After breakfast for two, we drove to Karosta Prison, the only military prison open to public in Europe.
Originally built as an infirmary in 1900, it was used as a military prison by a long succession of regimes including the Soviets, Nazis and most recently, the Latvians. Indeed, the last prisoner was detained here as recently as 1997.
When we got there we were met by a girl who volunteered as a guide for people who wanted to visit the prison. As we were there in February, we had to first make an appointment by e-mail and telephone. The visit was short and one area of the prison was closed but we did get quite a lot of information about the prison and the area.
Visitors can take a simple tour with a guide or audio guide, participate in a reality show (in English or German), spend the night in a cell or do the ultimate and become a prisoner for the night including regular bed checks, verbal abuse by guards in period uniforms and experience the horrors of using the latrine.
The area of Karosta was established as a Russian naval base, and reminders of both tsarist and Soviet Russia remain, including a large Orthodox cathedral and forts once a part of the military complex of Karosta.
Karosta Prison, Liepaja, Latvia:
A Russian Ortodhox Cathedral near the prison:
After a visit to the prison and a drive around the area, not because we wanted to but because we were kind of lost, we moved on to the next destination, Kaunas, stopping on the way for something to eat.
A mall on the way to Kaunas:
Time was tight. We had to return the car at the airport but we wanted to drop off our suitcases at the hotel first. But we made it.
Kaunas airport, however, is not well connected to the city. There is a bus connecting the airport and the city but the bus stop is not anywhere near the airport building. The easiest way to go to town is to take a taxi. We were worried that we would get ripped off since we did not know how much a taxi ride to town was. Fortunately, while standing in front of the information desk to ask about the price of a taxi ride, I overheard someone asking about a taxi ride. We ended up sharing a taxi with a couple from England. That was a win-win solution for the four of us.
Once back in town, to get to our hotel from where the taxi ride ended, we had to walk along Laisvės Alėja (Liberty Avenue), the main street of Kaunas. It was a very nice long street, especially at that particular time we walked on that avenue. Stretching for 1.6 km between the St. Michael the Archangel's Byzantine style church to the Central Post Office and Tadas Ivanauskas Zoological Museum, Laisvės Alėja is the longest pedestrian street in Eastern Europe.
The photo below shows how the avenue looked like on a winter's night. This is the original photo, no photoshopping has been made. The only editing I made was making the photo smaller for this blog. This is one of the best photos I have taken in my life and I am still proud of it.
Laisvės Alėja in Kaunas, Lithuania at night:
