SAS once had a points deal to some rather...um...obscure...destinations. one of those was palanga. it sounded a bit like an exotic island somewhere warm, but it turns out it's on the baltic coast of lithuania.
it also was a thoroughly charming place. sadly, i went with a very low battery in my camera (pre-DSLR days) and only got a few photos at
the castle - which was wonderfully restored and which we had very nearly to ourselves. and where oddly enough, i just discovered some of these very photos on their website (crediting me, thankfully).
the town of klaipeda was full of charming little galleries and restaurants where you could eat nice meals for a song. we came home with art and ceramics and a great woven linen scarf that i still wear frequently.
we went to a charming little blacksmith museum and saw an outdoor market (where people were selling little piles of fresh forest mushrooms).
we visited an aquarium with a reasonably good dolphin show (camera had died by then). i remember a baby dolphin that you could observe through an underground tank with windows and that it seemed really taken with sabin. she thought that was pretty cool.
on the way home in one of those Dash-400 planes which SAS had so much trouble with, i recall the crew on the phone with copenhagen, getting tech support to get the plane up and running. i think we may have even had to stay an extra night.
by warming up the battery, i squeezed one last picture out of the camera before it completely died. it was of sabin when we rode in a horse-drawn carriage to catch the little ferry back from the island where the castle and the aquarium were. she was so cute and little.
it was an undiscovered, unspoiled place and i don't really know why we haven't been back.
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these photos were taken in klaipeda, lithuania in september 2006
