Today we said goodbye to Rinno Hotel, their amazing breakfasts, and the beautiful city of Vilnius. We truly enjoyed our few days in Vilnius.
The plan was to drive 4 hours to Klaipeda and then ferry to the Curonian Spit. But as we traveled, the traffic on the motorway came to a dead stop. Tomas checked traffic and found that the motorway was closed so we had to divert on smaller side roads. It took maybe 30 minutes to get to the exit, and our detour took us on some smaller roads through a couple of villages/settlements. No complaints from us about having to drive through the countryside!!
Klaipeda is, at a population of about 200,000, the third largest city in Lithuania. It’s a harbor town and is ‘linear’ where the city’s focus is toward the coast so it’s long and narrow. As we had places to go and things to see, we headed straight to the ferry to the Curonian Spit. After a 10 minute ferry ride, we were on the spit, with our first stop a teeny cafe (three tables and one 2-person high top) for lunch.
After lunch, the next up was The Hill of Witches! This is like an outdoor gallery, or outdoor sculpture exhibition, that takes one on a nice walk through the woods. It was named for a Pagan festival that takes place on June 24th/the Summer Solstice. Since we are starting to get a bit wordy… here are some pictures from the wooded hillside trail.
After the nice “witch walk” we made a quick stop to see where cormorants stop while migrating. Although the birds weren’t home (off-season for them as well!!) their was odorous evidence that we were in the right place. In addition, the trees all around the roosting area were barren and dying, as the acidic nature of their poop kills the trees.
Before describing the next stops, we need to explain what the “Curonian Spit” is. It’s a peninsula, now a national park, that is reachable only by ferry from Lithuania. It was/is composed of moving sand dunes, albeit a good portion now has vegetation and trees growing. There are several villages buried deep by the sand over time.
Our next stop was unique. To begin with, Blake nearly made friends with a red fox. We’re pretty certain that he would have scooped up the little fella and taken him with us had they made contact! Once the fox excitement subsided we took a very short walk to some of the dunes.
Why were these particular dunes unique? Because we could see Russia! If you’re looking at a map in your head and this doesn’t make sense, consider that Kaliningrad, Russia is isolated on the coast, bordering Lithuania and Poland.
Our final stop on the ‘Spit was amazing! We were nearing sundown, and really wanted to see the Grey Dunes which is a must-see regardless of time of day. We had to decide whether to go to the west side of the Curonian Spit and watch the sunset or quickly drive to the Grey Dunes on the east side to see the full moon rising. We chose the moon rise and got so much more than planned, seeing the sunset over the Baltic Sea as well as a full moon rise over the sand dunes. Incredible!!!
We caught the 8:20 pm ferry back and checked into the Hotel – The Old Mill Inn. Jay had already done a little research and knew that the hotel was next to a swing bridge. A swing bridge is used to control multiple forms of traffic. In this case, it allows passengers to pass over the bridge when it’s in one position and allows boats to pass on the canal when in the other position. Think of a drawbridge that moves to the side rather than opening up. Anyway, it’s a pretty cool piece of mechanical technology and Jay was excited to see it.
We walked a few blocks to dinner, again challenged to find something open due to the late hour and it being off-season. We found a pub, had a nice meal, and then headed back to the hotel. Keeping in mind it was about 10 pm, it was strange to be walking in the near dark in a foreign land hearing someone running up behind you saying ‘Hey guys!!”. We had left a cell phone and glasses in the pub and our waiter was nice enough to run nearly 2 blocks to return them. We were SO grateful for his kindness.
Another late night, and we plan on hitting the ground running again tomorrow!