Buses, Vilnius

1 more image

I arrived in Vilnius by train from Kaunas, and left by longdistance bus for Riga. The two stations are short of next door to each other.
Vilnius is well served with trains and buses to/from Kaunas but if you want to go to Latvia there are only buses to choose from. I used the Eurolines for my journey to Riga and was satisfied with the quality of the bus and service.

Vilnius is well served by buses and trolleys. This link will give information about the lines and schedules. There is a little pic showing a map which to click on for the line highlighted on a map.
The word "stotis" which appears quite often means "station".

The most common means of getting to and from Vilnius is by bus. These are generally high quality transport, many of which have wi-fi. For international travel the most famous, and most expensive, line is Eurolines. But there are a number of others who are probably as good, or close enough.

The bus station is a bit of a mess, and a fair walk from the old town. It's easy enough to get to and from there without walking, however. Most of the trolley buses seem to go near the old town.

Just a note to anyone coming from Riga. The eurolines bus stops at a shopping centre on the far side of the river. This can be convenient if you are staying in a hotel in the new part of the city, but you are probably better staying on until it gets to the bus station. You'll know you are there because there will be a lot of other buses there too.

Vilnius has a good system of buses and trolleybuses to get you where you need to go. Tickets can be purchased at most newspaper kiosks for 2 Litas per ride. When you board a bus or trolleybus, look for the place to insert your ticket, then push the hole puncher in to cancel your ticket. If you can't figure out how it works, a local will generally help you. If you haven't bought a ticket in advance, you can still buy a single-ride ticket from the driver for 2.5 Litas. You can also buy 1-day tickets (13 Litas), 3-day tickets (23 Litas), and 10-day tickets (46 Litas), but the average tourist most likely won't use the system enough to make these options pay off in a walkable city like Vilnius.

4 more images

In 2006, after exploring Lithuania for about 10 days we returned to Vilnius from Panevezys by bus. The trip took about 3,5 h and was 22,50 Litas (about 6,80 Euro; 2006).

In 2011 we left Vilnius by bus to Minsk in Belarus. We bought our ticket for about 13 Euro one day before the departure. We returned from Belarus to Vilnius from Grodno (BY) via Druskininkai.

Vilnius' bus station (Autobusu Stotis) is served by several bus companies from almost all bigger cities in Lithuania. International services are available from many European countries including Poland, Latvia, Germany and Belarus.

The bus station is conveniently located just next to the train station, only 10 minutes on foot south of the old town.

Vilniaus Autobusu Stotis:
http://www.autobusustotis.lt/

Most points of tourist interest is located inside or very close to quite large Old Town of Vilnius. There was no better way to visit it than walking around esp. that many/most streets of the Old Town were narrow and surely closed for public transportation.

But outside, you can use extensive net of both buses and trolleybuses although the last ones can't go to farer suburbs. Some buses I saw, looked a little bit old, some were new. They were not crowded on business day when I was in Vilnius. The bus stops were put close one to the next one.


Ticket prices: check here
There were the same tickets for buses and trolleybuses: single tickets, one-day, 3-day and 10-day tickets. They costed 0.80 Lt in kiosks or 1.00 Lt (0.3 € or $0.36) when purchased by a driver. You must validate your ticket in a machine immediately after getting on a bus/trolleybus.

You can download and print out the map of public transportation: click here

As I noticed the bus stops of public buses were located close one to the next one. There were well marked and the timetables in Lithuanian language were easy to understand. The public buses were not crowded on business day when I was in Vilnius.

If you are going to travel in the Baltic States the longdistance buses are a very good option. I used Eurolines but there are others as well.
I'll post some links here:
Eurolines
Luxexpress
Ecolines

3 more images

Dead easy to get to Vilnius by bus/minibus from Kaunas.

There are lots of services operating. Just buy your ticket from the ticket office (you will see the timetables displayed at both Kaunas and Vilnius bus stations). Decide what time you want to travel, because the person behind the counter will ask you (I found the ladies to have very reasonable English, which helped).

You could buy your return ticket when you arrived if you wish, as I did. That way you are sure of a seat on the bus/minibus at the time you want. The timetable does not show which service is a bus and which is a minibus, so it is difficult to know how much space there will be (I imagine that buses at the beginning and end of the working day can be quite crowded). There are no 'return' tickets as such, just one-way tickets (20 litas when I visited in August 2010).

Both Vilnius and Kaunas bus stations are well-signed, and you will easily see which stand ('gate') your bus leaves from.

Journey is around 1h 20m, although can obviously be affected by traffic congestion at busy times.

Hello,
my recomendation is to go from Vilnius to Siauliai by buss. Then from Siauliai buss station you can take a buss to Joniskis direction(every our starting at 7:25, last 15:40), you have to go by this buss to Domantai village. From the stop in Domantai you will have to walk 2 km to the hill of crosses. The same way is back. Then from Siauliai you will get the buss to Riga.
From Siauliai you can reach Cross hill also by special buss from the buss station, but it runs only on Saturdays and Sundays, starting at 10:25 and brings people back to Siauliai starting at 15:07 from Cross Hill.
I got this information from Siauliai turism center, if you need some details you could contact them for information : http://tic.siauliai.lt/en
Eurolines is a good choise for traveling to Riga.
Have a nice travel.