The Budget Airline Got Me There

Another thing I like about travel is the Americana restaurants.  We went to one the other day in Moldova called Cactus Cafe.  One thing I find is most Americana restaurants have the best service.  Today we saw a restaurant called Macks BBQ: A Slice of America.  We almost went but didn’t.  It had tons of Coca-Cola pictures and cowboys.

 

We flew Air Baltic from Chisinau to Vilnius, Lithuania.  I was scared flying, for the first time, given we had watched a show on the Discovery Channel focusing on airline crashes and all the problems that can go wrong.  We arrived fine!

 

We got to our hostel in Vilnius and it was awesome. Some Irish girl with a red soul patch (gave mine a run for its money) checked us in.  We immediately met some really cool people.  There was a guy from Indiana and two girls from France.  We talked for a while before we knew it our belts were decorated with French phrases.  We tried to avoid going clubbing by leaving the hostel for a walk.  I was shocked by how nice everything was.  I felt like we were in the lap of luxury (probably because we came from Moldova).  We suddenly started hearing shrieking and laughing and our paths directly crossed a bachelorette party in full swing.  The clamored over to us to have us sign the brides skirt.  After that, Tyler took the op to get a picture.  Priceless!

 

After the walk we went back to the Hostel and I met these two older guys from Australia.  I am still going to stand by the statement ‘I haven’t met any Australians I didn’t like.’ We ended up laughing an talking about life for about 4 hours.  Before we knew it the clock said 2am and I went to bed.  Yesterday someone asked if I was Australian, it made me happy.

 

I’m am really enjoying the fact our travel pace is slowing.  We are staying 3 nights in Vilnius, Lithuania, 3 nights in Tallinn, Estonia, and 6 nights in Riga, Latvia.  I believe any traveler should stay at least 3 nights in most places.

 

So one irritating thing about many McDonalds in Europe is they haven’t heard of breakfast.  Who wants a Big Mac at 7:30am?

 

The next morning we got up and walked the rest of Old Town Vilnius.  We finally stopped at the courthouse to meet our Couchsuring host.  As we waited, about 40 people did some Ti-Chi.  It was pretty funny to watch.

 

We met a guy named Peter, from Germany.  He ended up hosting us for two nights.  He was a really funny guy with tons of opinions on everything.  He was going through a little personal turmoil at the time with this girlfriend which made me feel bad for him.  Our last night with him he found out through Facebook that his girlfriend was ‘single.’ That was probably the worst way to break up I have ever heard.

So Peter has another CSing friend name Aiste.  They took us on a tour of the city, which was really fun.  We went to a traditional restaurant and ate some Zeppelins (large potato substance shaped like an egg, stuffed with meet).  We also went to the Republic of Uzupis (a local neighborhood).  This area of town was so funny because they have their own passports, independence day (April Fools), constitution and holidays.  You can even get your passport stamped. 

 

After the tour we went to Aiste’s house for some time hanging out with a hookah and whatnot.  On the bus there some Mormons jumped onto the bus in their suits and name tags and started giving tracks to locals.  We had alot of fun with Aiste before heading back to Peter’s for the night.