Getting lost in history

So the main reason we really went to the mystical land of Lithuania was to look at our family  history there which has been a really intriguing/strange/enlightening?

We started in kaunas (kovne) where shanelle's family and part of Lee's family used to live in the early 20th century. We started the day walking through the old town which was completely dead at 10am. But it was really pretty.

We then kept walking and found the Kaunas Castle ruins which suprisingly really beautiful and has inspired us to go to more castles. It also provided us a perfect bridge taking opportunity.

We then decided it was time to go to the ghetto memorial.We prepared by asking the hostel receptionist where it was/how to get there. She told us where to take the bus and to get off at the last stop. we found the bus pretty easily and were quite proud.

45 minutes and a lot of Lithuanian countryside later we were pretty sure she misunderstood...

above: the last person walking away from the bus into the distance, leaving us alone with a strictly non-english speaking bus driver.
After getting a good view of lithuanian landscape we sat quietly on the bus and hoped that the bus would eventually go back to where we came from luckily another 45 minutes later we got back to where we started.
We began our second attempt at finding the ghetto memorial and we walked there in a couple of minutes. The memorial was pretty underwhelming it was in the middle of a fork in the road just in front of an apartment block

It was getting a bit late but we really wanted to go to the old jewish cemetary so we started walking to the other side of Kaunas. When we got there we could see the magen davids on the gates which were covered in bushes. Going inside was really eerie. It was so quiet and forgotten but you could just imagine how much history there was in the place we were standing. All you could see ahead was overgrown weeds covering eroding tombstones

Then we went to the hostel and had an early night after very little sleep the night before.
We then went to Siauliai which is where my (lee) family was from. We started on a 2 hour bus ride from kaunas to siaulia where both myself and nells need for a window seat meant that we coulnt sit together. Which lead to me meeting a really talkative old lithuanian woman. It was only about 10 minutes into the covesation if me noding polietly that she asked me a question and i had to tell her i diddnt actually speak lithuanian. that was slightly awkward..
We got there with just 2 street addresses one of the memorial for 2 ghettos that used to stand in siauliai and the other was of what used to be a big synagogue at Vilniaus 68. We soon relised there was no need for a map when you can get a bus stop of friendly lithuanians to direct you.
This ghetto memorial was similar to the one in Kaunas but looked even slightly more out of place. It was a small memorial stone at a junction of two streets

Then we went off to the synagogue a couple minutes walk away only to find a completly abandoned brick building.

We then walked around the town and ate lunch in the park across the street

and headed back to Kaunas.