Harry Potter, Pizza Hut & Tim McGraw (Sunday, Sept 5)

Last night was by far the worst night of sleep here yet. Like I’ve said, I’m usually so tired at night that it’s easy to fall asleep but this night I woke up around 2 am and was wide awake, left alone to the thoughts of wanting to be home and spending the weekend with family... After tossing and turning I occupied my time and thoughts with some Harry Potter reading (I’m finally on #6 for those of you keeping track!) and after about 2 hours was finally able to fall back asleep. This long night though caused me to miss breakfast and not wake up until 1 pm! Oops. But it was nice and probably much-needed to sleep in. We have Sundays off so with a free day ahead of me, I was excited to finally have the chance to go out around the city and check out the sites. Migle had shown me where there was a huge mall and another busy touristy street right next to my hotel. So for the first time I put on nice clothes (a cute scarf of course :) ), straightened my hair and set off with my camera and US Dollar-Lithuanian Lita currency exchange rate chart. The mall was about a 2 block walk and with the perfect fall weather (no more hot US summer temps!) it was nice to get some fresh air. The mall, the Akropolis, is HUGE and reminds me of any big mall like in a big US city. There aren’t many, or any, chain stores like NY & Co or Forever 21, but all of the clothes stores looked cute and I am excited to go back and shop a little. Being my first time I was determined to just walk around the whole place and not do any hard core shopping. I did make some first Lithuanian purchases- a pair of Nike socks (for some reason when weeding things out packing I thought I’d only need 3 pairs of practice socks) and a headset with microphone so that it’s easier to hear me when Skyping. Going in these stores gave me another “first” experience with trying to deal with store workers who didn’t speak much, if any, English. After awhile, I started to just avoid any eye contact so that I wouldn’t have to go through the process of them asking me something along the lines of “can I help you find anything?” and me responding with a shrug and head shake. Although, as I learn more common Lithuanian phrases, I am determined to get better at this interaction.

Having woken up so late and missed breakfast I had planned to look for a food court to try out some new foods at the mall. However this plan ended when I was riding up the escalator and a big Pizza Hut sign raised up in front of me like a scene from a movie. Not gonna lie, my heart skipped a beat and I figured it was a sign that I was due for some American food. And yes I know, it’s technically from Italy, but pizza says “home” to me and after the night of homesickness it was so comforting to eat it that I really felt like I was having an Eat, Pray, Love “relationship with my pizza.” Ha. I sat and listened to my ipod and laughed at myself for being in Lithuania and at a Pizza Hut listening to Tim McGraw. I swear, this was a cultural cheat day for me and I will continue to experience different things as time goes on! On my way out of the mall I stopped in Maxima, the big department/grocery story. It was good to look around and see all they had although I got a little overwhelmed in the grocery area seeing all Lithuanian labels and figured I’d had enough of the mall for the day.

I walked back towards my apartment and decided to check out the tourist street that was about 100 yards in the other direction of my hotel. I had actually researched this area a little before coming here so I was happy to see that it was even prettier than what it looked like in pictures. It is an exclusively pedestrian street with a tree lined path in the middle and lots of shops, stores and restaurants along the outside. At the end nearest to where I entered the street is a huge, beautiful church, Šv. arkangelo Mykolo bažnyčia (St. Michael the Archangel Church) After heading that way and taking a few pics I set off in the other direction to see what was all on the street. I absolutely love tree-lined streets so that and the beautiful weather made it an awesome day. I walked about 2 miles down the street until it ends and becomes a normal street again. Needless to say, this is my favorite area I have found so far and definitely plan to return to it often.

I came back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night talking and Skyping with family and friends- a perfect way to end a great off day!

Akropolis mall

Šv. arkangelo Mykolo bažnyčia (St. Michael the Archangel Church). Absolutely beautiful!

Tree-lined streets = Heaven!