Lithuania has been attacked by both Russia (1940) and Germany (1941) with both powers occupying the country for periods during World War 11. More recently unarmed Lithuanians were attacked by Soviet military in 1991 during their struggle for independence from the Soviet Union. Even up until today the Soviet threat to the baltic countries remains very real.
I had an early start to the day with my tour to The Witches Hill departing at 7.45am. Philip's tour on E-Bikes departed at a more decent time of 9.00pm. Both of our tours start with a car ferry ride across the Curonian Lagoon to the Curonian Spit that is a narrow forested sand dune peninsula. This peninsula borders the Russian state of Kaliningrad, that is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea.
After a brief comfort stop, our bus takes us to Witches Hill at Juodkrantė. Witches Hill is an outdoor sculpture trail with around 80 sculptures depicting legendary characters, witches, devils and spirits from Lithuana's rich folklore. It was created in 1979 after a festival of creative artists came together and continues to grow to this day. I created this collage of just some of the carvings that I photographed.
Our young guide was quite the story teller and I loved listening to her, at times humorous, and other times terrifying, depiction of the statues. The Devils Gateway was my favourite. The trail is not very long but is quite steep in some parts.
After our walk and when we are all back on the bus our next stop is the Weathervane and Amber gallery at Vetrungiu. I am not drawn to amber as I know others are. I prefer other precious stones. Our guide handed us all a little sample bag of amber to take home as a momento that I thought was a lovely gesture. However, in the gallery I loved the linen and purchased a set of six beautiful white napkins with linen red roses. The weathervanes were also pretty cute.
The last place we visit is the Blue Flagged beach at Smiltynė on the Curonian Spit. The Blue Flag is a worldwide sort-after award for environmental management of a beach or marina. Lithuania has four blue flag beaches with Spain having the most blue flag beaches in the world. I have never heard of it and Australia is not one of the participating countries. We have to walk up a long staircase to cross over the dunes before arriving at the beach. It is extremely windy but it is a lovely beach with white sand.
Our tour did not include a visit to the town centre of Klaipeda but Philips tour did so I will leave you with some of Philips photos of Klaipeda.
No comments:
Post a Comment