On Friday, 21 June, we hit the road. We would spend the next couple of days on the Curonian Spit, a narrow 60-mile long peninsula on the western edge of Lithuania.
First, we needed a car. I walked from Old Town that morning to the Vilnius bus station, to catch the shuttle bus to Vilnius Airport and the Hertz office there. As in Berlin, people in Lithuania use public transportation a lot. Here’s a gallery of pics from the Vilnius bus station.
Drove a Volkswagen Golf back to the apartment. My iPhone directions, however, once it got close to our location, said I was not permitted to drive any closer to it. Pilies, the street on which we were, was defined as limited to “pedestrian” traffic, I assume. When Vilius first drove us there, slowly through lots of pedestrians, I asked about that and he said it was a pedestrian street “unless you need to drive on it.” Okay. (Interestingly, Google’s directions, which Julia used, brought us all the way to the location.)
After wandering about for a bit, I was able to recognize some buildings and found my way.
We left Vilnius for Klaipėda, the port city at which we would take a ferry to the Curonian Spit. The drive was about 200 miles to Klaipėda, nearly all of it on Highway A1, the main east-west highway in the country. A1 is divided, four-lane, speed limit 80 miles an hour (in summer). I sometimes felt as if I was driving in New Hampshire.
Julia had found a hotel in Juodkrantė, a small resort village (720 permanent residents) about halfway down the Lithuanian portion of the peninsula. It was a beautiful setting, with the Curonian Lagoon just across the street.
Here’s video (1:42) of the road trip.
Everything went great on the drive. Except for one event. As we drove along a two-lane road in the center of the peninsula, the car in front of me suddenly braked hard and pulled over. But there was no space for him to get entirely off the road. With the butt end of his car taking up about half the lane and a lorry approaching from the opposite direction, I had to slam on my brakes. I avoided contact with the car in front, but another lorry behind me was not able to avoid contact with our car. “Damage” was very minor — a small, shallow scratch (it sounded worse). The lorry driver, somewhat agitated, didn’t speak English. Calculating the situation (language, absence of police, level of damage), I said things were okay, we shook hands, and returned to our cars. Meanwhile, the instigator of the situation had taken off. (Long story short, I was worried about what charges I might face with Hertz and there were none.)
We had stopped at a mall in Kaunas for lunch. After spending a couple of days in Old Town, I was surprised, frankly, at the MEGA Mall. It was a pretty good indication of why Lithuania is classified as an “advanced high-income” economy. Here’s video (1:27).
Lithuania, part IV: Curonian Spit