar to have a couple of drinks in. The weather in Vilnius was about minus 4, so it was bitterly cold and we were very glad to get into somewhere cosy to warm up from the inside out (red wine will do that to a girl). Because it was so cold, it was a hard holiday wardrobe to plan (especially when knitwear is so bulky and fits in a small suitcase with a lot less ease than bikinis and denim shorts do). I opted for leather coated jeans and a chunky knit grey jumper with roll neck, since it's like a jumper and a scarf built into one!

Whenever I go on holiday, I like to try and eat the local cuisine as much as possible. Now, usually the Lithuanian meat-and-potato style of food isn't my first choice. But when it's winter and everyone is in full-on hibernation mode, the stodge is what the heart wants. We found the cutest cave-style restaurant and shared a variety of lovely dishes; venison dumplings, cheese and pork rolls, and the most amazing steak. Everything was so good!

Despite the fact we'd decided not to hang around for the actual switch on, we weren't about to go without seeing the tree lit up in all its glory! It really was beautiful and I could definitely see why Vilnius regularly tops the Christmas tree leaderboard.

The next day, we planned to do a bit of exploring! Vilnius is hardly a massive city (in fact, it's actually pretty tiny) so we were easily able to get to all the stuff we wanted to in one day. We started with coffee and cake at a beautiful little tearoom, and then walked up to the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, which was really impressive.

We decided to take the scenic route round the city and went through Bernardine Garden. It was the most beautiful kind of winter weather; blue skies, low sun, and super cold! It had snowed quite a lot just before we arrived but wasn't actually snowing while we were there, which is the perfect formula in my view because it meant I got to kick through lots of pretty snow without my hair going frizzy. Why is it that we never lose the childish instinct to walk through untouched snow? We could see lots of footprints of other people doing the same too so it clearly wasn't just us.

There's nothing quite like seeing a city from above so our next stop was the bell tower. It took us 135 stairs up to the top (no lift of course), which is harder than you'd think in chunky boots and lots of snow-proof layers. But it was a really lovely structure and we had 360 degree views once we got to the top. There was also a cute video about the history of the tower and there's a special floor tile right outside which is supposed to be lucky. You turn on it clockwise 3 times and make a wish - here's mum in action trying it out!

The thing I found most magical about visiting Vilnius at this time of year was how spectacular their Christmas decorations were! So we enjoyed a little wander round looking at them all. Every shop, cafe and town square were adorned in the most beautiful decorations ever. I mean, just look at the Nutcracker-esque display on the cake shop? 

Pizza is a must-have no matter where you are in the world, so we stopped off at a lovely little Italian restaurant for a late lunch. Mine was salami and gorgonzola and it was so good!

I've seen that a few cities have these illusion museums but I'd never actually been to one so figured it'd be fun. It was really cool and there were so many clever illusions to look at and get photos of. Plus it got us out of the cold which was a little bonus.

We finished off the day by stopping for a drink in a cute cosy little pub. I had wanted to try a mead while I was away because I'd heard Lithuania was famous for it, but the waitress didn't seem to have any idea what I was talking about so I played it safe with a hot wine instead!

After getting ready for the evening, we started off with drinks at a cool pub right near our hotel whose entrance involved walking through a red box to get in. It was a British themed pub and as coincidence would have it, they were even playing the Nottingham Forest game on the TV (what are the chances)! Then we had a wander to look for a nice restaurant and after admiring plenty of beautiful Christmas lights, we ended up at the oldest restaurant in Vilnius! It was really cool and the menu felt almost medieval which I really liked. I went with a dish famed for being a favourite of the grand Duke!

The next day, our flight was reasonably early so we basically headed straight off to the airport. It was actually snowing again on the Sunday so we felt like we'd timed our trip perfectly with the snowy ground and perfect blue skies. In fact, we felt like most of our trip had worked our perfectly, and I'd highly recommend Vilnius as your next city break. It was cheap, it was beautiful and it was ideal to explore in only a couple of days. Plus, we were able to fly back from Lithuania with so much festive cheer that we risked our bags being over the weight limit. Enough to see us through to Christmas day, that's for sure!