Dead or Alive tour

Today, we made a quick run to Trakai castle to confirm that it is there and kibinai are still as they used to be. Check out the sign on the left. Line 3 - I wonder who the target audience is :) As we parked on our typical spot in Trakai next to the large Church at the beginning of Karaimo street we noticed that the entire church yard is dug up. Several teams of men were doing excavations with metal detectors. By the look of how they all stopped at stared at us until we left it makes me think that not all of the artefacts found will make their way to the excavation catalogs.

After that we went on a general tour of checking what survived the winter in Vilnius. Here is the list. We did not actually go into all of them so cannot comment in more detail.

Gone

Double Coffee:  I will miss their luscious muesli breakfast

Ruma Namai: good riddance

Soup place in the alleyway off Gediminas – very sad

Still there

Coffee Inn, Vero Coffee had expanded in several locations, Wok the walk, McD, All Pizza places, Gusto Blini place near Austros Vartai still there, Indian near Cathedral Square, Bistro 18, White Elephant.

 

Newcomers

Coffee Hill, Kibin Inn, an interesting Asian restaurant decorated by the birch trees and having menus shaped like turtles, a few kebabai places and Italian restaurants. A new grill restaurant Kerchma opened up where Dubliner used to be. They also have outside terrace where there used to be a big hole in the ground next to Dominican. I wish they tried to restore the whole monastery complex instead of razing the parts of it and converting them into a parking lot. This is a pic of one of the last standing buildings in the complex. Looks like abandoned Chapel.  

There are more bookstores and they don’t all sell the same things. Office goods store, gourmet kids clothing store, bike rental on Vilnius gatve are all gone. We still did not see Rosita and our homeless guy yet. Though there is plenty of new faces of the same kind around.

 Visited Alicia. Spent some time talking with her outside. Even though she said that she only lays claim to 4 cats, we saw 5 line up for petting around her bench.

There was a free concert by Ozomatli near the city hall tonight. It was very nice. Large crowd gathered.

Digging through the pictures. Will put more out on prior blogs.