Tuesday 10 June 2014

Vilnius- finding a laundromat, how hard can it be ?


Here we are.  Therese and I about half way through our Eastern European holiday.  We're now in Lithuania, and enjoying the old city, full of churches and old buildings.

One of the challenges of travelling for more than 2 weeks is doing your laundry,  I last did some laundry at Andrew's place in Singapore, so had a reasonable supply of undies, but by now, I was almost out.   Therese was up to the re-use stage and we wanted to avoid that.  You know what I mean ?

So, the other day, we asked the nice lady in the Tourist Information booth about laundromats, and she was very helpful.  Gave us a list of about 10 laundromats in the city.  She picked one, and went to great lengths to show us how to get there.  It was a fair distance out of the city, but we acknowledged that the time and effort taken was a cost of travelling as independent tourists and also not willing to spend around $5 to get one pair of undies washed in the hotel.

We use google maps to identify where the proposed laundromat was.  We were also able to fit in one museum on the way (the Jewish State Museum) and the caught a bus that would take us to the general area of the address given for the laundromat.

We visit the museum (always very moving) and make our way to the bus stop.  By this time. Are already a bit behind schedule.  We wait for bus-trolley #15.  About 10 mins went by and finally our bus came.  It was one of the very old ones that roam the streets of Vilnius.  We keep a close eye out for the correct bus stop that we need to get off.  3rd after the big round about.  We find it, signal the driver, and get off.

Now that we are off the bus, we look around our surroundings.  We are looking for street number 176.  It appears to be an old, abandoned building across the road.  No road crossing, except for a very suspect underground walkway.  Where are we ?  What are we doing here ? Were some of the thoughts crossing our mind.  But our spirits were high, so, we kept on going.



Once we cross the street, we walk around the huge building that supposedly is #176.  Nothing, no doors, no signs, no people.  A little further, around a corner, we find a modern looking shop, and we enter , eventually, to ask for directions.  The man was helpful, he said he knew of the shop, and it was a little down the side road amongst other shops.  We were very grateful, and now had some more hope.



We walked in the general direction indicated by the helpful shopkeeper, and walked into a what we would call an industrial park.  Mechanics, panel beaters, and other like businesses, but no laundromat.



We traced our steps back and walked 'behind' the #176 building, and saw some signs.  Perhaps somewhere here ?  Looking, looking, but no laundromat.  



How hard can this be ? I wanted to shout.  We looked around and saw in the distance a building that looked like it had some offices.  Perhaps they would know.  As we approached, one of the doors had a large 7- 22 on top of its door.  Perhaps there were a number of business inside, and they would know where out laundromat was..

We walked inside the door and were literally blown away.  It was a modern shopping centre, including one of the largest supermarkets that I have ever seen, and, yes, our bone-fide laundromat was also there.  



What a relief.  Therese and I could now travel in the knowledge that the stars we attract are not directly related to the state of our undies.  



ps - we bought the lady a box of chocolates as a thank you

pps - when we got back to our hotel room, we realised that we had only taken half our dirty laundry !

pps- I guess we'll have to do this all over agin in Krakow, Poland . . .   :)))  






2 comments:

  1. The crusty underpants story !

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