22-AUG--Lithuania

(kly-ped-a) (Lithuania, of course!)

It's here!  (I'm still getting these three States order right, but getting there!)

Lithuanian Flag

For some reason, we keep getting these views coming into port.

There was a greeting band...who did NOT smile!!

Lithuania is an ancient country, and the first known use of its name is from 1009 AD, with an ancient language dating back to about the 7^th Century.  By the 14^th Century, it was the largest country in all of Europe, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, comprising modern day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia.  But, today is a fairly small country with merely 25,000 sq miles and 2.8 million people.  We arrived early this morning, and got off the boat as soon as possible to meet our driver.  So, about 8:20, we were trying to figure out who he was, and hoping we got the right guy! 

Soviet missile base.

It was about an hour drive to the Zemaitija National Park, a very nice wooded preserve with a lake in the middle.  In the midst of this nice bucolic reserve (fittingly) was a Soviet Missile base.  It was deactivated around the 80’s, and now it sits as a Cold War Museum.  With a couple of audio guides, we walked around on our own exploring the whole place.  The facility is in fairly rough shape, since after the Soviets abandoned it, thieves ransacked it for any metal they could carry off, but some sizable items simply could not be extracted.  But even in crumbling shape, it was very interesting and thought provoking.  It took almost 2 hours to see it all.

Look closely at how they spell United States of America.

After the Cold War Museum, we checked out a little church in the middle of this forest, and then a lookout tower.

St. Stanislas (or something like that)

The whole building was wood.  The walls were mortise and tenon, the floors wood, the roof, even!

View from the tower.

Overlook tower.  Not really pretty.

Bill on the tower (and Theresa still climbing)!

A ship on the Dane river through Klaipeda.  (It's a restaurant, now)

It was over an hour to get back to the center of town because traffic was bad.  But we had the driver drop us off near the “old town” and walked around a bit.  We didn’t find much, but ran into a couple from the ship who had stopped for a local beer and some “fried bread” (a local treat).  Well, that sounded good, so we joined them.  At the first restaurant, it took a very long time to get a server to visit us.  We finally figured out what we wanted…even though the store had the local brew on all of its windows and even the menu…they were out.  So, we went to the next restaurant.  They had the beer, but no fried bread (and it was the highly recommended treat the couple was told to try).  So, we went to the third one.  After waiting quite some time, we bid our friends good bye and headed back to the ship.  Along the way, we found our path interrupted by water on all sides, and our ship on the other side of the water.  A brief shocked moment was relieved when we realized it was a rotating bridge, and would swing back our way in 11 minutes.  Well, there was beer in the little store next to the bridge (surprise surprise!) so it was a good placate for the wait and the missed one earlier!

The Dane River.

A "Hogwarts" bridge!!

Local beer!!  (Waiting at bridge)

Leaving town.

Back on the ship, we grabbed a bite at the pool grill, and headed for trivia.  Our team did embarrassingly bad!!!  But all of the other teams did embarrassingly worse!  So we won, but were more shocked than anything! 

The Moon and Mars. (I'm told it's red!)