Friday, May 11, 2012

Adventure and Mis-Adventure Vilnius: Sightseeing

Our main purpose for traveling to Vilnius was to spend time with our good friends, but of course one must go touristing when one visits a new city.  On Friday we attempted to take a bus tour. On the company's web site the pickup time is listed as 10:30am. On the brochure we had, the pickup time is 10:30am. On the ad on our taxi's video monitor as we left the city, the pickup time is listed as 10:30am.

At 10:20am we met our friend at Town Hall Square (5 minutes from the hotel) and went to the pickup location. Pickup time: 10:15am. Grrrr. So we went on our own tour with me reading the Vilnius guide book out loud and my friend driving us around.

Here's the brick masterpiece of St Anne's Church.

Here's Cathedral Square.

And some random kitty cats



As mentioned previously, on what turned out to be a blistering hot Saturday my friend filled her car with us and her children and we jaunted out to Trakai Castle. Here it is:


On also-hot Sunday we attempted to visit the Museum of Genocide Victims, housed in the former KGB headquarters. For some  reason, I successfully go arts-ing (museums, ballet, etc) with my children individually, but when the whole family is together it's chaos.  The stone blocks that form the building's outer walls have the names of the individuals who died in that place and their birth and death carved into the rock. I really wanted to get some photos but there was too much hysteria.  The museum was interesting and definitely worth even the mere 30 minutes we spent there.


Lastly, here's Terry carrying the kids off into the sunset on our last night there, at Belmontas restaurant. It's what Karl & Friedrich in Piter wishes it could be.

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