Tuesday, July 14, 2015
One week from today, we’ll be leaving Marina in Southampton
and be on our way home. Of course, we’ve felt like we were on our way home
since we went back to Stockholm to re-board Marina. Now, the end is tangible.
Clay said last night that he was glad he had decided not to go into work during
the short period we are home before the Great Lakes cruise. He is probably
right. We’ll probably just barely have time to get through the back log of
mail!
We were both up early today to get laundry done. Clay went
to the gym after making sure that I was up and the laundry room was open. Last
night there was a line to do laundry, this morning there was no problem. I got
it done and we went to breakfast at Terrace.
So, like yesterday we arrived a little earlier than the new
delayed arrival time. It was a nice sail into the Curonian lagoon by the
Curionian Spit. I saw the long approach from Horizons Lounge during needlepoint
this morning. We went up to Baristas around 11am to have a quick, light lunch
before we had to meet ashore at 11:45am with the Alla Tours group and guide.
So, we had a long busy day. Here is what we did. 11:45am we met up outside the
port gate. It was very close. Actually, old town was very close too! We got in
the van with 10 people and the driver and the guide at the port gate and headed
for the ferry. We went out onto the Curionian Spit for most of the day. By noon
we were over there. The ferry ride was only about 5 minutes and there were at
least 3 ferries running. We went first to Smiltyne Beach. They hunt for amber
to wash ashore there after storms. Unfortunately, there was no debris on the
beach so odds were low. I searched hard anyway and found a tiny crumb of amber!
It seemed to me that there could be a lot of tiny pieces of amber making up the
beach, just mixed in with the sand. Our guide, Mindagus, gave each of us a
piece of amber with a hole drilled in it as a condolence. That was very nice!
Next we had a stop for photos at a Gray Heron and cormorant colony. We didn’t
find any herons, but we found thousands of cormorants nesting up in the oldest
part of the forest out there and they had killed off a large swath of the big
old trees with overwhelming amounts of poop. Next we drove to Nida and visited
an amber museum/gallery. We walked across the street and walked through an old,
odd cemetery. Lithuania is known for being the last European area to become Christian
and they still have a lot of pagans. We have been surprised that we have heard
double digit percentages of people who self-identify as pagan as we travel
through the Baltics. I think that had something to do with the weird footboards
at the graves. We crossed the street again and walked along the waterfront and
through the little town of Nida. Everyone wanted lunch even though it was not
on our itinerary. The guide suggested a place and it was good and reasonably
priced. It took a long time out of our day though. The guide sat at our table
and we and another couple bought him lunch. We drove a long way next to get to
the highest point of the traveling dunes and to see a solar clock-calendar
sculpture on top. From the top you could see a great panorama of Neringa. You
could see the Curonian Lagoon on the left, the Russian part of the peninsula and
on the right the Baltic Sea. I think Mindagus said the dune was 84 meters tall.
For some reason, I did not have the Hill of Witches on my itinerary but the
others said they had it. We didn’t really have time to do it anyway, but we
stopped and walked about halfway up the hill and saw a half dozen or so creepy
wooden sculptures in the woods. This was in the little town of Juodkrante. Last
stop was a photo stop at Amber Bay in Juodkrante. This was the site of an amber
mine in the 1800’s. They took out 75000 kilos of amber during something like a
3 year period. We drove back to the ferry and returned to Klaipeda after 5pm.
At 5:30pm we left the driver and van on the far side of Klaipeda and we started
our walking tour of old town. Almost as soon as we started, Mindagus took us to
1 of 3 courtyards in Klaipeda and showed us restrooms and bought local beers
for everyone that wanted one. Then we set off again on our walking tour. The
thing that was missing for me again today was a map. It was a good tour though and
I for one certainly appreciated the guy’s patience with us and for his
flexibility with our changed arrival time and the group’s demands. I don’t
actually know what we paid for today’s tour, but I think the list price was
$130pp.
We had very good luck again with the weather today. It was
supposed to be 67F and rainy. I don’t think it ever got that warm and it only
rained on us off and on for less than an hour of our day. It was cool, windy
and mostly cloudy but it could have been much worse.
We went to Terrace for a late dinner after we got back on
Marina. I don’t know if it is always like that but Terrace was an absolute zoo
for the last hour they were open tonight. I hope we don’t ever have to do that
again.
