The Spit at Night...and other tales

The thesis defenses are over! My four fourth-year friends who opted to write a business thesis presented them yesterday and in order to celebrate, we had lunch at Skandalas, a great restaurant that my parents favored when they were here. I bought the wine as a congratulations gift and a good time was had by all. Then each of the friendlies went home for a nap, and I met up with Regis and Evaldas later for a 12th Floor excursion. It was a great day and they were feeling inclined to treat themselves to the fancier restaurants in town. While enjoying our food, view of Klaipeda and company of friends, we decided to go to the Spit for a short time - and we ended up catching the second to last ferry across, which meant that we had one hour or so to goof around, and then we had better get our booties back to the harbor, or we would be stranded for 6 hours until morning. There was only us and the two crew members on the ferry, and when we stepped off the boat, we headed to the path into woods, which would eventually take us to the beach. Picture this: the path through said woods starts a short walk from the parking lot and refreshment stands and it is the start of a 'no-streetlamp-zone' which means it is pitch black journey of fun. Being the token scaredy cat girl, I claimed the middle position and held both boys' hands as we began our trek into the black.

Evaldas was enjoying the fact that both Regis and I were not as comfortable with our adventure as he was (though I was the most frightened, and had I not had two strapping young lads to (hopefully) protect me, there's no way I'd have walked around like that) and so he took every opportunity to make a noise or exclaim 'what's that?!' and point into the woods as he could. I swear, I am the jumpiest kid I know - Regis will go ahead of me in my own stairwell, open and close the door so I think he's gone outside, when he's in fact hiding in the dark next to the door waiting to scare me. This is something I know he does and it's obvious when he does it, yet I scream everytime he jumps out at me. Anyway, back to the story - so we successfully walked through the woods and made it to the beach, where we gazed at stars and the boys ran around, apparently trying to scare me into thinking they had left me. There was a particularly bright orb of light near Mars, so we were wondering what it was...Venus maybe? After our beach walk, we headed back to the wooded path, far less intimidated than before and boarded the ferry and we all went home.

The next day was the LCC choir and bell choir concert, which was great! I really like the choir songs and almost wish I had joined it, though my vocal chords were not blessed at birth, I do enjoy singing. After that event, Evaldas, Regis and I were joined by a study abroad student named Rachel and we headed to Kretinga, a small town outside of Klaipeda. We saw the Winter Gardens attached to Kretinga's Museum, which houses a cafe inside the huge greenhouse - picture at right. It was beautiful! There is a small park near the property that had wood and stone sculptures that marked important dates in Lithuania's history - from battles to All Saint's Day, etc. There was also a huge sundial.

We tried to go to an inn-styled restaurant that I hadn't been to before for lunch, but a chicken breast meal would have taken an hour and a half..so we left and headed to HBH, a place that knows how to handle crowds :) The weather was very nice, so many people were sitting outside. We enjoyed our lunch and then headed to the botanical gardens of Palanga, which also has the Amber Museum on the property. I hadn't been to the area in all my time in LT, so it was cool to explore a new place. The statue at left is another interpretation of Eglė and the snake she married that turned out to be a prince - a Lithuanian fairytale. We did not go inside the Amber Museum, but the estate itself was impressive. On our way to the beach, we passed 'Birutė's Hill' - a place that houses a stone altar that a girl called Birutė looked after, but was whisked away by Duke Kestutis, who had fallen in love with her and took her to Trakai (the lake castle) and married her. In true Christian tradition, there is now a statue of the Virgin Mary next to the cave/altar - combining the sacredness of the place into a pagan rooted, now Christian shrine.

We saw the sun set on the beach and headed back to Klaipeda after having quite an adventure!