Nesvizh and Mir - Belarus

Nesvizh and Mir – Belarus

Post published:30 May 2016
Post category:Belarus Eastern Europe Europe

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Treasures of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Crown Kingdom of Poland

An spontaneous and very last minute decision for touring something else in Belarus than only visiting its capital, Minsk; turned out to be one of the highlights in this trip all together. However, it was not an easy task finding out the transportation to get there. But first of all, let’s start by talking about how we found and knew about both these places. At the time I was collecting information about Minsk before the trip, Nesvizh Castle also pop up, but after reading the “complicated” way to reach it I decided to let it go and not going deeper to find out more.

A second attempt came after I finalised the guide for Minsk and discovered that for sure, two and a half days in the city will be way over too much. So as usual I do wherever we travel, I searched for UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the country in case something turns to be nearby. And there is was again, Nesvizh and Mir. I only noted down the very minimal information on how to get there and though on asking someone once in Minsk rather than the almost 0 proper help from internet. And so after our first day in Minsk, and after seeing hundreds of advertisements for visiting the castle, and also the castle of Mir (which I did not have any idea of its existence until this day); our resolution was waking up early and ask at the bus station.

Asking at the bus station did not happen at the end, but at our hotel they gave us all the information we needed, and managed to get there without delay and pretty much straightforward. Not before having to ask at another hotel for further “clarification” and help but all was there at the front of our eyes. I explain below at the next section how to get there and all you need to know with details which are nowhere in the internet.

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Minsk - Belarus

Minsk – Belarus

Post published:30 May 2016
Post category:Belarus Eastern Europe Europe

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Capital of the Commonwealth of Independent States

Another exciting trip ahead of us to a country we’ve never been, Belarus. And yet another country to tick off the list of countries visited in Europe, bringing down the count to just 6 left (out of 50!). These are already serious numbers, but also means that excluding Albania and Moldova which are quite near and “easy” to reach, the others are way farther and beyond any logical time to get there on just for the weekend or 3 days trip. So unless booking some time off coupled with the weekend, there is no other possible solution to be able to enjoy them. In any case, the remaining ones will definitely require more days for visiting as it is not the only objective getting to their capital, but also secondary cities and important places elsewhere in the country.

Flying to Minsk does not come cheap either. Not only the direct flight to/from London is seriously expensive, but also the scheduled times do not make much sense to be honest if all you have is only a few days. The flights are not daily either. In the other hand, if you look to a map, Minsk is very near Vilnius, to where you can grab some nice flight deals and very frequent. We twisted even more since the deal we found was actually with airBaltic on a London-Riga-Vilnius, and Vilnius to London. The bus from Vilnius to Minsk is 3.5 hours and is just 13 Euros, but for the sake of convenience, we managed to get the flight back from Minsk to Vilnius for almost the same price as the bus would have costed us, giving us some extra hours in Minsk as consequence and avoiding at least 2 hours on the border to enter back the European Union. Leaving the EU for Belarus is as quick as few minutes, but in the opposite direction to enter the EU the queues at the border are terribly long.

So with the flights and overland transportation sorted, the next was to find a hotel. That was an easy task, and a great deal at the DoubleTree by Hilton very near the city centre. Now, as we already knew, there was still the “most” important task to be done: getting a visa to travel to Belarus. Since we already experienced a similar process for getting one to Russia, Belarus was in a sense similar although they have introduced some extra barriers in the process. I will explain this below in a separate section so you know how to proceed. (more…)

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