Nida

On Friday morning (the 24th) we crept out of our dorm nice and early, and headed for the bus station. It's always strange to see that there are people up and about at 6.30 in the morning, when we, at least, are in the habit of sleeping in. Anyway, our bus came, to take us to the edge of the Baltic. The trip was perfectly pleasant, other than the horrible squat toilets at the one stop, and having reached Klaipeda, the bus trundled onto a ferry to cross to the spit, a long piece of land stretching down the coast, enclosing a lagoon. It is forested with conifer and moss, on sandy soil. You'll remember we had headed out here without booking accommodation, which was making M a little nervous. On arriving in Nida, after stops at some other tiny fishing villages, we headed straight for the tourist information office, where we'd heard they could find rooms. However before we even got inside, a tiny woman asked us if we wanted accommodation, and we said yes. She spoke no english, and just a tiny bit of german, but she led us past some dodgy-looking apartment buildings to a very nice new building, and up to a very new apartment. Our room was huge and comfortable, and only 100 litas a night. Which is about 50 bucks, for the two of us. We were pretty happy.

Having settled in, we went to explore the town. It is super-cute. Rows of brown and blue painted cottages, and nice gardens. A nice little harbour (the town is on the lagoon side), and paths through the forest up to the enormous sand dune. We walked up it, and the view was wonderful - we could see Russia. That's the bit of Russia tucked in between Lithuania and Poland, and cut off from the rest of the country. I can't really remember what we did for the rest of the day. We went to the supermarket at some point and bought food, and wandered around a bit looking at the village. We went for dinner at CiliPica, the local mass eatery type place on the harbour, which has decent cheap food. Oh, we had lunch at a nice little cafe recommended by the guide book.

The next day we hired bikes and rode for a long way through the forest up the spit, then across to the baltic side to the beach. Then back to town for some lunch at the same cafe, then we rode to Russia. We couldn´t go in, obviously, and couldn´t really even get close - there was a big no-man´s land between the customs houses on each side. But we took some forbidden photos and sort of milled about a bit. Then we rode to the proper beach, where all the people were. Very popular, despite the rather bracing water. We had dinner again at the same place, then took a beer and went up the sand dune to drink it overlooking the town as darkness descended. Very pretty.

The next day we were to leave, and had seen everything, so spent the day cafe-hopping, having a small beer and a snack in each one. We were quite sleepy by the time the bus came to take us back to the mainland, and Margot almost fell asleep on someone - the bus was absolutely packed full. Our hostel in Klaipeda was horrible and small and dirty and the mattresses were more like a bunch of rocks in a sheet, but it was right next to the bus station for the next morning, and in that was totally ok.