I love going to spas and so when I decided to go to Lithuania, I had to incorporate a break to a spa. Druskininkai seemed to be the main spa town in the country with lots of spa hotels. After looking at the various hotels, I decided that Spa Vilnius in Druskininkai was the best place to go because it had some of the traditional Lithuanian treatments that I wouldn’t find in some of the other hotels, especially the peat mud bath. It also offered amber treatments as Baltic amber from Lithuania is world renowned.
Druskininkai was easy to get to by bus from Vilnius bus station, just a 2 hour journey and the spa was only a 5 minute walk from the bus station in Druskininkai. The bus wasn’t busy and even though we had been allocated seats, one of the other passengers kindly told me that she had asked the driver and he said we could sit anywhere and space out. It was a pleasant enough journey, even though the view from the window was hardly spectacular. The scenery was very flat and very grey on this winter December day.
My room wasn’t ready when I arrived, so I decided to take a walk around Druskininkai to explore. The town is easy to walk around, even though it is quite spread out. I walked past the upside down house, through the park which was decorated for Christmas, into the small square where the Christmas tree was and found the cable car that went across the river to the indoor ski centre. I didn’t have time to do that today as I had some treatments at the spa later, so I headed to back to the hotel to check in.
My room was ready when I got back, I had a deluxe room with a balcony which was actually a very large room consisting of a bedroom, separate living room with sofa and a kettle and fridge as well as the ensuite bathroom. I only briefly went onto the balcony, it was literally freezing in Lithuania at the moment, so it wasn’t the weather for sitting out there in my bathrobe enjoying the view with a glass of prosecco. In fact, it wasn’t a brilliant view either, a few tower blocks in the distance and bare branched trees, but I could see the river and it wasn’t the hotel’s fault that there were tower blocks close by and certainly not their fault I’d decided to visit in winter so there was no colour to the trees or the sky!
My treatments this evening were an amber bath and then an amber massage. I put on my bikini and my bathrobe over the top and went to find spa reception. The spa part of the hotel is really beautiful, lots of quiet areas to rest on big sofas, loungers and chairs, in white and brown muted colours to create a relaxing atmosphere.
Before I had any treatments I had to have an appointment with the doctor. This is a very useful tip if you’re booking a spa break in Lithuania. If you go to a spa and have an appointment with the doctor who will approve your chosen treatment programme, it’s classed as a medical stay and is exempt from tax. If you don’t see a doctor it’s considered to be a leisure stay and you have to pay tax on it. My doctor’s appointment consisted of 15 minutes where the doctor took my blood pressure, listened to my chest and asked a few general questions about my health. She didn’t speak English so the receptionist came in with me and did the translating.
This was another thing about Druskininkai. It’s a reasonably obscure town tucked in the southern part of Lithuania and so has very few foreign visitors. They said they rarely got any guests from England, they were mostly Lithuanian. I didn’t hear any English being spoken by the guests, I was definitely a rarity.
After my appointment with the doctor, I had my amber bath. There was a corridor of rooms where all the baths were and various bath treatments were offered, but I had gone for the amber bath today, followed by the amber massage because it was something traditional due to the famous Lithuanian Baltic amber. The bath was filled with warm water, the jets were turned on, I got into it and then a jug of an amber oil mixture with echinacea and motherwort was poured into the bath to soak into my skin over the next half hour while the jets massaged my body. It was a really nice feeling, I thought that it certainly did my skin some good, but then again, who wouldn’t want to lay in a bath of luxurious amber oil?
When I had finished my bath, I decided to check out the pool facilities and sauna facilities. I went in the jacuzzi first, then I had a swim in the pool. I went into the other room where there was a much larger jacuzzi pool and three saunas. The most comfortable one was the Bio Sauna at a temperature of 45 degrees and not much humidity, the other two I couldn’t stand to be in for long. The dry sauna which had a temperature of 90 degrees was too hot and the wet sauna where all the surfaces were dripping was too humid. I went intermittently into the Bio Sauna between going in the jacuzzi until it was time for me to go for my amber massage.
The Amber Road massage, a lymphatic drainage massage using amber oil and amber stones, was very relaxing. This was what I needed after having a flight that landed at 2am in Vilnius and then virtually no sleep before I got the bus to Druskininkai. I was tired enough to really relax into it and the massage therapists at Spa Vilnius were very good.
At the end of the massage I went on one of the loungers in the relaxation room and enjoyed a cup of herbal tea. I was in the relaxation room on my own, so I could really relax. I wasn’t interested in going back into the pool after I’d had my tea, I was just going to go back to my room and relax in there for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow was an early start.
The beds in the Spa Vilnius hotel rooms are very comfortable, I had a really good night’s sleep. Just as well because I had an early start with a few activities crammed into my schedule before 10 o’clock.
First of all I’d booked a Sonata to the Sun massage to wake me up, it took just half an hour, but it was booked for just after 8 o’clock. This massage was supposed to help you banish stress by targeting points in your body responsible for fear and anxiety. It was a lovely gentle massage and I felt relaxed at the end of it. I’m not entirely sure it had woken me up for the day, but it had certainly got my day off to a good start.
The doctor had recommended that I do the morning aqua aerobics class as well, so I dutifully took off to the swimming pool after my massage and did half an hour of aqua aerobics. Even though I didn’t speak, my blank looks when the male instructor was speaking were enough of a hint for him to realise I wasn’t Lithuanian and he spoke in English, although he demonstrated at the side of the pool what we should be doing, so I could have got by without him speaking English. I hadn’t done an aqua aerobics class for ages and I quite enjoyed it. I could certainly feel it working.
The staff had made a reservation for me to take part in the class, but there were only 3 of us in the class. Maybe it was too early in the morning or it clashed with breakfast. In fact, it did clash with breakfast, but if I was quick, the theory was I could dash off to the breakfast room before it closed at 10 o’clock. I suppose if I hadn’t turned up to the aqua aerobics class no one would have bothered chasing me up about it, despite it being the doctor’s advice, but I had half an hour to get breakfast and as long as you were there before 10, you didn’t get chased out of the breakfast room.
I was impressed with the breakfast, there was a huge amount to choose from, breads, pastries, fruit, vegetables, cheese, fruit juice, smoothies, tea. I set myself up for the day with a decent sized breakfast and then it was my intention to walk into Druskininkai, get the cable car across the river and have lunch at the place that served Arabic cheesecake before going back to the spa for the afternoon.
It was cold outside again today, so I wrapped up warm and headed into the town. I walked through the park with all the Christmas decorations in it and up to the entrance to the cable car that I’d found the previous day. Unfortunately there was a group of school children waiting there and I was told that it would take half an hour or so to get them all across to the ski centre. I bought my ticket and checked out the building next door which was a hotel and waterpark. I wouldn’t have time to use the waterpark on this visit, but I would definitely check out the waterpark if I came to stay in Druskininkai again. The waterpark was still closed, it didn’t open until later and there wasn’t really anything you could see inside, so I walked back to the park, took some photos of the Christmas tree and could see, from a distance, that the queue for the cable car appeared to have dissipated.
I went back to the cable car and waited for the next ones to come back. There were 4 cable cars as part of the Druskininkai Hoist Cableway. There were 2 lines of cable and 2 cable cars for each line. The cable cars went over the river and back on the same line rather than in a continuous circuit like a lot of cable cars do and both cable cars went together. I got into one of the cable cars with another couple and it took just under 10 minutes to go across the Nemunas River to the ski centre.
As we set off and left the town behind there was an expanse of woodland below. The Nemunas River crossing was almost at the end of the ride, a wide, brown river running through the woods. The descent into the ski slope station was immediately after the river.
The couple in the same cable car as me didn’t stay to look around, they just got straight back on and went back, as did the family in the other car. They must have been tourists or just having an outing and as it was only 5 Euros return, it was a reasonable enough thing to do, especially since this was the only cable car in the whole of Lithuania.
I decided to get off and look around. I quickly realised there was nothing much here apart from the ski centre. I was aware that there were some houses located at this side of the river, but they weren’t in sight. If there were any woodland walks you could do, I couldn’t find any signposts for them. And it was cold, I didn’t have a vast amount of time, so it wouldn’t be a good idea to go exploring today.
I went into the ski centre, which was very nicely decked out inside, the shops selling the skiing equipment looked like Swiss chalets against a mountain background painting. But there was nothing to do here, so I went out to the cable car station and rode back across the river into the town.
One of the peculiar things in Druskininkai is the upside down house. Part of the Museum of Illusions, this is a little yellow house along the pedestrian walkway near the park with its roof on the ground. I had enough time to have a look around, I was sure that 15 minutes would be more than enough, there were only 2 rooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. I hadn’t seen anyone else going in it while I’d been in the town. I suppose once you’ve been inside, there wouldn’t really be any need to go and look at it again, it was interesting to look inside for me, but I wouldn’t go in it again if I was back in Druskininkai.
The lower floor is the bedroom, because this is upside down and would be the top of the house if it was the right way up. Various objects were hanging from the ceiling or stuck to the walls. I went upstairs to the combined kitchen and living room and separate bathroom. There was a lot of detail, ironing board, children’s toys, pictures on the walls. I took a lot of photos, but a couple will give you the general idea of what it’s like. It makes you look like you’re hanging upside down if you turn the photo upside down so it appears everything in the house is the right way up. It’s difficult to explain, it’s easier to look at the photos. Although the photos do something to your brain which finds it hard to compute what’s going on in them!
I didn’t have a massage until evening, so I could go and have something to eat before I went back to the hotel without me having any issues with digestion. I had my mud bath in the early afternoon, but that would be fine. There were a few places to eat in Druskininkai, including a rather nice looking Italian restaurant, but Toli Toli had caught my eye because it had Arabic cheesecake on the menu which I’d never had before. I love cheesecake and it also had a rose flavour to it and anything that’s got a floral flavour like lavender, rose, violet or lilac is my first choice.
I ordered baked feta with tomato and olives and then the Arabic cheesecake and a flavoured lemonade to drink. There were several flavours of lemonade to choose from, but for me there was only one choice. Seabuckthorn lemonade. I love seabuckthorn flavour and it is very popular in the Baltic, but I’ve never really seen it anywhere else. I’ve ended up having a lot of seabuckthorn flavoured drinks in Estonia, so it was a chance for me to have it again.
The Arabic cheesecake was not what I was expecting. It was soft cheese surrounded by sweet vermicelli pastry topped with pistachio and served in a sweet rose flavoured syrup. The cheese cut through the sweetness, but it would probably still be too sweet for someone who doesn’t like really sweet things. Luckily, I can eat really sweet things, so I enjoyed it a lot.
I then walked back to the spa hotel and quickly changed into my bikini and bathrobe and went to spa reception to report for my peat mud bath.
Peat mud baths are famous in Lithuania. I couldn’t come to a spa here and not try out this ritual. Apparently the best peat mud in Europe comes from Druskininkai so this was the ideal place to have a mud bath. According to the information, special peat generating from different plant organisms over a long period of time is used for the treatment. However, it didn’t look very enticing when I walked into the room where I found a bright green bath filled with black gunge. If I was going to get into that, it had better be good for me!
Getting into the bath was actually worse than I expected. A large amount of mud had settled to the bottom of the bath and squelched underneath me as I lowered myself down. I was then encouraged to coat my limbs with this peat mud which was supposed to detoxify and improve my metabolism. I did this, but the bath was very hot. Unfortunately, when I tried to communicate this to get a bit of cold water into the bath, the therapist misunderstood and started to put in yet more hot water! Finally, I got her to understand that I needed cold water and she put in a bit of cold water for me. The bath was still very hot, but now it was enjoyable rather than me feeling like I was melting, like the Wicked Witch of the West, who I probably looked like in this light with the green glow of the bath reflecting off my face.
After 20 minutes it was time to get out of the mud bath. I scraped as much mud off my arms and legs as I could before I got out and then went into the shower and tried to get rid of all the mud.
I wasn’t planning to head back into the town again. I’d seen everything I needed to see. So it was another couple of hours at the swimming pool, jacuzzi and saunas and I was very good and did quite a number of lengths of the pool for the exercise, although I have to admit, it wasn’t a very long pool, not 50 metre Olympic size or anything like that. But swimming was swimming, even if it was in a small pool, which I mostly had to myself because the other guests there seemed to be in the jacuzzi, the saunas or on the loungers. When a family with children got into the pool, that was my cue to get out and go into the saunas.
I hadn’t initially planned to have another massage when I was putting my programme together for my 2 night stay, but I was persuaded to have a “jazz massage”. I think, not unreasonably, I was expecting this to be quite a lively massage to jazz music. In fact, it had nothing to do with jazz music at all. It just meant it was a varied massage that catered to my own needs.
The massage therapist definitely had her work cut out with me. I had knots in my muscles everywhere. They were like rock. She said she would have to put some pressure on my muscles to try and ease the tension, so I agreed and actually it wasn’t too bad, but I could certainly feel her working. She was appalled at quite how tense and knotted my muscles were and as she got to another area on my back or shoulders or neck or legs and felt what a mess my muscles were, once again she was amazed that almost every muscle in my body was rock solid.
She wondered if I’d be there the next day, so she could have another go, I told her that I wasn’t. So she had to be satisfied with the hour she spent trying to loosen my muscles off, which had her working quite hard to try and get any sort of pliability in them. Although it most definitely wasn’t a relaxing massage, it was certainly effective and beneficial. And that was the last treatment I had at Spa Vilnius in Druskininkai.
The next day I was leaving for an early bus and as breakfast didn’t start until 8am and my bus left at 8.30, I had no time to eat before I left. The reception staff were very concerned about this and offered to get me a tea, but I declined. It was far too much of a nuisance dragging my suitcase up the hill to the bus station with my rucksack on my back without also having to try and carry a cup of tea in a cardboard cup. They offered to get me a box of something to eat, so I said if they wanted to get me a couple of croissants, that would be very kind. So while I settled my bill, one of the other staff ran to the breakfast room and filled a box with pastries for me, which I could fit in my rucksack so I didn’t have to carry them separately.
I had been very happy with my stay at Spa Vilnius. The booking procedure which I had done via email had been a bit of a drawn out process, but I did get the programme and the room that I wanted. My room was large and very comfortable and in better weather the balcony would have been lovely to sit on with a glass of fizz. The pool and saunas were pleasant and the therapies I had were extremely good. I enjoyed all the massages and both of the baths I had. Breakfast was good and there was the additional gesture of the staff making sure I got some breakfast to take away with me to eat because I was leaving early, I really had no complaints at all. It was also really good value, less than 400 Euros for 2 nights accommodation with breakfast, use of the spa facilities, aqua aerobics and all those treatments I’d had. In comparison to a spa break in England, the price was phenomenal, so I would happily stay at Spa Vilnius again.
On the other hand, Druskininkai was full of spa hotels. There was another one I had considered when I’d been looking online and I rather liked the look of the one with the waterpark attached next to the cable car station that I discovered when I was there. So I’m not sure whether I would go back to Spa Vilnius because I know how good it is or try out another spa because I want to try something different. Who knows, I may never return to Druskininkai. But I would thoroughly recommend it and definitely wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to go again if it presented itself to me.
I visited Druskininkai in December 2021.
I stayed at Spa Vilnius in Druskininkai in a junior deluxe room with a balcony. A 2 night stay with breakfast booked directly through the hotel website cost €198 which included use of pool and saunas and a consultation with a doctor to qualify as a medical stay.
The mud and amber baths are approximately 20 minutes and cost €12 each. Massages start from €31 . The Spa Vilnius website has a full list of spa treatments. You can request your treatments at the time of booking and the reservation staff will incorporate these into your stay.
The Druskininkai Hoist Cableway is the only cable car in Lithuania. It costs €5 return. The journey time in the cable car is around 8 minutes each way.
The upside down house is part of the Museum of Illusions. Entrance is €2.
I had Arabian cheesecake and seabuckthorn lemonade at Toli Toli, a cafe in Druskininkai town centre.
I travelled to Druskininkai from Vilnius by bus. The journey time is approximately 2 hours. A return ticket from Vilnius bus station cost €22.60. I booked online through autobusubilietai
I flew to Vilnius from Doncaster Sheffield (Robin Hood) Airport with Wizz Air. The flight cost £75 return.
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