If you’ve ever been to the outer banks of North Carolina then you have a good idea of the ecological wonder that is a sandspit peninsula. Personally, I have always loved the outer banks since I was 18 and had taken my very first parent-less vacation there. The weather is a perfect compromise between warm and refreshing, the water is always cool and inviting on a hot summer afternoon, and there is always delicious and fresh seafood to be found. Take that, add some German tourists and Lithuanian culture then move it onto the Baltic coast – now you have Nida.
I compare it to the Hamptons because I get the sense this is the posh place where Lithuanians with expendable income go during the 15 minutes of beach weather this country has. In the parking lots I see lots of BMWs, Audis, Range Rovers and I’ve even seen a few Bugaboo strollers. The people vacationing here are young, well-dressed Eastern European yuppie parents, older German tourists and of course – writers and artists. This is not a party town, it is a quiet resort town not easily accessible to the city folks. From Vilnius, it is a 3 – 4 hour drive to the port town of Klaipeda, where you catch one of two ferries to the outer banks. One ferry leaves you a 30 minute drive from Nida, from the other it is about an hour…without traffic. For a car it costs about 40 litas (around 18 USD), and then you have to pay a 20 lit toll to enter the residential part of the island.
Once you reach the outskirts of town you see quaint, well-kept summer homes progressively increasing in size until you reach the center of town. While you won’t see any Double Coffees or an Apple store, you will find a Cili Pica right in the center of town. The Maxima is reasonably overpriced as are the menus of 80% of the restaurants but remember – it’s still in litas! I hear most accommodations are equally overpriced but we stayed at the writers’ union hotel, which is an original Soviet complex (unrenovated and molded over with frayed, grey history and spider webs) turned hipster hideout. The rooms are ghastly but they are cheap (if you’re in the writers’ union) and there is a great restaurant on the roof. Don’t stay here if your life depends on it but please try the restoranas! It is owned by the same people who own In Vino in Vilnius and maintains a standard of great wines and delicious food. Plus it is has a sketchy wooden footbridge between rooftops, and a marvelous collection of film posters and quotes by familiar icons like Jean Luc Goddard in unfamiliar Lithuanian. It’s a fun place.
One of the best things to do here, besides go to the beach, is hike the sand dunes. There are several serene trails you can take to the sundial, which is a central vantage point and gorgeous view of the dunes, the ocean, the bay and the ominous border of Kaliningrad. There is always great controversy sparked by fierce environmentalists about actually walking ON these dunes but people do it anyway. And they generally respect the natural environment, even though I did see one empty beer can and one empty bottle of champagne. Our hike took about 3 hours in total and we ended up on a beach on the bay side. Even though the weather was hot for local standards it was still cool enough not to pour sweat at any point in our hike. But even if we had there would be no release – the bay water was freezing. I recommend checking these dunes out, just remember it’s a lot easier going down than it is to climb up, and don’t litter!
If you’ve never been to a Northern European beach I think you should check it out once before you die. You will never find such gleeful sun worship in any of your travels. I am informed that it is a Scandinavian practice to sunbathe in the buff for health reasons. Your bathing suit is nothing but an obstacle for the sun’s nutritious rays and will hinder you from receiving all the vitamin A and D we need to get from it. This far north they don’t get to lay out much, so while it seems extreme to us, maybe they have a point about going all out with their balls out when weather permits. The nude beaches are right next to the non-nude beaches, and when I say ‘next to’ I mean we can all shake hands. Everyone gets naked from grandma to lil’ babies, and some of them even go in the unforgiveably cold Baltic.
At the beach there is a small kavine where you can get lunch and beers and there is a stand where you can get freshly picked berries to munch on while lounging in the sand. They’ve even built a lovely wooden playground for the kiddies. People throw down their towels at random so you will find people lounging all along the pathway leading to the beach. I don’t understand this because there is always plenty of room on the shore. Maybe they don’t realize there is more beach beyond the moorings? Oh well, more beach for me!
While Nida is very touristy and exclusive, it must be said that it was originally a fishing village. All of the villages on this peninsula are fishing towns. There are other areas you can visit like Juodkrante and Perevelka, the former being the site of a locally famous sculpture park and has several cute kavines and souvenir shops. Follow signs for Zuvis for a revered local treat. It is local fish found in the area in great abundance, smoked for hours on cedar wood. The fisherman’s wife will hand you a full fish in a small plastic bag for something like 10 litas. It is delicious and fresh and messy to eat. You must try one if you visit.
