First time in Lithuania?
Good. Make three decisions: how many days, where you start, and whether you really need a car. Everything else on this site becomes easier after that.
Three decisions. Then stop planning.
Answer these in order.
How many mornings?
3 days: Vilnius + Trakai + Kaunas. 5 days: add forest and coast. 7 days: give the coast two nights and stop living out of the suitcase.
Where do you start?
Use Vilnius as the first base. It gives you the easiest first day, a simple Trakai outing and fast rail to Kaunas.
Best first base: VilniusDo you need a car?
Not for Vilnius, Kaunas or the first Trakai day. A car becomes useful when the trip starts asking for lakes, villages and last-mile freedom.
See the honest no-car version →The first-trip spine.
These are not three versions of the same itinerary. Each extra two days changes what is worth adding.
A very good weekend.
Vilnius, one castle, one other city. No coast and no motorway heroics.
Open route →5 DAYSThe route I actually give people.
City, castle, forest and sea without turning the holiday into parcel delivery.
Open route →7 DAYSThe sweet spot.
Two city personalities, a deliberate slowdown and two nights on the Baltic coast.
Open route →YOUR DATESBuild My Lithuania.
Dates, bases, transport, fixed plans and pace go in. A route you can edit comes out.
Build it →Four practical pages. That is enough.
Open only the ones that can change a booking.
VNO or KUN?
The cheaper flight is not cheaper if it manufactures a transfer day.
BASEWhere should I sleep?
Choose geography before the hotel card starts shouting about breakfast.
MONEYWhat does it cost?
Real 2026 numbers and where paying more actually buys something.
DATESWhat is actually on?
A good festival can deserve the Saturday more than another museum.
Now add one thing you care about
This is where the trip becomes yours.
Still not sure what country you are looking at? Read Lithuania, explained →
Lithuania is not hard. Choosing too much is. Almost every disappointing first trip has the same cause: too many towns, too little time in any of them, and a hire car doing the work that a lake and an evening should have done.
FROM THIS PAGE TO THE WHOLE TRIP
One page solves one decision. The Handbook connects the trip.
Twenty chapters join the days, bases, transport, food, destinations and things worth skipping into one offline plan. If you would rather not assemble it yourself, Trip Build applies the same judgement to your dates.
Trip Build and €99 support both include the complete Handbook at no extra cost.
Eat the Old Town. Do not commute through it.
Our walking-first Vilnius food, bar and Old Town evening guide — Michelin when it earns the hours, Stikliai when the street itself is the point, and one good drink instead of a pub-crawl spreadsheet.