Kalpeida and Palanga

 

Today we visited Klaipeda and Palanga, Lithuania. Our first time in Lithuania. 

 

We drove through the city of Klaipeda looking at a variety of buildings from Soviet style apartment blocks to old style single family homes and stuff in between. The Klaipeda area has belonged to Germany, France, the Soviet Union and of course Lithuania. According to our guide, it’s heart is German and Catholic and no matter what the Soviet Union tried to do, the people stayed the same. 

 

 

We visited yet another amber museum, but this one was so much better than the one we saw in Kaliningrad as we had a guide who interpreted the language as well as the gem. She said Lithuanian is more closely related to Sanskrit than any other language. Did I tell you that the language was hard to decipher. One more place where I was illiterate.

 

 

We learned that Jurassic Park is impossible. The largest chunk of anything found in amber is part of a lizard...and only 5 chunks of amber ever found have a lizard in them. But more important, amber is only 50 million years old, and dinosaurs are far older. Most inclusions in amber are insects or insect parts, including over 125 species of mosquito. Only 0.04% of inclusions are plant matter. No one knows why this is the case. Our guide also said the only thing that makes amber valuable are the diamonds the amber is set in! 

 

 

 

I'm a good watcher. The children were beautiful and well behaved. The streets were tidy. There was no graffiti. We liked our short visit to Lithuania. Tomorrow we stop in Latvia.