The Parnidis dune
Sea left, lagoon right, from fifty metres.
Veljo Runnel — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Alexander Grebenkov — CC BY 3.0 · Valdis Pilskalns — CC BY 3.0 · Alexander Grebenkov — CC BY 3.0
A full day at minimum from Klaipėda (ferry, bus to Nida, the dune, and back); better is two nights with a bicycle to ride the spit at leisure — among northern Europe's finest cycle routes.
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A sand ribbon four hundred metres wide and ninety-eight kilometres long dividing a sea from a lagoon: the Curonian Spit is a UNESCO site shared by Lithuania and Russia, a moving dune that people fixed with forest after it nearly swallowed itself — its inhabitants felled its trees in the eighteenth century, the sand began to move and buried fourteen entire villages, and a replanting project that ran for two centuries saved it. Nida is its loveliest village: blue and red timber houses under thatch with carved weathervanes, and the summer house of the German writer Thomas Mann (1930-1932), now a museum. Above it the Parnidis dune rises fifty metres, climbed by a wooden stair to a view that splits the world in half: blue sea to the left, silver lagoon to the right, and sand between. Along the spit run excellent cycle paths (fifty paved kilometres), pine forests, the Hill of Witches with its wooden carvings, and a bird-ringing station. Reached by ferry from Klaipėda in five minutes, then bus or bicycle.
Sea left, lagoon right, from fifty metres.
Coloured timber houses under thatch.
The German writer's summer home, now a museum.
Neringa, Lithuania