Kaunas Day Two

Thursday, day two, was always going to be a hectic sketching day. During my wanderings the bus station, outside which was a helpful streetmap which I photographed. I found another one on a wall in the town hall square, which showed less of the town, but had landmarks marked on it. Using these I had a rudimentary itinerary sketched out, should you pardon the pun.

Back to the Old Town to begin, where I made this sketch in Vilnius Street, which should hopefully give an example of what I meant about the architecture of the street and the way it is laid out.

Thence to the Vytautas Bridge. I crossed it and took the funicular railway, which I sketched on my required elements post.

Crossing the bridge back to the old town I stopped to make this watercolour sketch of the Vytautas the Great Church. Whoever Vytautas was, they thought a lot of him in Kaunas.

I needed to do some shopping, and so I walked along the riverbank to the Akropolis shopping mall. My map told me that this was close to the Archangel Michael Church, and so this also gave me the chance to do some unfinished business in Laisves Aleja. I made another watercolour sketch of a building I liked.

Along the Laisves Aleja there are several statues of what I presume were prominent former citizens of Kaunas. This chap was a former mayor of Kaunas, ad I believe quite instrumental in Lithuanian moves for independence following world war one.

It was a bit of a step from there to Kaunas Castle, but even thought only about a third of the original 14^th century building remains, it’s still quite impressive, and sitting on top of the dry moat I found it one of the calmest and most peaceful places in Kaunas.

Looking behind me I realised I could see the tower of the town hall, and it didn’t look far away either. In fact I was right by the Old Town, which enabled me to nip back to the town hall square, and make this sketch of the St. Peter and Paul cathedral Basilica.