Hi folks. We're currently in Vilnius after driving across from Nida on the Baltic coast with Hannah and Des. Staying here a few days before heading down to Poland.
The Curonian Spit is this amazing finger of sand stretching across an enormous lagoon. We were camping in probably the best camp site in Lithuania, meaning it had toilets and hot showers.
Spent quite a bit of time swimming at the beach and on one particularly windy day I even managed to catch a (very small) wave. So I've now body surfed in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas. Impressive eh?
So anyway, we went out for dinner last night for my birthday and had a fairly comical experience. In the first restaurant, we were handed a full menu and made our selections, then when the waitress came to take our order we were told the kitchen was closed and they could only do pizzas. Considering the "Pepperoni" pizza had tinned peaches and apricots, and no pepperoni, we left.
Second place was a Greek restaurant. The girls ordered a chicken with aubergine dish. An hour later it finally arrived and seemed to be some kind of Greek chicken curry. Strange. Des and I ordered moussaka, which turned up a full ten minutes after the girls' meal, despite clearly being microwave cuisine. Moussaka is layered potato, aubergine and meat with cheese on top, kind of like lasagne. This wasn't. It had a layer of potato, then some kind of meat/aubergine mash and was topped with a very appetising whole tinned tomato. I sent it back -- first time I've done that in a long but it was ridiculous.
Finally Des and I ended up at a kebabariam, because how can you fuck up a kebab, right? Wrong. They managed it. Dried out, no chilli (despite our explicit request) and really flavourless. Incredible!
So we think Vilnius isn't a town for the foodie. Somewhat redeemed today by a wonderful breakfast in our hotel and lovely lunch in Uzupis, a separatist suburb with its own constitution.
We're planning a rerun of the birthday dinner tonight, and we'll use the guidebook to choose somewhere to eat I think.
Anyway, we're having a good time. It's bloody hot here, which is typically what happens whenever we're away from the beach. Loads of weddings seem to be going on, I guess it's Saturday and Summer.
Our plan from here is to try and get to the Black Sea coast as fast as possible, to take advantage of the heat. That could be a dash to Krakow and then a ludicrously long train to Varna in Bulgaria. Or we might be able to find cheap flights. We'll see.