Exploring the coast of Lithuania

After my last visit to Vilnius in June, I still had some Litas left. Because they will be introducing the euro in Lithuania shortly, I started looking into the possibility for another trip as soon as I got home. When I found a return ticket for only 35 euro, the decision had practically been made for me :)

I told my parents about my plan and a couple of weeks later my mom asked if she could come along. We've been on a couple of trips together, which has always been great fun, so off course she could. With her coming along i figured it would be nice to visit the coast of Lithuania. I had never been to the Curonian Spit and it was supposed to be very beautiful. This was confirmed by the pictures found on Google and after reading a couple of reviews we started looking up some timetables for public transport and other info we might need. Finding a place to stay wouldn't be very hard, as half of the houses on the island seemed to be either hotels or guesthouses.

To get there we'd have to get a bus or train to Klaipeda and from there a ferry could take us to the Curonian Spit. One of the girls working in the hostel in Vilnius (Jimmy Jumps House; best hostel ever!!) is from Klaipeda, so i figured she could help us out with booking our bus/train. With her help we planned our trip: we'd take the bus to Klaipeda, take the ferry to Smiltyne and then the bus to Joudkrante. This is a city (village) half way up the Curonian Spit and we decided to spend the first night there.

The next morning, after waffle breakfast, we took the 10:30 bus and four hours later we arrived at the busstation in Klaipeda. From there we took a bus into the old town, and had a little drink before heading to the ferry. For about 80 eurocents each the ferry took us to the other side in less than ten minutes. There a bus was waiting to take us to our destination of the day: Joudkrante. Apparently a village with 720 inhabitants needs four busstops, the first one being quite a bit outside the old centre. So after a short walk we managed to find our guesthouse: Vila Flora. To our surprise the girl behind the counter spoke German fluently. After checking in we bought some drinks and sat along the Curonian Lagoon untill it got too cold to sit outside.

We had planned to rent bikes in Juodkrante and ride these to Nida, the biggest city of the Curonian Spit situated at the end of the island. This cycling trail is supposed to be one of the most beautiful trails in all of Europe. There didn't seem to a lot of bikes for rent in Juodkrante though. So after a delicious banana pancakes breakfast, we decided to take the bus to Nida and cycle down the trail from there.

The first thing we noticed in Nida were the cute colourful houses. Unfortunately, the second thing we noticed was the stench... In all of Nida it smelled like old fish, which was probably due to the green water which left odd turquoise stains the boats and rocks. After we got over our initial shock, we went to the tourist information office to ask where we could rent some bikes and where the hostel was we had heard about. With our newly rented bikes we set out to find said hostel. When we still hadn't found it after driving around for an hour, we went back to the tourist info office. By now they were on their lunchbreak though, so we figured we should have some lunch as well. As the Lagoon water wasn't having a very possitive effect on our appetite, we decided to cycle across the island to the Baltic Sea. The air here was very refreshing and we had a lovely lunch on the sunny Baltic beach. Unfortunately, the water on this side of the island wasn't very suitable for swimming either, as it was filled with jelly fish.

After a while we went back to Nida to start our second search for a place to stay. When we got to the tourist info office, we found out we had lost the key to our bicycle lock. So as my mom cycled back to the beach, I informed the lady behind the desk we had not been able to find the hostel. A short while and a couple of phone calls later they found out this was understandable, as it was closed down a while ago. They gave us some tips on other places and after seeing all of Nida about five times we found a place to stay.

After a well deserved Baltas beer, we could finally start cycling down this magical trail. Unfortunately, we didn't get very far. Not even half an hour into our adventure we simply had to turn around, because the path was infested with swarms of tiny black flies. There were so many of these little creatures, we had to tie our scarfs in front of our faces and wear sunglasses just to keep them out of our eyes and mouth... So after climbing up to one of the viewing points along the trail, we went straight back to guesthouse to take a shower. When I took off my clothes and untied my hair, about fifty dead bugs fell to the ground and another fifty were stuck to my body. Needless to say, I was quite happy with the fairly new shower facility.

After this failed adventure we still wanted to put our bikes to good use. So we decided to cycle in the direction of the Russian part of the Curonian Spit, to see how far we could come. Here we stumbled upon a huge sand dune. About 200 steps off stairs took us to the top, where we found a huge sundile and an amazing view. We could see the Curonian Lagoon on one side, the Baltic Sea on the other and in the middle the beginning of the Russian territory.

We were very happy we had finally seen the beauty of the island. This made all the hours of waiting, searching and the stench worth while. Feeling very satisfied we went back down to find a restaurant where we had a nice Baltas and some pink soup.

So even though we had some bad luck along the way, we had a great time at the Lithuanian coast. But it's safe to say I won't be visiting the Curonian Spit anytime soon. ;)