Post by justjohn on Dec 25, 2011 5:03:27 GMT -7
The Curonian Spit in midsummer
By Karen Bradbury
Published: December 22, 2011
Karen Bradbury/ Stars and Stripes
The darkest days of the year are upon us. But we can take solace in the fact that as the winter solstice passes, the hours of daylight will slowly begin to increase. To get through these days, I find it helps to fall back on memories of a time when it remained light late into the evening. So I recall a journey I took to an area known as the Curonian Spit.
The Curonian Spit is a splinter of land tracing the coastline of the Baltic Sea for some 60 miles. It is separated from the mainland by a lagoon, and its territory is shared by Lithuania and the Russian Federation. As this geographical phenomenon lived in my memory, it was a sparsely touristed place. Thus it came as a huge surprise when, after a nearly three-hour bus ride from the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, followed by a 20-minute ferry ride from Klaipėda, and another half hour in a mini-van doubling as a taxi, I arrived in the town of Nida only to find all accommodation booked solid.
www.stripes.com/blogs/europe-traveler/europe-traveler-1.8540/the-curonian-spit-in-midsummer-1.164303