Juodkrantė is a former fishing village. These days I couldn’t spot any traces of the past. What I saw was a nice, quiet little place. I read it is home to 720 people only. I liked it, especially the waterfront. They have built a promenade and green areas that run along the entire shoreline, and are dotted with sculptures, which I now know are of the 31 stone and metal pieces belonging to a collection named “Land and Water”. I should have known something was up when I laid eyes on them 🙂 I spotted a handful only, but had I known, I would have gone looking. I did visit the wooden folk art sculpture park, Hill of Witches, though. I must say I liked this place better than Nida. If you don’t want to, or have time to, travel to the southern part of the Curonian Spit, Juodkrante might be satisfactory. They have the charming houses associated with the region, just not as many. They have the beaches, on the other side of the spit (1.5 km away). Can’t attest to them being as nice as in Nida, as I didn’t go, but one could assume they are about the same? And I experienced as much of the birdlife (heron and cormorant) here as in Nida, which wasn’t plenty. What I spotted in the sky, I don’t know 🙂 Juodkrante is definitely small, but probably more bustling in the summer, and when it’s raining cats and dogs.
Reaching Juodkrante means travelling by ferry and bus from Klaipeda.
Neringa municipality website (in Lithuanian only, for now): visitneringa.com
