After a night of little sleep thanks to the 9 hour time difference between here and home, and a struggle to get through the home school lesson, we finally made it out of our apartment in the late afternoon.
Old town Vilnius was beautiful. Cobblestone streets, gothic and baroque architecture, lots of small cafes and shops.
I tried the local specialty of cepelinai–“zeppelins” of heavy gelatinous potato dough stuffed with ground meat. Very filling. Very bland. Ashley tried a cold beetroot soup that had yogurt or kefir as a base. Very unusual for an American palate. The kids were happy with banana-filled crepes.
Sat in a park while our kids played around a marble fountain
Vilnius seems to be a pretty calm and clean city and people are quite friendly. So far, everyone I’ve talked to speaks Russian, so that’s been great for me.
The kids are thrilled with our accommodations. Jane has told me a dozen times that she would have no problem living here. Ashley and I are content, but the place I booked on AirBNB is certainly far from luxurious–but it does have running water and an indoor toilet.
There is a sculpture garden called europos parkas a little outside the city that was quite memorable. I think we got there by bus. Once sculpture made out of thousands of old TVs really stands out and I think kids would enjoy it too. Gruto parkas might be somethig you would like as has a lot of old Russian era relics and statures but it’s a bit further away. Trakai is not too far by car and it’s worth the visit depending on how long you guys are there. You could rent a car for a day and see all three perhaps.
Maybe we’ll check out that europos parkas tomorrow. That sounds way cool.
So far, out biggest hurdles have been the jet lag and homeschooling. We’ve only had two full days here, but we were lucky to get 4-6 hours of activity in. I think we’ll hit our stride sometime soon, but traveling with young kids is definitely different than without them.
We love hearing your daily adventures.