On Saturday morning I woke up before 6:00 am and went for a long walk to get my steps in for the day.
( at least 10,000 steps a day is the goal this trip and I'd like to try for 20,000 steps a day. And so far so good although my shorts are already tight so I suspect I've put on some weight already ... blame the beer which I don't normally do at home. Also answer me this ... why does it take me more than a month to take off ten pounds but only a week to put those pounds back on? ).
Of course I brought my camera and following are some of my pictures. I might do this most days and there might be some repetition but I don't think that will matter much. Also I may not manage to publish in chronological order since I tend to go by theme and these sometimes don't fit into the theme of any particular post. Also this is time consuming. I have to download all the pictures, open them in photoshop, choose the ones I like, crop them, edit the odd one and then save them twice ... once in a separate file to avoid over writing the original and a second time as a 72 PPI picture since google's blog site only takes 72 PPI pics. They will convert bigger files for you but google takes a long time and I can convert them in photoshop in minutes. So sorry for some of this blog being out of sequence but that unfortunately is the way it has to be for this to work.
( at least 10,000 steps a day is the goal this trip and I'd like to try for 20,000 steps a day. And so far so good although my shorts are already tight so I suspect I've put on some weight already ... blame the beer which I don't normally do at home. Also answer me this ... why does it take me more than a month to take off ten pounds but only a week to put those pounds back on? ).
Of course I brought my camera and following are some of my pictures. I might do this most days and there might be some repetition but I don't think that will matter much. Also I may not manage to publish in chronological order since I tend to go by theme and these sometimes don't fit into the theme of any particular post. Also this is time consuming. I have to download all the pictures, open them in photoshop, choose the ones I like, crop them, edit the odd one and then save them twice ... once in a separate file to avoid over writing the original and a second time as a 72 PPI picture since google's blog site only takes 72 PPI pics. They will convert bigger files for you but google takes a long time and I can convert them in photoshop in minutes. So sorry for some of this blog being out of sequence but that unfortunately is the way it has to be for this to work.
One interesting finding on this walk. Drive or walk around Vilnius and it is beautiful. But get behind the scene and in some places it is a very different story. They have quite often restored the easily visible part of buildings and churches but I walked down alley ways and behind the churches and they for the most part have not been touched. I suspect they ran out of money so prioritized their renovations. You can see it in some of these pictures although I wasn't interested in taking pictures of the ugly part of this city so I kept them to a minimum.
Enjoy
Auto Guru in Europe.
Wow! Great light in the am! Church crawls are always fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThe first church - the pink one we all know well because it's where there are always concerts in the summer. And we've all been to at least one there. The inside is splendid, and the acoustics, well like you'd expect in a cathedral.
The only other church I know really well is the tiny really ornate (baroque?) red brick one Sv. Onos or St. Anne's in English. Apparently Napoleon wanted to bring this one back to France with him as he marched through Lt. on his way to ... Moscow (?). His other legacy was the "Napaleoniskas tortas", the mille feuille pastry and Napoleon Torte that Mociute was so famous for making ...
And the waterways: The big river is the Neris. (Algridas' apt. overlooks the Neris, but closer to the Parliament buildings.) The smaller stream is the Vilnia, or Vilnialis (a diminutive form since it's a small stream) and the art Institute where Audrone went to school is near the Vilnialis and could well be one of the buildings in your pics. The big white building could also be the seminary, esp. if it was close to the Church of St. Anne.
And the back lanes and backs of buildings? All of the Old town is an International(Unesco?) Heritage site so any work has to be done with very strict rules and very $$$$. Some of the work has been done since '91, but because materials were not top grade, they have again fallen to disrepair. (the inside of the Cathedral is one good example - done 2x at least ...)
As a further point, the statues on the Cathedral roof have caused some controversy because they were replaced (after '91) on a grander scale than originally designed and for those with a discerning eye, demonstrate an imbalance of proportion ... the bell tower in the Cathedral Square dates from some ridiculous century (well, less than 600 years because Lt. was one of the last European nations to fall to the crusades!) and the castle turret (in red brick) up on the hill is the reconstruction on the foundations of the Gediminas (founder of Vilnius) Castle.(think medieval times)
Dennis good luck on keeping the trousers "loose". Keep walking and remember in Lt. you have to say no 3 times!!!!
Looking forward to the next installation of pics.
Vida