Lilac Time

My apartment is filled with the smell of lilacs, which are peaking this week in Klaipeda, and with the smell of dirty clothes from traveling, sauna-ing and biking expeditions. My friend Dwilah arrived in Europe on May 8th, and my friend Nicole and I met her in Krakow, Poland for a week-long mountain/city vacation. It was fantastic and low-key. Pictures are up on Flckr, but the following two illustrate the lovely balance of the trip:

Exhibit A: Jen's natural habitat, part 1, Massolit Bookshop in Krakow




















Exhibit B: Jen's Natural Habitat, part 2, Morskie Oko, Tatra National Park




















Now that we're back in Klaipeda, I am dragging Dwilah along on all the Lithuanian activities that I myself have not had a chance to do yet, which have thus far included only my second visit to the beach sauna (100 degrees Celcius! Labai Karstas!), tomorrow's adventure to the Hill of Crosses (a major Lithuanian site I have yet to pilgrimage to), to the top of the tall church in Riga on this coming Thursday (I SWEAR I will get to the top of that thing yet, it's always closed when I'm there!), and this past Saturday, we bicycled from Klaipeda to Nida, an 82-kilometer trip! I have been wanting to ride the whole trail system on the Spit (nearby strip of land off the coast of Lithuania) since reading about it last year. We started calling the trip the 1st Triathalon of the "Lithuanian Chapter of the International Contingent of the North American Rocky Mountain Women's Outdoor Adventure Association" (aka, the LCICNARMWOAA, made up of myself, Dwilah and Jerilyn). We had a FABULOUS time, setting off at 9 am and returning at 10:30 p.m. We stopped and climbed dunes, saw my favorite spot in Juodkrante (the Witches Hill), ate Lithuanian cold beet soup in Nida, looked at amber, long-jumped in the sand, saw a vast variety of Lithuanian mullets, swam in the Baltic, ate chocolate cake at the Villa Flora hotel (also a favorite), watched the sun go down and the stars come out over the Baltic, smelled the pines, and WORE ourselves OUT. It was lovely.