Practical City Guide – Vilnius

This is a practical city guide.

You won’t find the best restaurants, activities or sightseeing here. Rather, I’ll tell you

• how to get from the airport to the city center
• what are the supermarket companies
• which hostels I stayed into
• where to find food
• …

In summary, all the “practical” information a classic city guide won’t tell you.

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How to Get From Vilnius Airport to Vilnius City Center

The cheapest is with the public bus 1, 2, 3g, or 88. If you’re headed for the old town, 1, 2, and 88 are your ways to go.

You cannot buy a ticket on the bus at the moment because of hygiene regulations. Therefore, your options are:

1. Pay with the app. It’s called Trafi. More info here.
2. Get a transportation card (€1.5) and charge it with money.

You can get the card inside the airport. Just before you get out of the airport, go on the right. There is a small shop called “Navresen”. You can buy a card there and ask to have credit on it.

That is what I did. It was really easy.

If you are not sure, there is a tourist information office inside the airport. Just before getting out of the airport, head on the left.

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Accommodation

I booked the Jimmy Jumps Hostel through hostelworld. I have stayed twice at the hostel.

It’s a small and comfy one, but the kitchen is very small. Not recommended for large groups or cooking gourmet meals.

The room I stayed in had windows that you could open and was an 8-people room. I slept well.

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Moving Around

You can walk, use shared scooters (Bolt and Dott) or you can use public transportation and bikes. These ones are called Cyclocity.

You can whether buy a one-way ticket which costs €0.5; or you can buy a three-day ticket which costs €2.9. This enables you to ride for 30 minutes for free (and then you pay €0.39 per half-hour).

You can buy both tickets from the Trafi or Cylocity app (I recommend the latter), or you can buy the three-day ticket at each bike station which I do not recommend as you won’t be able to unlock a bike if the screen doesn’t work.

Also using the app is much more convenient as you can unlock the bike with it.

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Food

The main supermarkets are:

• Maxima
• IKI
• Norfa
• Lidl
• Rimi

You will most likely find Rimi, Maxima, and Iki in cities. Rimi has a lot of Rimi Express shops in the city.

IKI is quite pricey (I bought my olive oil and olives were sold at a higher price than in Belgium) but the meat was alright (7€/kg for fatty beef which ended up being delicious, and 4€/kg for fatty pork).

Norfa are XXL supermarkets, probably the cheapest, but always located outside of the city center.

In any way, I recommend you don’t go to supermarkets as they tend to be expensive, even by Belgian standards.

If you want fresh cheap local food, the best is to go to open-air markets. You will find several spots in the city, some are permanent, some are “mobile” (you buy from trucks).

Here are the main ones:

Hales Turgus

The closest to the old town, you will find the cheapest meat (5€/kg for beef and 2-3€/kg for pork) I could find, fresh fruits, veggies and mushrooms, and a lot of shoes and clothes.

Find it here.

Mobilus ūkininkų turgelis Naujamiestis

This market is a “mobile” one. The day I went, there were only four small trucks selling pork, chicken, dairy, and fish.

Find it here.

Kalvariju Market

This market is similar to Turgus, but much bigger and with more choices. The meat is slightly more expensive than at Turgus albeit it seemed higher quality too.

Find it here.

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Language

The Lithuanian websites I used offered Polish (Lithuania and Poland were once a country), Russian, Lithuanian, and English as languages.

Lithuanian is the main language in Lithuania.

Hello: sveiki

Thank you: ačiū

Please: prašau

Bathroom: tualetas, vonia

For more technical city guides, head to auresnotes.com.