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.

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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).

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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.

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we went to a charming little blacksmith museum and saw an outdoor market (where people were selling little piles of fresh forest mushrooms).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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