Cross the 300-meter wooden footbridge to Trakai Island Castle before ten in the morning and the red-brick ramparts are still quiet enough to hear the lake lapping against the barbican walls. That gap before the tour buses arrive from Vilnius is the single best planning tip for anyone building a day around Trakai’s activities. The Island Castle and its museum The Gothic water fortress on Castle Island is the reason most visitors come, and it earns the trip: eleven exhibition halls inside the ducal palace hold Grand Duchy weaponry, coin hoards and armor, plus views over Lake Galvė from the wooden gallery ramparts.

Vilnius is one of the few European capitals that lets a hot air balloon drift directly over its own cathedral spires, and that single fact does more for a couple’s itinerary here than any list of restaurants ever could. A flight over the spires, if the season is right Balloons launch from Vingis Park or the riverside at Valakampiai and climb over the Neris and the Old Town’s church towers, usually twice a day, at dawn and again around golden hour.