Baltic trip (2): Klaipeda and Curonian Spit

It was raining on the way to Klaipeda, but it was perfectly sunny when we arrived there at around 14:30 (it was 4-hr trip from Vilnius) :-). Klaipeda is the third largest city in Lithuania, a port city located in the western part of Lithuania, so that was our first encounter with the Baltic sea in this trip. The main reason for visiting this city is because it is the gateway to reach Curonian Spit. Curonian Spit national park (as you can read on the link) hosts some of the most beautiful sand dunes in the world and is recognized as a World Heritage Site of Unesco since 2000. The Spit itself is divided almost equally by Russia's Kaliningrad region in the south and Lithuania's national park in the north.

As usual, we dropped by to the local Tourist Information to get some advices. There were not so many things to see in Klaipeda, though I was impressed by quite a lot of Fachwerkhauser (German half-timber house) in this city. Historically the city was a Prussian city of Memel, so no wonder there are quite a lot of German buildings and also German tourists :-P. We then decided to take a short ferry trip to Smiltyne, the northern part of the Spit which is the closest part to Klaipeda and visited its quiet beach. The funny thing is that I did not realize that they have several kinds of beach there (good that Remko read something about that before). Basically they have beach for woman, man, family, and the nudist one... So we have to be careful to read the sign before entering a beach area :-P

The next day, we took the ferry again to the Spit and since the weather (at that time) was quite good we decided to take bike to Nida from Smiltyne (it is about 50km away). It is possible to rent a bike in Smiltyne and drop it at Nida so we do not have to cycle again to Smiltyne (otherwise..no way hehe). The bike trip was great, though on the way to Juodkrante (half way to Nida) it was raining quite hard....but cycling when raining can also be fun :-) We had a light lunch in Juodkrante (after 25 km and the rain... I need something to eat :-P). The area is famous of its smoked fish which reminds me of bandeng asap (Indonesian smoked fish). I had salat with smoked fish and it was good. We then continued cycling (thanks God it was not raining anymore), passing by the scenic villages of the Spit: Pervalka and Preila with their pretty timber houses.

Finally we reached Nida around 16:30. Nida is nice village and was surprisingly quite crowded with tourists. We visited the 52-m high Parnidis dune (or the Great dune) which is really beautiful. It was nice view from it but the stairs really hurt my legs (well I have not cycled for more than one year and that day I had my 50-km bike trip). After spent some time in Nida we returned back to Smiltyne by bus, it was one hour trip and along the way we met a group of forest pigs (and the bus stopped to let us having some moments with them :-P). We reached Klaipeda around 20:30 and had dinner in Kurpiav, a nice restaurant with jazz live music. It was really a nice day to end our visit in Klaipeda and Lithuania, since the next day we had to leave for Riga, Latvia.

Baltic trip (1): Vilnius

I had my summer holiday (finally!) three weeks ago, this time I had 12-day traveling in some Baltic countries: Lithuania (Vilnius-Klaipeda-Curonian Spit), Latvia (Riga), Estonia (Tallinn-Laheema National Park), and Finland (Helsinki, but well I am not sure whether Finland is included to what so called Baltic countries...but at least it's still in the area :-P). This year I visited some Eastern Europe countries which are just recently included to Schengen agreement (meaning no additional visa needed for me, it is kind of my celebration :-P). I still miss Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia though... hopefully I can visit Budapest this year, keep my fingers crossed :-).

Remko, my Dutch friend who is just recently returned back to the Netherlands after working in Indonesia decided to join me for this trip. We started the trip with a flight delay (yeah what a start :-P), but I was so excited with the idea of having 12-day holiday... so I did not really care at that time.. We should have been departed at 08:45 but the flight was delayed to 10:10...quite a long delay actually...I only thought that I could sleep longer :-P

We arrived in Vilnius at 13:30. After getting the free map and advices from the Tourist Information, we walked around the old town. Vilnius has a lot of churches....I mean really a lot... I can not remember the names, only one church that I find a bit different than the others: the St. Anne church which is a bit gothic. That day we had a nice dinner in Balti Drambliai, a cheap vegetarian restaurant in the old town.

The next day, we started early and went directly to the bus station for Trakai. We took bus at 09:15 and arrived in Trakai around 10:00. Trakai is a very nice small town (or village?). It was quite important place around 13th century as the Grand Duke of Lithuania lived in the island castle of Trakai for some time. Before reaching the island castle, we passed through some colorful timber houses a long the main road. Trakai also famous of its Karaite sect people. They are originally from Baghdad and were brought by Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas from Crimea in ca. 1400 to serve as bodyguards. There were about 380 Karaite families at that time and now only around 63 remain in Trakai.

The island castle is beautiful, though it's really obvious that they just recently renovated it. We visited the Trakai museum inside the castle and then we visited the ruin of Peninsula castle and had a light Karaite lunch on the way back to the bus station.

We reached Vilnius around 15:00 and visited the Gediminas hill and castle to see the view of the old town from the top of the tower. Our next destination was Uzupis area. It is kind of artist district of Vilnius which in 1998 unnofficially declared the district as a breakaway state called Uzupis republic with their own president, anthem, and 41-point constitution (zoom in my pic below to read a bit of their constitution). During April Fool's day, they even stamp the visitors' passports. We had dinner in Uzupio Kavine just by the river of the Republic's main gate. We left Vilnius the next day for Klaipeda.