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I arrived in Klaipeda, Lithuania's third-largest city and a large port on the Baltic yesterday afternoon. Nothing particularly special about the city; it used to be Memel, the capital of Prussia. Lots of brawling over the years has seen various groups booted out and a lot of of destruction.
The old town has the biggest cobblestones I think I've ever seen. Rough to walk on. I found it hard to find anywhere to eat in old town that wasn't a pub or a cafe. Eventually had dinner at a wine bar/pizza place of modern style (browse the bottles on the shelf and grab one that takes your fancy type of thing.) It was pretty good casual stuff. There's a rather nicely renovated sailing ship nearby that functions as a restaurant but I'm always sceptical of those sorts of places. May check it in more detail tonight.
The main reason to come here was to spend today on the Curonian Spit, a World Heritage listed long sandy spit (an island really as a very short car ferry ride is needed to get there.) Yesterday was very cloudy with a strong cold W wind but, true to the forecast, today was a divine mild windless autumn day; could not have been more perfect!
It's a major recreation area and must be a zoo in summer. I expected it to be busier than what it was, being a Saturday. Just goes to show how folks here start to really shut down for winter in early October.
The spit is narrow (about 1-2 km and about 100 km long.) The S section is part of Kaliningrad, the Russian Baltic outpost.
Geologically, it's totally a long sand dune that formed 5-6000 years ago. Deforestation in the 16th century caused the sand to start moving, swallowing 14 villages over the following 300 years. In the late 18th century a massive replanting effort got under way. Now there is only a fairly small dune area, but it is still moving.
The W side is a pretty standard-looking beach with the dunes rising fairly sharply. The E side is flatter, sheltering a channel into Klaipeda and providing extensive bird habitat. A very calm lagoon-like place. There are a couple of quite attractive villages along the E side.
Lithuanians are very keen on sculpture. There are sculpture parks everywhere. Some of the older ones look a bit soviet but many of the more modern ones are pretty good IMO.
Walking in the pine forest woods with a damp sphagnum-like ground cover, the abundance and diversity of mushrooms and toadstools was quite astonishing. Many people were out mushrooming.
A bunch of pics will follow to put some imagery to this text.
Haeding to Vilnius tomorrow.
The old town has the biggest cobblestones I think I've ever seen. Rough to walk on. I found it hard to find anywhere to eat in old town that wasn't a pub or a cafe. Eventually had dinner at a wine bar/pizza place of modern style (browse the bottles on the shelf and grab one that takes your fancy type of thing.) It was pretty good casual stuff. There's a rather nicely renovated sailing ship nearby that functions as a restaurant but I'm always sceptical of those sorts of places. May check it in more detail tonight.
The main reason to come here was to spend today on the Curonian Spit, a World Heritage listed long sandy spit (an island really as a very short car ferry ride is needed to get there.) Yesterday was very cloudy with a strong cold W wind but, true to the forecast, today was a divine mild windless autumn day; could not have been more perfect!
It's a major recreation area and must be a zoo in summer. I expected it to be busier than what it was, being a Saturday. Just goes to show how folks here start to really shut down for winter in early October.
The spit is narrow (about 1-2 km and about 100 km long.) The S section is part of Kaliningrad, the Russian Baltic outpost.
Geologically, it's totally a long sand dune that formed 5-6000 years ago. Deforestation in the 16th century caused the sand to start moving, swallowing 14 villages over the following 300 years. In the late 18th century a massive replanting effort got under way. Now there is only a fairly small dune area, but it is still moving.
The W side is a pretty standard-looking beach with the dunes rising fairly sharply. The E side is flatter, sheltering a channel into Klaipeda and providing extensive bird habitat. A very calm lagoon-like place. There are a couple of quite attractive villages along the E side.
Lithuanians are very keen on sculpture. There are sculpture parks everywhere. Some of the older ones look a bit soviet but many of the more modern ones are pretty good IMO.
Walking in the pine forest woods with a damp sphagnum-like ground cover, the abundance and diversity of mushrooms and toadstools was quite astonishing. Many people were out mushrooming.
A bunch of pics will follow to put some imagery to this text.
Haeding to Vilnius tomorrow.
.
