17 Jul 2023
Tags: summer holidays, beach holidays
The Republic of Lithuania is a fantastic alternative to more conventional summer destinations such as the Mediterranean, with lovely uncrowded beaches and sand dunes, warm but not soaring temperatures, long days and fantastic events.
Curonian Spit National Park
Designated a national park (Kuršių Nerijos Nacionalinis Parkas) in 1991, the long thin sandbar of the Curonian Spit on Lithuania's Baltic Sea runs from 60km south of Klaipeda to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. It's an otherworldly ecosystem of pristine beaches and sand dunes that have earnt it the nickname 'Lithuania's Sahara', the authentic fishing villages of UNESCO-inscribed Neringa (comprising Nida, Juodkrantė, Pervalka and Preila) and pine forests with resident deer, elk and wild boar.
This is very much a place for simple, low-key pleasures in the sea air: swimming, searching for amber on the beaches or admiring it in the Amber Gallery Museum with its jewellery workshops, hiking the dune trails and climbing the 50m Parnidis dune south of Nida, with its 12m sundial with pagan and runic symbols, cycling (bike hire is available from many hotels and guesthouses) , lagoon boat trips and refueling on smoked local fish such as bream, mackerel and eel.
Literature lovers also like to pay homage at the Thomas Mann Cultural Center, a museum in the wooden summerhouse that the German novelist and his wife Katia had built in Nidia in 1929. The spit was once part of the German province of East Prussia and you can still feel the cultural legacy of that epoch in the red-brick Evangelical-Lutheran Church and old German cemetery nestled within a remote pine wood.
Accommodation here tends to come in traditional wooden cottages, many painted crimson with pale blue and white detailing.
www.visitneringa.com
EuroVelo 10 (the Baltic Sea Cycle Route)
This transnational cycling path runs the entire length of the Lithuanian portion of the Spit, linking the villages mentioned above and Kaliningrad at one end and Latvia at the other.
Klaipėda
The port city also has beaches and a resort-like atmosphere in its suburbs of Smiltynė, Melnragė, Giruliai and Karklė. The best is Smiltynė, at the tip of the Spit and accessible only by a 10-minute ferry ride. Smiltynė offes hiking and cycling through its pine forests, Kopgalis fortress housing the Lithuania Sea Museum with its shipping displays and aquarium, and a reconstructed 19th-century fisherman's farm.
The Sea Festival, Klaipėda, 21-23 July
Each year the harbour of this Baltic port city plays host to the biggest annual Lithuanian seaside views. Joining forces for 2023 with Baltic Sail, it displays traditional sailing vessels and other ships as well as embracing about 100 events, including a main concert by Sam Ryder in the cruise ship terminal, ceremonies at sea, shows, fairs and exhibitions.
https://klaipedatravel.lt/en/events/sea-festival-2023/
All images: www.visitneringa.com
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