The rain had cleared out overnight and left us with a partly cloudy morning, though the forecast was for more rain later in the day. Robyn wanted to check out the Vilnius Bus Station to get our bearings for the trip to Warsaw on the next day, to get some food for the trip and to wander down some streets we hadn't been to as yet.
We had been talking to some Australians at breakfast about the prospect of walking over to the bus station ("Only fifteen minutes, and only four steps in one flight of stairs") but a survey of the trip showed us a number of possible problems, detours onto the road to avoid building sites and uneven surfaces. Remembering our difficulties with Riga and those cobble stones we decided on a cab.
The Vilnius bus station is functional, not much more need be said.
Instead of wandering down through the Gate of Dawn again we set off around the wall in an anti-clockwise direction, and while the buildings were a bit less than attractive it re-inforced our view that Vilnius is a city slowly dragging itself through a modern renovation. In ten years you almost won't recognise the place.
We ended up back in the centre of town after a circuitous route which allowed Robyn to buy a shawl of the type she had been eyeing since Tallinn. Then a look inside the cathedral and time for coffee and a sit, watching the world go by.
The only thing we had planned for the day was the Alternative Walking Tour of Vilnius at 3pm so I persuaded Robyn that food purchases and a rest back at the hotel were in order. She wasn't overly convinced but decided we had made the right choice when rain set in just after we got back to our room.
At three we were outside the Town Hall, with the rain having cleared, among a group of about 12, including Howie and his mother Barbara from New York who had been with us on two bus trips and two other walking tours so far - sometimes you find other people's itineraries very closely aligning with yours for a week or so.
This tour took us outside the walls of the Old Town to the market, with its mural opposite by Italian artist Millo;
the railway station, with its strange statue of James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, partly hidden by a misplaced stationary train carriage;
the mural of Trump and Putin exchanging dope smoke;
the magnificent mural by two Brazilian artists (including a portrait of their grandfather, an ex-Lithuanian who always wanted to return to this country but never did, except here sitting on the figure's left hand);
and we finished at a bust of Frank Zappa.
A truly excellent tour followed by a few beers with Howie and Barbara, a typical dinner of Lithuanian dumplings and then home to pack for the next day.
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