Yesterday I struggled to figure out the layout of Palanga, and had some difficulty even with a phone showing me maps. Meredith was much better today. She managed to get around town by walking all of it. Twice. We put in a new (for us) record of walking 35,000 steps, or about 18 miles. Happily, it’s a pretty town.

Our hotel doesn’t offer breakfast, so we walked to a bakery recommended to us by our hostess, got some food, and went down to the beach to eat while blissfully looking at the…fog. Palanga had no rain today, but was socked in by fog for the entire day. It lightened some as the day went on, but never went fully away and came back thicker as the day cooled off from the balmy sixty-five we got to.

It was still very peaceful eating by the ocean. We could hear the water, and even see about two waves’ distance. Occasionally, people-shaped fog beings would materialize and then quickly fade away. Once we were done eating, Mer decided we should walk along the beach. She had a destination in mind, which we couldn’t see, but there is a very, very long pier that crossed our path, so we had a fogmark.

The pier loomed up in front of us, which was a clear indication to walk out on it. That was a strange experience. After just a few feet, the beach disappeared, and we were surrounded by water and fog. It just stressed how hopeless we would be if we were in a boat in the fog – the only indication of land we had was the knowledge the pier started somewhere.

Back on solid ground, we continued on south, but Mer wanted to take a scenic route, so we used the town’s seemingly endless boardwalk system that cuts through the forest that borders the beach. The townsfolks have somehow not only kept development from happening right on the beach, but they have also kept really tall (and so, I presume, really old) trees looming in a belt all along the shore. I have no idea how the trees escaped the Soviet lumber mills, but I’m grateful that such a beautiful place was preserved.

We popped back inland when we took a boardwalk in that direction, and we stayed on the pretty street we were on rather than go back out on a boardwalk. We followed the road to the corner of the Palanga Botanical Park. This large park (247 acres) is made up of more very mature trees, and has several gardens in the park. It’s a gorgeous place to walk. We went into the park, just strolling along, until we came to a set of stairs. I let out an inadvertent gasp of excitement, since I like to climb up things, and Mer rolled her eyes before indicating we were going that way.

We climbed up to the the top of the hill, which a sign later told us is actually the largest sand dune in the area. On the well-forested top was a small brick chapel. I could understand why – it was peaceful, and many people must have agreed, since the sign also said it had once been a pagan worship site.

We went back down the hill and deeper into the park until we came upon the back of a mansion. We were there to tour the second floor of the house, which contained the Palanga Amber Museum.

Amber is found in great quantities in the Baltics, if only from all the street vendors hawking it to tourists. But besides telling the story of how amber formed, how it was mined or gathered, and how it was worked, the museum has thousands of amber objects on display, many of which are rare. We got a tablet that was to be our audioguide in English and got set to learn all about amber. All we needed to do was hit the number on the tablet that matched the number on the display case. Easy.

Except this is a Lithuanian museum! That means the numbers tend to go in order, but by no means are required to. We shared many confused looks as 7 followed 5 and 6 was found across the room by itself. At least a couple of the 31 explained objects were either missing or not labeled. We still managed it, if with some grumbling.

Amber is fossilized tree sap. It is famous for being made into jewelry because of its warm, brownish, translucent color, and for having trapped bugs inside it as it oozed down the tree. This museum had many examples of both. In fact, they claimed to have one of the largest collection of inclusion amber (when it had a bug inside) in the world, which helps scientists with ancient specimens of bugs, and lets movies like Jurassic Park get made. The museum even has an inclusion of a lizard, of which there are only half a dozen in the world. It requires a dead animal to get coated by amber before the animal gets eaten or rots.

As a bonus, we got to tour the bottom floor of the mansion, which was build by a rich count around 1900. He and his wife sounded like decent people – the count paid for several public buildings, and the countess educated local peasant girls and paid for more schooling in Vilnius for the talented learners.

Anyway, the audioguide covered the house too. With no identifying numbers. And going in backwards order. Mostly. Except when it skipped around a couple of times. And the pictures on the tablet were old and so didn’t exactly match the actual rooms anymore. Otherwise, it was fine.

The house was grand and pretty, but the front and back gardens were where the real action was at. For some reason, roses love the climate here, and they haven been in bloom everywhere we have gone. Since we had come in by the back, we left by the even grander front, which led us along the count-made pond with cute bridges crossing it.

We made our way out of the park to go to the main tourist strip in this beach resort town. Along the way, we saw a sculpture park, so we made a note to come back to it. It was 3:00, and we needed a lunch of some kind. The fog hadn’t burned off, but breakfast had. We found the main tourist gauntlet, and it was every bit as gloriously tacky as the one in Gatlinburg or other tourist towns. We grabbed lunch at a Cuba-themed restaurant where we ate traditional food like French fries and a beet salad. At least Mer got to sit in a cool covered chair stuffed with pillows.

After lunch we went back to the sculpture park, where we saw about twenty sculptures, mostly figures and mostly from about 1960 to about 1985. It was a good reminder that artists in the Soviet Union could put out art that wasn’t just about glorifying the proletariat.

I was having some lingering stomach issues from the late morning, so we walked back to the hotel and got resupplied with water, as well as taking things easy for forty-five minutes. Then, back to town! Mer told me I could go back the the gardens to see more, so that was the plan.

But travel sometimes throws you a great curveball. As we were walking toward the strip, we passed next to a square where we heard music and noticed that the fountain in the square was changing with the music – it was a dancing fountain. Obviously, we had to stop. For forty-five minutes. The surreal kept getting cranked up as we heard “Pour Some Sugar on Me” as the background to jets of water in a small town in Lithuania. Add in a Lithuanian doppelganger of my mother (even Mer saw it in the woman), and for good measure have four thirty-ish moms dancing choreographed dance moves to the music while their kids raced around the square, and you have an unusual evening.

We still wanted to see the park, so we left the fountain and moms to their dancing. We were a little pressed for time since it was pushing 8:00 and the park closed at 9:00, but we made it to a formal garden area that had roses and statues. We passed by the mansion again, and made our way out of the park around 8:30. We went back to near the strip, where we had a light meal in a Ukrainian restaurant.

It was now almost 10:00, but Mer wasn’t done. We walked the short distance to the pier, where we sat on a bench to watch the sun (?) go down over the sea (?). We mostly saw more fog rolling in, but there was a very talented busker playing piano, so that was nice.

After a short mile-and-a-half walk back to our hotel, we had wrapped up a successful, if foot-weary, day. Tomorrow Mer is going to let me use something called a “car,”  which sounds exciting.