Well, we made it. A dash across Schipol and a helpful shortcut through immigration meant we made our ~40 minute connection with time to spare. And easy two hours from Amsterdam to Vilnius and we arrived at the very quaint Soviet-era Vilnius airport. We met up with our Airbnb host – she was somewhat confused about why we came to Lithuania. Our apartment building is comically similar to apartments we’ve had in East Berlin and Kazakhstan – the Soviets were not a very imaginative group. After settling in, we set out for some jetlag-fighting walking.
Our first stop was the big Halle market. The vendors were winding down for the day, but we bought some halva, pickles and strawberries. Thanks to the shrewd negotiating tactics of the Lithuanian grandmothers, and our sleepy brains, we ended up with far too much of everything.
From the market, we wandered in the “old town” (~14th century) to browse some shops and grab some food. We had a very early dinner at a traditional Lithuania place – mushroom soup in a rye bread bowl, cold beetroot soup with potatoes, potato sausage and potato dumplings stuffed with sour cream. Everything was delicious, though I can imagine by Monday we’ll be craving a salad.
We wrapped up our day by doing a guided tour through the VoiceMap app. We got a crash course in the history of the city, but had to end the tour abruptly when the tour path ran right into an active film shoot. We’ll have to pick that up tomorrow.
For now, we’ve got a lot of sleep to catch up on.
So glad you got there. (For some reason your photos come up just fine in Safari but not in Chrome.) Hope you’re getting a good long night of deep sleep.