Me and P in Lithuania

My good friend Paola had a conference in Klaipeda, Lithuania in September. The original plan was for me and Ben to visit her and see some of the country. Unfortunately, AIMA – the agency that handles immigration and issues residency permits – thought otherwise. Ben’s residency permit wasn’t approved in time, so Klaipeda turned into a girls’ trip.

We arranged to have the same connecting flight from Copenhagen, so we arrived to the airport in Palanga at the same time. We rented a car for the weekend to explore the area. Saturday we drove north toward the Latvian border to Šventoji, a small beach town. We grabbed a snack and walked along the beach.

Paola was adventurous enough to touch the water, I was not. =) P can now say she’s been in the Baltic Sea.

We found an alka which was a gathering place for the Samoatic people who lived here before Christianity came. They would hold ceremonies here.

The pillars are arranged as a celestial observatory to determine the dates of the Baltic calendar holidays based on the shadows cast by the sun.

We spent the next day on the Curonian Spit. It’s a national park that can only be accessed from Lithuania by ferry. It connects to Russian to the south, but the border is closed. The Lithuanian part of the spit/peninsula is about 50km long. We drove all the way to the Russian border, to say we’ve seen Russia.

It was a rainy day, so we didn’t get to spend as much time outside as we’d have liked, but we did get to walk around some. We stopped in Juodkrantė for a look around. It has a permanent population of about 700.

We continued south to an area that has a sculpture park along the river. We were able to walk around it and got into a restuarant once the heavy rain started. The food was good. Our waiter told us it was the last day they were open for the season. They were closing the next day, Monday. There weren’t many other food options, so we were lucky there!

Our last stop was to see the Dead Dunes, also called the Gray Dunes. They are known as the Dead Dunes because and they swallowed 4 towns between 1675 and 1854 when they were moving as far as 15 meters in a year. They are the tallest migrating dunes in Europe. The walk is a kilometer on boardwalks through the nature preserve. I imagine it’s a wonderful walk when it is not pouring cold rain on you.

There is a raised platform at the end for people to see over the landscape and take photos.

We finished the day with a nice dinner close to where we were staying. It had wonderful views of the city of Klaipeda.

Paola’s conference started Monday, so I wandered the city on my own until she was free. The city has a lot of sculptures, so they became waypoints on my walk. I first visited a large park full of sculptures and found this along the way.

Here are some more photos from my walk around the city.

and probably my favorite: