Wednesday – July 19
We slept late (well, later than we usually slept) and made our way down to the included breakfast buffet, which was only available from 9-11am. It was typical fare, except they had bacon, which Monki has recently discovered, so she was rather excited to pile it high on her plate. They also had smoked bacon, which I was sure was raw, but Rasa insisted it wasn’t. It still took me two days to try it.
The self-service coffee machine, though, goes on the “strikes against” list. It had to be slowest machine I’ve ever encountered and after I got a cup for Rasa, but before I was able to get one for myself, the hopper needed to be emptied and the woman working there wasn’t able to reassemble the thing, so on Wednesday, no coffee for me.
I told the front desk about the door and they sent someone up to take a look at it – but that’s all they did. They looked at it and went away. By this point, it was time to get the day started. It was still too cold to go and hang out the beach so Rasa decided we should rent one of those pedal car contraptions and buzz around town.
Okay, “buzz” may not have been the right word. The one we got was a two seater with room for Monki to sit up front, like a grocery store shopping cart in reverse. We headed off, with me in the driver seat, although the right-hand seat also had a steering wheel, it just wasn’t attached to anything – like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. And the person in that seat had just as much control as on that ride. Which is why, less than two minutes into our journey, I pulled over and let Rasa have to controller seat. Having a wheel but no control made her very uncomfortable, so from that point on, she determined our direction.
We didn’t really go much of anywhere, but boy did we have fun. I’d figure we maybe went two kilometers south then turned around and headed back (we only rented the thing for an hour, which was just fine. There was one thing we wanted to see, the local lighthouse, which was a bit of a fixture. We kept looking for it on the GPS but where it said the thing was supposed to be, we saw no evidence. At one point, we wondered if the big church, which had the highest windowed observation tower we could see, had replaced it, but no, that didn’t seem to be the case. It was just no where we could find it. In the end, we decided to let it go and stop looking.
Heading back into town, we drove the thing up to the Monkey Bridge. On the way, we passed a souvenir stand (of which there were plenty) with a proudly displayed T-shirt reading “Fuck you, I drive a BMW.” Rasa and I talked about it and she said she might want one that said “Opel” if they had one, so on the way back, we stopped and I got out to check if they did. They did, but it was a custom job, made to order, so we had to think about it and in the end, didn’t end up getting one. But it did strike up a different conversation. Monki is learning to read (in two languages, I’ll have you know) and so she’s reading everything which comes into her line of sight.
When I got back to the pedal car, she told me that she had said the grown-up word because she was reading it. Now, we’ve had several discussions about “grown-up” words (the big one, the F word, coming from her singing the song “I’m Good (Blue)” by David Guetta and Bebe Rexhall. It features the line:
“I’m good, yeah, I’m feelin’ alright
Baby, I’ma have the best fuckin’ night of my life.”
She knows she can say it when she’s singing and with us, but it’s not something to be said in public or school or whatever.). So in this case, we had to have a conversation about what the word actually means (nothing) and that it’s okay if she was reading it, because that’s what it said on the shirt, but we again reiterated that it wasn’t a kid word for school. This does tell you, though, that the family friendly nature of the resort town may not be all that.
When we finally returned our pedal car, I asked Rasa how it was.
“It was fun,” she exclaimed. “We almost survived!”
Almost. It was close, sure, but in the end, we just didn’t pull through. We laughed about that the rest of the trip.
It was still early, so we had an ice cream and walked down to the beach to see The Fisherman’s Daughters sculpture, which overlooks the former port of Šventoji, our final destination. This used to be a major port, until some international incidents with Latvia caused some disruptions, but evidently it’s getting dredged to make it a viable commercial area once again. As it stands, it’s rather unique. While we were there, it looked like a music video was being filmed and I took some cool pictures.
Monki, meanwhile, put her feet into the water and played in the sand, but the weather was still too rough, with storm clouds threatening, for actual surf play.
After hanging out for a bit, our legs were tired so we took the little electric train back to town then made our way to the hotel for lunch and a bit of a rest. While having a lie-down, Rasa was looking for things to do with the afternoon and showed me a marker indicating the Latvian border, which was only a few km from where we were, and easily walkable.
We decided to spend the afternoon walking to Latvia!
This probably does not make the historical list of bad decisions, but it’s a definite runner-up. Not that the idea is bad, but walking 5 or so kilometers through sand drifts and forest, with the constant refrains of “my legs are tired” coming from the newly 7-year-old, and you have the beginning of what we were dealing with. Also, it was cold… but only when we weren’t in the sun. When we were in the sun, it was quite warm, bordering on hot. So literally we went from freezing to boiling as we passed from tree shadow to sun streak. The “path” we traversed, while ostensibly on the map, led us past private roads and, presumably, illegal buildings. At one point, we passed a truck which had gotten stuck in the meter high sand drifts. I offered to help push, but the two older couples who had been in the truck just laughed and explained a rescue vehicle was on the way. We moved on.
And then, we almost missed the border, since the markers were inland a little bit and by that point, at the very end of the route, we had shifted to the beach. In the end, though, we did it! We found the border marking and dutifully took pictures (what else were we going to do?) and then decided it was time to head back. We made the much more sane decision to do the entire southward trek along the beach with the water lapping at our heels. I still had to heave the little one to my shoulders fairly often, as I did on the way up, but at least the relatively flat and hard packed sand was easier on my feet.
Back in town, we had all earned a good dinner, but unfortunately, none of the restaurants were really all that kid friendly. None of them had kid menus and the prices were a bit outrageous. Sure, were it just Rasa and I, we would have had a fine time, but it wasn’t, so we ended up back at Cili Pizza.
After dinner, Monki and I headed off in search of cotton candy while Rasa hit up the local grocery store for ice cream desserts and we were all back in the room and getting ready for bed relatively early.
This is when we discovered what we hoped would be the last issue with the hotel (it wasn’t, but we’ll get to that) in that the water was heated by a small boiler. The upshot was that all three of us couldn’t take a hot shower after our long walk without a considerable refill period. So Monki and Rasa too their showers, but the boiler hadn’t refilled with hot water by the time I fell asleep, so I was left to take my shower in the morning.
Thursday July 20
Another late morning with breakfast at the hotel. Still not beach weather so we decided we’d head south to Palanga and check out the race cars. The race itself wasn’t for a few days, but the cars were all lined up on the street so we parked a few block away and joined the huge crowd to check out the machines. Rasa and Monki loved it. And honestly, it was really cool. Made me wonder what an F1 weekend would be like outside of the race. Here, we got to see the cars, got some pictures and then had a big surprise, when Rasa noticed the mother of one of Monki’s friends hanging out by a car and wearing the team jersey. Then, we saw Monki’s friend sitting in the driver’s seat! Turns out her dad was the driver and owner of the team! How neat!
There was a timed sprint race we got to see as well, and The friend’s dad came in second! It was exciting to be right there as the cars gunned their engines and took off. You could feel the sound rattle your bones. After the sprint though, the festivities were moving to the actual track area where we didn’t have tickets so our race time was over. Instead, we walked down Basanavičius street towards the pier. It was still cold and Windy so Rasa waited on the beach side while Monki and I headed out over the water.
The day before, Monki had discovered she could “control the water” by pointing her hand at it and commanding it to stop. So as we walked along the pier, she commanded the water. Gotta love the imagination of a 7-year-old.
As we headed back towards the car, we passed a guy with a blue Macaw offering pictures. The day before, we had prevented Monki from spending her money buying a temporary tattoo, explaining that it wasn’t something worth spending money on since we had a bunch of them at home. It was better to spend money on things which would create memories or lasting impressions. Getting your picture taken with a large parrot seemed to fit the bill. We even offered to cover the cost of it. Monki was thrilled when Teta Beta (the bird) was placed on her hand and posed with her for the picture.
By then, it really was time to head back to Šventoji and see if we could, maybe, sneak in some beach time. We had lunch and grabbed our beach gear and headed out.
The weather was still windy and there were red flags warning of dangerous surf, but we found a spot in the dunes, not from the water but slightly protected from the wind and set up our blanket. Monki started digging and then we noticed the cloud.
It was obviously raining out over the water, but we didn’t know how far away it was or if it would hit us. At times it looked like it would go a little further south but then it started drizzling and we packed up in a hurry. As the rain started coming down in buckets, we ran for safety to a nearby beach bar. We tried to order a couple of coffees in order to not just be in there for the dryness, but their coffee machine was broken. We ended up with some ice cream and a great view of the ten-minute storm.
When it passed, though, it was done, and we were able to salvage our beach time, including an even better location to lay out our stuff. And with no going into the surf, Monki was playing in the sand nearby and Rasa and I were able to rest and read and not worry. Sure, we each made trips to fill up the bucket with water, but overall, it was a beautiful way to end the day. And we eventually did see the lighthouse. We just hadn’t been able to see it the day before because we had been too close and literally couldn’t see it through the trees. But it was there alright!
We headed back to the hotel to clean up a little before going for dinner and opened the door to discover our room had been skipped by the cleaning crew. Here’s the final thing. I went down to the desk to ask about what had happened and was told that since we didn’t put out the door hanger asking for the room to be cleaned, it wasn’t cleaned. We had been told specifically when we checked in we didn’t need to do this and in fact, I’ve never heard of anywhere where you had to specifically ask for the room to be cleaned. Ask for it not to be cleaned, sure, but this was always an opt-out not an opt-in.
The woman at the desk was able to make a call (it was after 6pm and evidently, the cleaning crew only works 3-6) and get some people up to clean it. While they were in the room, we stepped out onto the terrace. Evidently, they finished and left because we eventually looked back in to find the room tidies and the people gone. They never told us they were going, even though they knew we were outside waiting.
Ah well.
And that’s when the rain started. Remember, I mentioned that our door opened to the outside with no overhang, so we were at the mercy of the weather. Here is where that pays off. It started coming down in sheets so we weren’t going anywhere. On the plus side, though, it left us with a beautiful rainbow.
When the rain did stop, we headed to a new place next door to the Cili Pizza we’d been frequenting called ERROR’as grill pub. We’d tried to go there for lunch but then it was called Trys šakutės and was a cafeteria style place. But in the evening, as a grill pub, it was yummy and Monki tried all sorts of new stuff, including a cherry coke!
After dinner, rather than get dessert there, we stopped for a heart shaped waffle, dipped in chocolate and covered in sprinkles which we took back to the room. It was our last night in Šventoji and we’d certainly wrung a lot of it.
Friday July 21
Friday morning we enjoyed one last breakfast buffet and then packed up. Instead of going home, though, we were headed to Mažeikiai to have a quick visit with Rasa’s mom and one of her sisters. We did leave for home on Saturday, driving through some severe rain storms, but we made it back and were in our own beds on Saturday night.
And even though it was a bit cold while we were on the coast, turns out our timing was okay, since the following week there was a huge sewage spill on the Latvian side and the beaches were all closed anyway. We take the good where we can find it, right?
Getting the Hang of Thursdays 