Trials and Tribulations, Followed by Hot Soup

Of course not everything on our trip has been easy. For example, it's often been very difficult to resist the urge to walk around shouting: How Lovely! or Isn't This Delightful! From the cafes along Helsinki's promenade, to the cobbled streets and spires of Tallinn's old town, to the traditional music and craft fair that sprang up outside the door of our hotel in Riga, the countries around the Baltic are apparently all cute enough to turn one into a happily blithering idiot.  But Lithuania's Curonian Spit took the prize for most quaintly charming spot we visited.  Until a few weeks ago, I'd never heard of the Spit, a sliver of land that parallels the coastline for about 60 miles, separating a long narrow lagoon from the Baltic Sea. Covered with pine forests and sand dunes, it's a paradise of B&Bs with thatched roofs and blue shutters, white sand beaches, and bike paths meandering through the woods.  We stayed in Nida, a small town a mile north of the border with Kaliningrad (I'll admit I'd forgotten that there's a little piece of Russia floating between Poland and Lithuania these days) where Thomas Mann used to come and write.  We got in around 8:30 and drank beers on the marina, watching streaks of high clouds turn pink against the bright blue sky. A lone jet skier flew across the glassy water of the lagoon. Our after dinner stroll was even more striking. A mist gathered on the water, completely obscuring the horizon and turning the world into a smooth gradient from deep blue water at our feet to the palest gray above. Standing at the end of a jetty felt like floating serenely in a void, broken only by a duck and her seven ducklings swimming by in formation. The next morning we flirted with the idea of using the second entry on our Russian visa to visit Kaliningrad, thinking that it might be a long time before we would again be sitting on the border with permission to enter. Visiting Kant's home and resting place would have been interesting, but thankfully we chose instead to rent bikes. We rode through a field of reeds, along the water, through tunnels of dripping woods, and along avenues of tall straight pines with wild red roses growing at their feet. Along the way we climbed a huge sand dune overlooking Russia, so at least we got to see it. At the beach we waded in chilly Baltic waters, snoozed and baked in the sun, and collected mottled stones in the surf. An afternoon downpour soaked us to the skin on the ride back, but a quick toweling off, change of clothes, and light lunch of broccoli soup and sun dried tomato quiche put everything right again.