Baltics24: Day 15a – Vilnius – Istanbul

This might end up as a two part entry as it’s a little after 2am and we’ve just checked in to our Istanbul Hotel. So if I fall asleep typing this I’ll throw some more words at the screen in the morning.

The main tasks for today in Vilnius were shopping, shopping, and shopping. All the last minute souvenirs and presents and that kind of thing, including getting the snow dome. Important stuff. Checkout of our “interesting” apartment (it did the job but had a few quirks, like the sensor for the shower light and exhaust fan with a 5 second loop) was at noon, but our flight wasn’t scheduled until 8.25pm, so we did a brief run around early, checked out, and then did a more leisurely stroll with baggage in tow. Grabbed breakfast at a little cafe down a side street in the old town, a little on the disorganised side but at least L could get something that didn’t involve potatoes (an omelette).

There was music in the air in Vilnius today, in preparation for the big song festival that we’re just missing out on. The stage in front of the cathedral is pretty much set up, and they were doing some soundchecks, and at least one act was also doing what appeared to be a rehearsal. The rest of the time the speakers were pumping heavy metal music through the square.

Once we’d hit the point of enough wheeling and dealing, we went to another restaurant offering traditional Lithuanian food for a late lunch. I had a meat filled cepelinai, an oblong almost translucent potato dumpling (the name comes from zeppelin, which inspires its shape). It makes me wonder what the dish was called before there were airships, or if this “traditional” food has only been around for 100 or so years. I also had a deep fried potato pancake filled with mushrooms, and it was as it should be: crunchy on the outside, soft and smooth inside, good mushroom flavour in the filling, and served with a flavourful sauce that I suspect was to a large degree whipped butter. All good food and went well with a local unfiltered lager. Following this I took a quick stroll up the hill to get a last minute impulse buy, being a small piece of amber that contains a bug. It will go nicely among the curios that sit on my desk at home.

We got to Vilnius airport without issue, they are doing lots of construction currently, and the existing terminal appears to be soviet era, so quite compact and functional. There’s not a lot of shopping, and the bulk of the duty free selection is before passport control. We had the shortest walk ever from passport control to our gate, as the former literally opened up to where we queued for the gate. Having plenty of time, we grabbed a drink and sat in a corner recharging devices.

For a first flight on Turkish Airlines, they weren’t too bad. We were in cattle class, i chose the basic tomato and cheese pasta offering which was ok, the selection for entertainment was fine but could use some more Korean movies (I watched a Japanese movie, The Black Swindler, which didn’t always make sense but I’ve just found out that it’s an adaptation of a manga series that ran for 10 years so am guessing it tried to condense a lot into the one movie), the seats were narrow, the plane was a little warm, but we got to our destination.

–End of Part One–