Thank you, Nida

With somewhat of a heavy heart we leave Nida in a couple of hours. This has just been a tremendous place. We are so grateful to Danielle and Ryan for sharing one of their favorite places from their world tour and urging us to come here. We can wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody else.

What makes Nida so special? See...here's the deal. All you who know us know that we are a Type A personality married to a Type A plus personality (I'll leave it to all of you to decide who is who..... (though honestly, I personally believe we take turns)). Relaxation is not one of the things we're good it. We constantly have to organize and plan. I know that many of you have been wondering whether or not we'd be able to be spontaneous enough for this trip. And it is a tough road to walk at times...you don't want to be so regimented that you can't act on new opportunities and ideas, on the other hand, at least in July and August if you don't do some planning ahead you will find that buses and trains no longer have seats and that there are no rooms to sleep in.

More to the point for us, we've really struggled with the fact that (especially in northern europe), living (and sleeping!) is expensive, so you feel like you can only be in a town a limited amount of time and that you need to use that time productively to see all the things you're supposed to do. We've worked hard to feel like sitting in a park reading a book is an okay use of time...and we don't always succeed.

So I guess that's one of the reasons I like it here so much (aside from the fact that it's so gosh darn pretty). This is the first time in almost more time than I can remember that I have felt totally relaxed. We have walked, and biked and explored, but we have also slept in and read and relaxed and lounged. And we have felt good about all of it. And for that, I'm very grateful. I'll try hard not to lose that as we continue...

A couple more closing thoughts:

1) we are total cribbage fiends. we starting playing with each other a bunch after Lori started organizing game nights back in Portland at the Lucky Lab (we think she was just trying to lure Jon in..) and it's been a common social thing for us to do with each other back home in MN. But we've really gone crazy with it here. We play on buses, on trains, at bars, at restaurants, and now, on beaches. We play sets to 7 games, and while Brian is killing me 4 sets to 1, he's only beating me on games 33 to 32. I just have to get better at that endgame!

2) Of course, after 4.5 days of the sky looking like this, and of downpours that even Noah would have had trouble with, we woke up on our last day to beautiful sunny skies. We took advantage of that for a last dune trek (and fun) and will leave with sunny memories. I'm not bitter though, because we always found enough dry (if not sunny) skies each day to do something, be it a hike or walk or bike ride.

3) Finding out after you have purchased canned foods that your new flat doesn't have a can opener can be a bit of a challenge, but not if you're willing to be creative. Despite the a few touchy moments, we got the can open, Brian kept all his fingers, and we decided that probably wasn't the best way to attempt this in the future.

4) One of the things that make the area so pretty, is just the traditional houses. They often are colorfully painted, and have all sorts of detailed woodwork. Other examples: 1, 2

Off to Poland via Vilnius now...

Hugs to all

Becca

More Random Notes from Nida

Just some quick thoughts before Becca and I go out to spend the afternoon here out exploring the beaches and dunes one last time...

- Evidently the torrential downpours we've received every morning we've been here aren't normal. Thank goodness; it's been bizarre to be trapped inside the house every morning only to have the sky clear up and have beautiful weather right around lunchtime. Certainly has made our schedule pretty basic; get up, have breakfast, do some reading/trip planning/internetas, have lunch, spend afternoon/early evening exploring (including Becca doing 40km yesterday on a old school granny bike), have dinner, go to bed.

- Because of the rain, we've been tempted by the TV in our room, hoping to catch part of the Tour de France. Instead we get four channels, three of which show Lithuanian dubbed Spanish soap operas all day (with the occasional Baywatch thrown in) and classy movies, such as these (1, 2, 3) in addition to a wonderful number of badly done US TV Movies. What did the Lithuanian people ever do to deserve this?

- And what of the fourth channel you ask? It's the Lithuanian National Channel. Basic national programming except that right now they're showing the European Youth Athletics Championships. All of it. Ok except for when you're making dinner and they're showing 40 minutes of the race walkers . (Dad, you'll be happy to know they showed the men's javelin in its entirety...)

- On a much less flippant note, the natural beauty of Nida and the Curonian Spit is amazing. The hikes and bike rides we've taken around the area just continue to amaze us. On Friday evening we took a hike up the biggest dune closest to Nida. We were able to just wander around in a certain area (or run around) and after about five minutes, you were surrounded by nothing but sand and silence. You know how silence itself can be noise? That's what I felt in this area. Give me some food and a good book and I could be up here or here all day. Just amazing. A lot more to write about how they were able to build the dunes back up over time, but I'll leave that for Professor Rebecca :-)

- Two last pics for everyone. The first is not native to Nida. The second... well feel free to leave you own thoughts in the comments section...

Brian

Quick Update from Nida...

Since we've evidently hit Nida at the same time as a massive storm of some sort (we woke up to the local folks cutting down a large tree across the street from us this morning) so we're spending some time away from the beach and updating the site.

Why does this matter to you, oh faithful reader? More pictures of course! Previous blog entries without pictures now have them plus you can always check them all out in flickr.

In the meantime, this is what happens when you pay the two krooni fee at the WC in Kuressare, Estonia...

Klaipeda...

Just a quick stop in Klaipeda on our way to Nida. Our bus didn't get in until 9:30 at night and looking at the map, we realized that the bus station was a ways from old town and that our hotel was out of old town the opposite direction (for those keeping track, this is the third out of the past 4 places where we have managed to arrange that). Oh well....it's good exercise and keeps us from being tempted to try and squeeze more in our packs. With some help from some friendly Lithuanians (who already seem to be more outgoing than the Latvians or Estonians), we did make our way to the Hotel Aribe, which turned out to be a very nice little hotel. For a reasonable price, we got a small, nice room with toilet/shower and tv, with towels folded like flowers on the bed, very friendly staff (though little english speaking), and a nice breakfast, which thrilled me by adding some cooked to order food to the usual toast, meat, cheese choices. We would certainly recommend it to anybody who was travelling to Nida and needed to spend the night on the way.

I was also recovering from casualty number two of the trip. With a couple hours to burn in Riga in between the bus from Sigulda and the bus to Klaipeda, we were doing some errands like checking email, buying groceries, and searching for some english language books to read. We were running to make a light and I missed a particularly sticking up cobblestone and took a header. Luckily many years of being clumsy (and two broken wrists) have taught me to roll rather than try and break my fall with my hands, so I escaped with only some scrapes and bruises and wounded pride. (And no Lincoln, no pictures of that either. )

The next morning in Klaipeda we walked 30 minutes to find a Eurolines (the bus company) office to try and get tickets from Vilnius, Lithuania to Krakow, Poland. The bus only runs 3 times/week and we were afriad that if we waited until we arrived in Vilnius it would be full. I'll write a whole separate entry soon about bus travel in Eastern Europe. It's been an experience.

Klaipeda seems like a nice town to wander a little in, but we were on a mission. After having to find the new temporary location for the ferry across the harbor (because the usual harbor were full of yachts particpipating in this), we did the 7 minute crossing to the Spit and got on the bus to Nida.

More on that in a couple of days......

becca