The Hill of Crosses

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20 July 2019

From Rundale Palace we drove South into Lithuania and after 50k stopped to look at the Hill of Crosses. This a small hillock where Lithuanians from across the world have planted hundreds of thousands of large and small, elaborate or simple devotional and memorial crosses in a haphazard way. The Lithuanians kept it going during the Soviet era despite the authorities attempts to outlaw the practice. We found the place quite disturbing and commercialised , but when Pope John Paul II held a mass there in 1993 he suggested that a monastery be built as a place of prayer. This now stands 100m away.

We then continued 200k back to the coast and the port of Klaipeda where we had a short ferry ride to the long and narrow Curonian Spit. We drove 50k along the spit to our home for the next few days at the resort Nida close to the border with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

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