Kaunas Botanical Garden

Two km south on the former Darius & Girėnas Airport, which now only has light aviation. The indoor exhibits (such as the flight simulator) closed during covid and have yet to re-open. So you can only see the outdoor collection of vintage aircraft.

Flight experiences with small planes or gliders at Darius and Girenas airfield. They no longer have skydiving here: that's moved out to Pociūnai 30 km south.

The largest indoor arena in the Baltics, with a capacity of 15,500 for basketball and up to 20,000 for concerts. It hosts Žalgiris basketball club.

At the south end of Vytautas bridge is this 133 m funicular, built in 1935 to connect the Old Town with Aleksotas district up the hill. It runs every 10 minutes with a midday lunch break.

In 1940 thousands of Jews from Poland and Lithuania were desperate to get out, but they needed visas. The Dutch issued many visas for Curaçao and their Caribbean colonies, but getting there became much more difficult when Italy joined the Nazis and closed the Med. The main escape route was then across the USSR to the Pacific. In Kaunas the Japanese vice-consul Chiune Sugihara (1900-86) issued hundreds of Japanese transit visas, blithely disregarding orders to conduct all sorts of checks. He may have saved thousands of lives, as a whole family could travel on one visa; from Japan they moved on to North America and elsewhere. His mission ended when the embassy closed, Germany crushed Lithuania, and anyone who hadn't got out was exterminated. Sugihara spent his later years in obscurity in Japan; his Kaunas residence is now this museum.

Dinky little whitewashed brick mosque and minaret built in 1930. The city's first Muslims were Tatars in the 15th century, and this patch was their graveyard, hence the street name Totoriu. It was their quarter of Ramybė Park, which elsewhere interred Catholics, Lutherans and Orthodox. Eventually a wooden mosque, imam's house and school appeared on the site.