Sun17Jul16: Hotel Domus Maria, Vilnius, Lithuania (rest day)

Church of St. Casimir

Difficult to sleep in when your body is conditioned to being up before 6am, but I manage to snooze until the church bells peel out 7am - that's the downside of living in a nunnery adjacent to a church, but it sure beats the 5am call to prayer from a minaret.
The buffet breakfast in our hotel cafe is okay, but my appetite just isn't there when I know that I won't be cycling afterwards.

Chapel of Mary, Gates of Dawn

Walk down to Cathedral Square just before 10am and purchase a hop-on hop-off ticket (E15) on the City Tour bus.  Always a nice way to 'get the lay of the land' before investing too much time in walking, and the city map suggests a few places that aren't reasonably close to the Old City.
Lunch is a 1L container of blueberry yogurt and a chocolate bar from the local Bimi supermarket.

Didzioji Street, Vilnius

My impression is that 'trickle down' economics' from the tourist industry keeps these three Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia, & Lithuania - perking.  This is based on the visible industrial or commercial activity, an evaluation of the housing, an evaluation of the cars on the streets and roads, the condition of the highways, etc.

Old City walls, Vilnius

Estonia is little besides pine forests and small farms, but has a bustling tourism industry with Finland (11 ferries per day from Helsinki!), Latvia has better farm land but is about 10-20% less prosperous overall, and Lithuania is another 10-20% less prosperous because the agriculture is basic and it hasn't a major port city to attract ferry and cruise ship tourists.     

Lithuanian partisans, 1944-1953

KGB Museum made the biggest impact during today's touring.  Lithuania was a huge empire back in 1430, was chopped and diced by other powers over the centuries, but became independent again after WW1.  June 1940, Germany and Russia agreed on how to absorb the Baltic countries and the Russians moved in.  Stalin started to exterminate the educated until German invaded the next year and liquidated 200,000 members of the Jewish ghetto.  Russia returned in 1944 and shipped hundreds of thousands of Lithuanian farmers to forced labour Gulags all over Siberia.  Lithuanian partisans operated from the forests until Kruschev took over in 1954 and brokered a truce, allowing some of the exiles to return home.  Yeecchhh!  Back in St. Petersburg I purchased a souvenir "Russia" baseball cap, but I'm probably not going to feel comfortable wearing it for quite awhile.  Back to the hotel about 3pm for a shower and some photo captions and editing.
George is hanging around the lobby at 6pm so we return to the Gusto restaurant for supper, then it starts to rain, so we stay for coffee and dessert before running back to the hotel.  Riding forecast for tomorrow doesn't look encouraging:  light rain all morning, strong cross-wind NW28kph, and a map shows the terrain will be steeply rolling.  Whoopee ding!