One year at Thanksgiving I decided to start with dessert to see what would happen. In my family, dessert includes 0 calories and takes up no room. So, people dug in – to pies, cakes, cobbler, and mousse. They ate and ate, but there was still a lot left over. Then we went on to the rest of the meal. Same thing. The motto of the story is that whether you start the meal at the beginning or the end, no one will eat more or less of anything than they ever did before. My conclusion? Start with your favorite part and work backwards. I don’t generally do that no matter my inclination, but I always look at the dessert part of the menu first just to gauge the rest of the meal.

Tonight, the crowning touch to a lovely day, ended with dinner at a sweet Italian restaurant on a twisty, turny street in old town. The menu said, in Lithuanian, Italian, and English:

The only thing I can say about the dessert is that it ended way too soon. The inside of that mini pie had almond cream and was unbelievable. It almost makes me want to bake when I get home. You will notice I said almost.

Today’s weather was pretty agreeable – we even had a teasing 10 minutes when the sun came out – just long enough to make us believe it wasn’t a rumor and such a thing did exist. I should really say, however, that today was just amazing. We had a phenomenal historian with us to discuss Vilnius in general, architecture and religion. She was incredibly interesting, and willing to engage in discussion and shift her talk to accommodate questions. My head is spinning from all I learned. We found ourselves smack in the middle of a protest over the Lithuanian government. There were about 8,000 protestors and it was startling how quiet it was1

There are so many churches here it’s unbelievable. This is St. Anne’s and I think it’s the prettiest of them.

Something I saw but which never would have caught my eye before, is the shell on the blue tile outside the Gate of Dawn Chapel. Our guide told us that the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage has spread far and wide, and that people are even beginning to start their pilgrimage in Lithuania and there are signposts all over pointing people in the right direction as they make their way from here to Spain.

Anyone who has traveled with me previously knows that the alleys, the old buildings, and the balconies are the sights that most often catch my eye. Today was no exception.

It’s not the buildings themselves most of the time, but the remnants of them that capture my imagination.

One thing Agnesia (I’m sure I’ve completely butchered the spelling of her name) mentioned was that the kindergarten built in soviet times on the site of the larger of the synagogues in Vilna was just torn down. The school was adjacent to the statue of the Vilna Gaon. I hope that they erect some type of memorial here. The stone patio, bordered by loose stones in the right foreground is the base for the statue.

I should mention that although Gabriel accompanies us sometimes and will on an outing to the client’s ancestral village, any photos I post on the blog are mine. If they were his, I would certainly include attributions.

Tomorrow the adventure continues.