Day 4 - Taiwanese paparazzi and diving into the culinary delights

Today at 9am I was the first one up. I guess with time we can become completely nocturnal. It is a good thing that it gets light out at 5am and dusk comes after 10pm. We woke up Georgia around 10 and went to walk around the town.

Last renters left some ungodly quantities of unroasted sunflower seeds and salt. So we wanted to check out whether the doves would respond to the former. Did they ever! Georgia dropped the first seed and a whole avalanche of the flying city rats descended in her vicinity. She panicked and dropped the whole bag. They destroyed it in under a minute. Will have to repeat the experiment later today.

As we walked towards the market outside the Gates of Dawn, Georgia got tired and sat down on the stairs outside the store. I snapped a picture of her. Then I heard snapping sounds behind me. It was a crowd of the Taiwanese tourists who stopped to take a picture of her too. They gave Georgia some candies.

We smelled the market as soon as we walked out of the Gates. It smelled like strawberries and cucumbers. We got some of each and tomatoes too. Everything looked so fresh and enticing. Women outside were selling lillies of the valley and peonies. I wanted to get some but our apartment owner left us a huge bouquet of Daisies and wild grasses. Will have to wait till it rots.

As we walked back a gypsy woman with a kid a bit older than Georgia appeared and followed us around for a bit begging for money. She and her daughter did some praying outside the shrine and then resumed following us. Gypsies had been living in the city for a long time. I wonder if they all practice the same religion or the bunch that lives here became Catholic or Orthodox. From what I could tell the shrine does not belong to either one of these faiths in particular. It is designed like an Orthodox icon but Pope John II did some praying here. So I am not sure. Back to the gypsies. Supposedly they are living in the area called Taboras which coincidentally respresents the largest drug market in the Lithuania. A few years ago authorities tried to fix that problem and also return the gypsies to back to the nomadic lifestyle by offering them some trailer homes located elsewhere in the country, but that did not go anywhere.

For lunch we went to the Royal Thai Bangkok in the old center on Šv.Mikalojaus str.15. Pretty austere setting offers a few hints that it is actually a Thai restaurant. It did not smell like anything either. But the food and service was very good. The spices were subtly different. We ordered chicken fried rice for Georgia. It was bright yellow from some spice (not just turmeric) and came served in the body of a pineapple. Dan had yellow curry and I had chili chicken. We switched because mine was very good but suited better the fire-eater league. Georgia had some fun with the napkin. Gold bags with chicken appetizer was great too.

At home we spent some time working while Georgia was taking her nap. It started to rain pretty intensely during that time. Later in the day the rain seemed to have stopped and we went out. The plan was first to feed some more sunflower seeds to the doves. It is a lot of fun to watch them. Next we wanted to walk around before our planned dinner at Graf Zeppelin, on Savičiaus 9. Supposedly the home of the largest ceppelin in the country. After dove feeding it started to rain so we had to run to our eating hole and finish the day there.

It is an awesome place and we see ourselves returning again and again. For one thing it has a perfect decor - with gnomes, writings in German fonts, and the pictures of Kaiser adorning the walls and cabinets here and there. Add to it a really friendly Aryan bartender/waiter who spoke fluent Russian, Lithuanian, and English (and I don't know what else). He brought colored pencils and a coloring book for Georgia. There was a pleasant sound ambience provided by the German 30s waltz style music. I was surprised to hear the rendition of Prince's Kiss in that style. Much more interesting this way than the original. Now, either Prince ripped that off or whoever was performing the waltz was making very good fun of it. I could not recognize any of the other songs, so it was probably the Prince doing the ripping.

Now we would probably be OK with the place even if the food was so so but the food was great, and they did not lie about the size of their zeppelin. Georgia had the "German children's favorite" Hoppelpoppel which was the fried potatoes and eggs. Dan and I are no German children but we remember this very same thing from our childhoods. Only it was usually accompanied by cutlet. Ah, the culinary memories.

We ran back home through the rain - it was only about a block away.

Now it is past midnight again and it is time to drop off.