My name is Inês, I'm 17 years old and I'm from Portugal. I'm studying Programming in Escola Secundária de Loulé and I’m about to start a one-month Erasmus+ adventure in Vilnius, Lithuania!

Through this blog, I’ll be sharing my experience of living in a new country – even if just for a short time. I’ll talk about what I discover, the people I meet, the culture, the challenges, and everything I learn along the way.

If you’re curious about Erasmus+ or just interested in what it’s like to live abroad for a month, I hope you enjoy following my journey!

Thanks for stopping by!

We started our day by going to Maxima, a really big supermarket, where we bought our breakfast for the week.

For lunch we went to a restaurant called "+++", what you see in the picture is what I ate, it was fried chicken with salad and french fries. It was yummy!

After lunch we went to LINEŠA, and met our internship advisor, Professor Eglé. LINEŠA is a Lithuanian state center for non-formal education, offering students after-school programs to explore interests and develop skills. 

Our first dinner was at Bernelių Užeiga. This meal is "Chicken kiev", a popular dish of breaded chicken breast that is rolled around a piece of cold, herbed butter and it was served with salad and french fries as side dishes.

Day two started with a walk to the Halės Market, it had a lot of stuff it kinda reminded me of Loulé Market. I ate a cookie that i barely asked for, I pointed at it and the lady just put it in a bag, i was going to take it anyway 🤷‍♀️

After our long day walking trough the city, we went to 7 Fridays, the restaurant we are going to have dinner the whole month. I ate the burguer that you can see in the picture, it was really good.

The day started with the bus being late (that's why I was sad), but we still made it to work on time 💪. We started to work on our tasks, but i confess that I was expecting to do something related to programming, my team's task is basically to make a table in Excel, it's really boring. The lunch was the same thing of the day before but instead of pork it was chicken.

On day five, professor Eglé made a reservation for us to work at the library, our first time working remotly. Their library is really pretty and has a lot of rooms, almost looks like a maze.

We didn't know what to eat for lunch, so decided to go to try the Lithuanian McDonalds on the main street. I think their coke is diferent from ours and they use other type of mayonese on the McChicken, they also have different stuff, like a mini McChicken from what we call "EuroPoupança" in portuguese.

After the Ilusion Museum we went straight to the Palace of the Grand Dukes, and we bought the 4 tours. 

The Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, located in Vilnius, is a reconstructed historical palace that was a center of political and cultural life from the 15th to the 17th centuries. After being destroyed, it was rebuilt between 2002 and 2018 as a symbol of Lithuanian statehood. Today, it serves as a museum, showcasing historical artifacts and restored rooms that reflect different architectural styles from its original era.

After lunch we went to the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights where the visitors can see original prison cells, interrogation rooms, and exhibits with documents and personal belongings of victims. The museum preserves the memory of Soviet repression while honoring the fight for freedom and independence. 

After all of these historical places we needed to rest so we went back to the hostel. Some hours later we decided to go eat at "+++" again as you can see I ate a burger, it was really good. Then me and David went to a PhotoBooth we found near McDonalds.

Since we were already at the mall, we went straight to the supermarket before returning home, and as reward we got some iced coffee before leaving. 

Instead of going out to eat at a restaurant, me and David bought a pasta with ham and cheese at the supermarket. I didn't like it, the ham had a wierd smell and taste after heating it up, I ended up to eat cereals.

After lunch Professor Egle said we can go home if we wanted to, so we went to Rimi, another big supermarket, near to LINEŠA.

Wednesday was our first time working remotly the whole day. Today we tried another way to do our task, this one seems that it's going to work. Maybe after all our task isn't that boring.

As we were working at home, we decided to go somewhere near to our hostel so we went to "+++", once again. Our plan was to eat lunch and then go to a cute coffee shop, but while we were eating we received an alert saying that a gas filling station was set on fire and it was dangerous to bne outside. So we ate and went home, and stayed there until dinner.

After dinner, I needed to buy more milk and bread, so we went to Maxima, going home we were talking and saw this beautiful red moon. The picture isn't the good enough to you how it looked, but it's okay.

Usually I don't eat breakfast, I only drink cappuccino, but this morning was different, I ate some Chocapic, my favourite cereals. And then went straight to work.

I'm already tired of "+++", so I looked up different places to eat on TikTok, and found "Grill London". It has burgers, rice bowls, salads, etc... I ate a chicken burguer, probably it was one of the first things that wasn't fried.

Around 12:30, we went to look for something to eat near our hostel. I think this was our first rainy day, the weather is really humid.

I think that rainy days as for an overpriced coffee, and I absolutely love it. So after luch we decided that we would go to a coffee shop and sit there working. I looked for some on Tiktok, and we decided to go to "Italala", it was only two minutes away from "Hesburger", so perfect, what could go wrong right? Unfortunately everyone thought the same, and it was full of people. So I openned google maps and found out that there was a "Caffeine", the coffee brand that's on almost every street, and went there.

Saturday we decided to do something different so we visited other city instead of vilnius, we bought train tickets and went to other place!

After walking for a while we finally arrive to the castle. We walked for about 40 minutes for it to be in contruction and the weather was so bad, it was very humid and cloudy. It was't as pretty as I thought, but I believe it was just because of the weather and the construction part. Anyway, we paid for our ticket and entered. 

We finally found a place to eat, I ordered chicken with rice and bbq sauce on the side, the food was good but the chicken had too much fat. But in general it tasted good.

After lunch teatcher Paulo, told us to go look for a pope statue, Pope John Paul II, the one in the second picture. We found it at Trakai Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded in the early 15th century by Vytautas the Great. Its main treasure is the Trakai Mother of God painting, which is considered miraculous and was the first in Lithuania to be officially crowned by a Pope in 1718. 

After waiting for what seem an eternity, it was only a couple hours, finally our train arrives, and we come back to Vilnius. I was super tired so I ate some bread with butter and a cappuccino, and went straight to bed.

I'm tired of eating burgers, and the day we went to Trakai I was looking for food on bolt, and found a pasta fast food, as I didn't ordered it and was curious to try it, we decided to go there for lunch, it's a bit far like a 25 minute walk from the hostel, but worth it. I really liked it! I ordered a carbonara.

For dinner we went to "Grill London", this was a great find! It's a cheap place with good food, I know I said that I'm tired of burgers but I couldn't resist this one. 10/10 for sure.

After working together on our project presentation all morning, that professor Paulo asked us to do for Egle, so she can see our progress, me and David went to have lunch at "+++", I wanted to try something different so I ordered potato pancakes with meat, I didn't like it very much, but still ate it. 

Now we're back to work, but instead of going home, we prefer to spend money on coffee and stay there the whole afternoon. While I finished our presentation, David was working on the project and trying to make it work. We stayed the until 5:30/6PM.

Finally we're back to LINEŠA, after working remote for a whole week, and did the presentation I was working before. We stayed there the whole morning, and Professor Egle told us we could home after going to the VR film.

When we were in the bus going to LINEŠA, I saw that near by is the restaurant that I ate at lunch the other day. This time instead of eating at LINEŠA we went to that restaurant. It was a good find!

Professor Egle bought us tickets to go see the work of the most famous artist and composer who ever lived in Lithuania, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. We watched the virtual reality film "Creation of the Worlds", it was interesting and good to relax.

This morning wasn't the easiest, me, David, Iara and Diogo left a few minutes later than we should, because the others didn't warn us that they already left the hostel, but we thought "it's going to be okay, the bus is always late anyways.", WRONG, for the first time the buses were on time and we couldn't catch it. Luckily another was coming but we needed to change buses, we only arrived a few minutes late so it wasn't that bad.

Like always, after lunch we worked the rest of the afternoon at home. On the way home we passed by "Iki" and I bought a latte to keep me focus at work, then worked the rest of the day.

The dinner was the same as the other days, it was meat with cheese and tomatoes on the top with rice and carrots as sides. It was good, but I had to take the cheese out because it was making me a little nauseous.

While we waited for the clothes to be washed, me and David kept working on our task, unfortunately the laudry doens't have plugs to charge our computers, and by the time our clothes finished washing, both of our computers were out of battery. So we put our clothes on the dryer and went on a walk.

Day 19, started with morning work, as you know me and David are working with an RPA, and we started by using power automate, an app from Microsoft, but it was buggy so I looked for similar apps and found UiPath, we are currently working with it, and it is going well .

Me and David were working so well that instead of going out to eat and loose our focus, we ordered some pasta on Wolt, unfortunetly they don't have uber eats here, before coming to Lithunia uber eats gave me 3 months of premium for free, but I can't use it here.

This time we didn't need to plan anything, because Professor Egle organized our saturday. We started by going to the train station, to catch the train to kaunas.

At the lab we used the microscop to observe a small leave, then we saw the difference between salt and sugar, and also the difference between chia and poppy seeds. Lastly we tried to find bacteria on the dirty water, unfortunately no one found it. 

After the going to the lab, it was about 12:40 and it had a cafe upstairs, so we went to eat a quick snack before the planetarium. I bought a cookie and a Lotus biscuit croissant to eat with David, but I didn't like it so he ate everything and I ate the cookie.

We found a McDonalds 10 minutes from the Science Island, so thats where we ate since we had to be back as fast as possible because they close at 4PM.

We still had an hour and some minutes left, so we decided to go to Akropolis Shopping,since it was really close to the train station. I feel like this one was the bigger we went untill now.

We arrived in Vilnius at 7Pm so we decided to pick up some kfc because it was on the way home from the train station, and went straight home.

On sunday I decided to treat myself with waking up later than usual, so I didn't take breakfast and went straight to have lunch. Me and David went to the kebab next to our hostel. It tasted good. I wanted to eat near home because on the other day I saw a lether coat at "Humana", a thrift store near the hostel, but unfortunately it was closed. :(

For dinner we went to "+++" and enjoyed the sunday deal, where you eat a burguer with fries and a drink for cheapper, amazing!

Before work I passed by "Iki" and bought a coffee with caramel. Then we catched the bus and went to LINEŠA. Me and David are back at trying to make our robot work for us.

Since we discovered the pasta restaurant near LINEŠA, we've been going there, I always eat a carbonara because it's so good, and makes me feel home. I make a lot of pastas back home, and carbonara is definitely my favourite, so the fact that i can eat it here for cheap makes me happy.