The town itself is really beautiful, lots of lakes to swim in, streets lined with flowers, interesting statues and architecture. The area around the town is also very pretty – lots of forests and lakes. In amongst them is the somewhat infamous Gruto Parkas. The place where all the old statues and busts of soviet era baddies go to die. Some of you may have already ‘virtually’ been here – I think it features in a level of the old N64 “Golden Eye” shooter.

A fascinating place to walk around – some of the statues were massive, and most with photos showing where the statues actually stood. The mood was kept quite eerie with old watchtowers surrounding the park blurting out old Russian marching tunes. In fact, it felt very strange walking around this beautiful park, with some amazing works of art that represented very dark times for many people in this part of the world. And we knew it was time to pull stumps when Mishka started hugging statues of Lenin. We headed for the restaurant for lunch which has on the menu dishes that promise an “authentic soviet experience”. I had some of the borscht which wasn’t bad but the actual bowl and spoon was made of the crappiest mix of cheapest metals that I was fearful of how it would contaminate the soup. At least the blob of sour cream gave it some weight.

One of the biggest impressions so far have been how beautiful and abundant the gardens are around here and there was no better example of this than Gailutes garden in Kudirkos Naumiestis – winner of Best Garden in 2005 (and it still looks good)! Had some delicious Šaltibarščiai made fresh from the garden, and equally delicious Shashlikiai (kebabs on the barbie) and we’ve got the secret to these shashliks so we’ll be serving them soon from Stanmore. Thanks to you all for a great couple of days. And now for those of you with green thumbs, check out this regular quarter acre block…

The vege garden out back with green house

The front garden

The garden gazebo

The side garden

Half way through the mall, but where's all the people?

Also whereas Vilnius has a lot of beautifully renovated buildings it seems barely a Litas has been spent in Kaunas, with  crumbling buildings about especially above the ground floor where paint jobs hide the collapse.

The one shinning light, and a must for any visit to Kaunas, is to spend a Friday or Saturday afternoon by the Town Hall watching the weddings. There are a number of restaurants with outdoor seating facing the “Rotuše” that provide not only fine refreshments, but seating so close to the action that we felt part of each party – standing, applauding the newlyweds as they came out of the hall and rang the bell. We sat for lunch and saw no less than four weddings pass through – and the limousines where banking up as we left. Here’s a taste…

Newly weds every half hour

This limo was amazing - a stretched hummer with outdoor seating!

A close up on the parked hummer and the rest.

We safely arrived (and have since returned) in Riga about a week ago after driving through two of the most intense storms I’ve ever driven in (driving out of Byron Bay once years ago was still the worst). They lasted only a few minutes each, which is kind of typical here, but were so strong that you couldn’t see more than about 20m ahead – which also made finding a safe spot to pull over kind of hard.

We stayed at the Ramada Hotel in a king size suite (Gaila, Mishka, Nada and I) which was almost bigger than the butas we have overtaken in Kaunas. It was Lux! And so we spent our three days there being regular tourists; sightseeing, eating, shopping, jumping, walking around lots and even hopped onto one of those open top bus tours for some professional sightseeing.

On the eating/drinking side of things, Latvian food, although has similarities with Litho food, is very much more German in design – think sauerkraut, sausages, pork bits, and juniper sauce. The beer is also very similar to Litho with some stand outs but mostly just good old Baltic Water served cold by the half litre. Latvian dark beers were rare though – I only came across one and it was no darker than a Coopers Sparkling.

Check out the intricate work on this gem

Highlights of the trip were the Art Nouveau district, which was a couple of streets just outside the old town (another highlight of course) and which boast the highest rent prices in the Baltics – although I never did walk into a real estate agent to compare Riga’s Art Nouveau apartment prices with a two bedroom terrace in the inner west of Sydney (I’d still reckon the latter would come out on top). Riga’s Freedom Monument was also very impressive with three shiny gold stars on top representing the three regions of Latvia and a guard of honour at its foot…

Feedom Monument

Overall we’re all very keen to get back to Vilnius to complete our summary of the Baltic capitals but Riga (like Tallinn) is very different, more Parisian with the uniform five story apartment thing going on and a noticeable lack of soviet-style apartment living. Nice.

1. User Friendly Parking Stations

There's actually 12 spots but Mishka's standing in one

Hands down my number one love. My jaw dropped when Ram showed us this marvel of human machine interface wonderment. Anyone that’s ever driven into the Bondi Junction Westfields Hell On Earth parking station, would appreciate this. Every single parking bay has a bright green/red LED hanging above it indicating its occupancy and every aisle has a counter showing how many spaces available. A true joy to anyone entering a foreign shopping centre JUST WANTING TO FIND A SPOT TO PARK regardless of how close it is to the Myer or DJ’s entrance. I had fun physically standing in the empty spots watching the light change with the number update too!

2. Real Time Bus Timetables

As the sign reads; the #10 due in <1min

Adelaide’s got ‘em, as does Brissy – but not Sydney. Come on guys, this stuff is really handy, and as has been pointed out, kind of essential in the freezing winters here – check the sign and go hide somewhere warm until it’s exactly time to catch the bus. What goes with it of course is in bus announcements and display of the next stop (ok, Sydney’s new Metro buses have that too).

3. Pedestrian Countdown

We’re all familiar with the little red and green man person that tells us when it is safe or not to cross the road. In Riga and Tallinn (and St Petersburg I’ve been told) they have a third light that is a countdown to when the lights will change. It’s great – you know when you look up and see the green man and think; “I wonder how long it’s been green for?”, or “Will it change as soon as I step onto the road?” Well here it’s all clear; 3.. 2.. 1.. GO (or stop). For those that are interested, it’s 27secs of red man and 7secs for green – makes for a more efficient crossing me thinks.

4. Self Service Check-Outs

I keep meaning to do a post on the shopping here cause I know a lot of you would be interested (and I think Nada would be the best to do this – come on Nada!). Anyway I’ve heard and read about this, but never seen it in Sydney – self service checkouts. In the middle of the checkout aisles is a big open space with about 12 terminals to self scan your own stuff and then swipe your plastic and escape. No chit-chat, no Chokito’s, no checkout-chicks… Well, at least you’ve got a choice.

5. Automated Washing Basins

I’ve put this high up because it is probably my first “old man” experience as three and a half year old Mishka showed me the way. A lot of the “nicer” bathrooms we’ve visited  in bars, restaurants and hotels, have hands-free wash basins. I’ve seen bits and pieces of this in Sydney but never the whole shebang – put hand under soap dispenser and squirt, put hand (with soap) in basin and water runs, swipe hand under paper towel thingy and paper is dispensed. That last bit Mishka showed me. I kept pushing the red light and Mishka said “No daddy, you go like this” and swipes her little hand under and gets her paper towel. Neat!

6. Cheap Internet and Mobile Costs

This is more of a dig at the poor state of internet service in Australia, than blogging about how cheap it is here to get online (taking costs of living into account and all). But whereas petrol is about $1.86AUD per litre here, a typical unlimited download, reasonable speed, monthly internet plan is $7.55AUD. And not that I’ve read the fine print but there’s a lot of $1LTL mobile plans floating around.

7. Automated Servos

Like 4. above, this has its positives as well as negatives, but there are some servos here that are completely devoid of human beings (and some would argue “so what’s new?”). Pull up, swipe plastic, fill up, drive off. I remember the first time I saw this was in France in 2003 driving from somewhere near Bordeaux to Poitier and we stopped for fuel in the middle of the night at this place on a hill off the freeway with no shop, just a bunch of bowsers standing alone in the dark – a bit spooky then and still is now.

8. LCD Billboards

Now we’re well into the territory of “kind of cool, but is it really a good thing?” Very large full motion video billboards, typically at very large intersections with long wait times (cars don’t have the pedestrian counter yet), train stations, and other prominent locations. Being a big fan of Blade Runner and never having been to Tokyo or New York I thought this was kind of cool and again something Sydney doesn’t have.

9. Trolleybuses

Last time I was here, the trolleybuses were still the old soviet-built ones; loud, smelly and old. Now I actually miss them, haven’t seen one yet. They’re mostly very modern and very quite, gracefully pulling in and out of traffic whilst still hooked up to wires (I’m still curious as to how they change to different cables at intersections). Really made me think again about Sydney’s Light Rail (and Monorail – cringe) and how clunky, expensive and slow it all is. Rather than laying tracks and setting an immovable path, just wire up a bus for a greener? faster ride.

10. Self Service Milk

I knew I should have taken a photo of this (if I do I’ll post it back here). And really just to make up the 10 – but at a XXX Maxima (the largest of the lot) we saw a vending machine dispensing “fresh” milk – you supply the container and the Lits, push the button and moo! I sveikata.

You may remember an earlier post of ours about Trakai, the castle on a lake? Well this place is probably the second most famous place to visit in Litholand. Kryziu Kalnas, or the Hill of Crosses, is a holy place for Catholics world wide and a photographers dream. Well I’m neither and I still find it a fascinating place to walk around. The wiki says there’s an estimated 55,000 crosses here (circa 1990), I reckon that’s just the +1m crosses and not counting all the little ones people leave behind. Daina – I looked hard for the glow in the dark crucifix you left here but I couldn’t be arsed waiting the eight hours for nightfall – sorry (but I did find this little one though).

How can anyone possibly try and count all of these!

Even "The Worrier" feels the weight of the crosses

Whilst we were staying with relatives in Smalininkiai, Nada popped across the road for some supplies. Naturally she got chatting with the local girls at the shop who recommended she try this new “bubbly flavoured vodka”, aptly named “BOOM”.

This picture now features on prominent billboards across Litholand

Nada returned just as lunch was being served and what better way to kick off the meal than with a glass of bubbly. Well, no shit this stuff is called BOOM, it turned out to be literally carbonated vodka, no flavouring, no additives just pure 40% proof fizz. Weird – and now we all had a full champagne glass of the stuff in front of us to get through… We were a bit late in visiting the next set of relatives the day after.

Mishka standing tall on a soviet-era sign to the city

From there we drove back to Kaunas and along the Nemunas River to a little town called Smalininkiai, where we spent a night with Gaila’s cousin in a lovely house right on the bank of the river (with an interesting vacant lot next door).

Standing on a big balcony, relaxing with postcard views of the mighty Nemunas River

Walked around a fair bit along the river and into the small town which had a lot of wooden sculptures on display. Mishka even managed to catch herself a frog which she held on to for a fair bit before begrudgingly setting it free.

With frog in hand, Mishka looks for a secluded spot to awaken her prince

We saw some wonderful gardens at the places we visited, with lots of home grown fruit, veg, herbs and flowers (no water shortages here let me tell you). Miska’s become quite accustomed to helping herself to her own berries now which sort of balances out the junk food that can be found.

A bowl full of berries before lunch? Why not.

And so after being extremely well looked after by our relatives, tasting several different types of kugelis, and many late nights, we returned home exhausted in the borrowed Lancia. Back to Kaunas to regain our strength for the next adventure to Riga, Latvia.

Nada drew the short straw for the drive home