Blogs from Nida, Lithuania, Europe

We arrived on the Curonian Spit on the lithuanian after a mornings travelling from Vilnius, which included a hike accross Vilnius at 5:20am, a train to the town of Klaipeda, boat across the small channel of water that separates the spit from the mainland and a bus to the fishing village of Nida. The Curonian spit is a narrow stretch of sand dunes and pine forests about 80km in length, with the highest point being a mere 65m. It bridges lithuania to Kalingrad in Russia, and creates a lagoon on the east side to the Baltic on the west. This creates a beautiful landscape of sand dunes, sea and pine forests, a great place for us to unwind after the city hopping we'd done earlier in the trip. Our three days were spent looking around the ... read more

We woke at nine and went straight down to breakfast. It was yummy. There was an array of food available, even the obligatory curd tart. We spent most of breakfast debating whether we'd be asked to pay, but we weren't. Yesterday we'd seen pictures of "The Lithuanian Sahara" so we decided to go on one of the set walks around that. By set walk it was more of a walk in the general direction of a set walk that probably existed. Once we were at the top of the hill the view was amazing; the dunes stretched out below and the lagoon on one side with the Baltic sea on the other side. At the top there was also a large sundial built in '95 but partially destroyed in '99. The dial was surrounded by a ... read more

29 April 2007: We woke up early only to find all cafés in Palanga do not open on Sundays (or any day for that matter) until 10am. Odd for certain for a tourist town.... So, off to the Curonian Spit. After a 30 minute drive, we arrived in Klaipėda and took the car ferry over to the peninsula. The peninsula is 97km long, but only 52 of them are in Lithuania (the southernmost portion being Kalingrad and Russian). The Lithuanian maps uniformly do not show the remainder of the spit below the border south of Nida. The four principal Lithuanian towns on the spit (Nida, Preila, Pervalka and Joudkrantė) all united in the 1960s into “Neringa,” and the spit was named a UNESCO world heritage site for its “cultural landscape” in 2000. At Joudkrantė, we ... read more