Klaipeda, Lithuania: The Amber Coast Gateway to Curonian Spit

The Curonian Spit is the main reason many passengers call at Klaipeda. The spit is a ninety-eight-kilometer sand barrier, shared between Lithuania and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. The Lithuanian section is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a national park, reached by car ferry from Klaipeda's harbor in ten minutes. The paved road runs the length of the Lithuanian section; the main village, Nida, at the southern end, is eighty kilometers away and a full day's excursion. The dunes at Parnidis, near Nida, are the highest in the spit — up to forty meters — and the walking route from the village takes about ninety minutes round-trip.

For a half-day on the spit, the Hill of Witches (Raganos kalnas) in Juodkrantė, thirty-five kilometers south of the ferry landing, is the more accessible option. A trail through the pine forest is lined with a hundred large wooden sculptures of Lithuanian folk characters — witches, devils, forest spirits — carved by local sculptors over several decades. The sculptures are genuinely well-made and the forest setting is unlike anything on the rest of the Baltic coast.

The Klaipeda old town itself is pleasant for an hour's walk. The Theater Square at its center was part of the German city of Memel, which was part of the German Empire until 1919 and occupied by Lithuania in 1923 — a complicated history reflected in the mix of Lithuanian and German street names and the tone of the history museum. The Simon Dach fountain in the square is a modern recreation of a famous original; the surrounding neo-Gothic townhouses are the real thing.

The Lithuanian Sea Museum and Aquarium, on the peninsula at the northern edge of the lagoon, is about fifteen minutes by taxi from the pier. The museum occupies a nineteenth-century fort and includes a dolphinarium (performances daily), Baltic sea-life exhibits, and one of the better collections of amber in the country. Amber is the defining material of the Lithuanian Baltic coast; the beach at Palanga, thirty kilometers north, is one of the most reliable places in Europe to find raw amber after storms.