Are summer holidays abroad done ?
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We holiday regularly in Lithuania by the coast in a seaside town called Palanga.
I first went there about 12 years ago while based in Lithuania for work with my gf at the time (who is Lithuanian), and couldn't believe how nice the place was (and still is). I'd say probably 90% of the people you see there are Lithuanians coming out from the cities to spend weekends/summer holidays there, the other 10% would be Lithuanians coming home from abroad, and within that 10% you'd get the likes of me who have reason to go there (Lithuanian OH) etc.... It's quite refreshing to be one of very few native English speakers in the area (that I notice anyway), so much so that if you hear someone else speaking English it's really noticeable as its not very common... and in that, most of the English speakers would be the children of expats who live abroad in either the U.K. or Ireland... (and the guy below wearing the Irish jersey who I presume is a Paddy, and only noticed the jersey after getting home and looking back through the pictures...).
The main thoroughfare of the town is a long pedestrianised street which houses a sh1t load of restaurants and loads and loads of stuff for the kids to do. Between the areas where the houses/apartments and town are, the entire coastline has a strip of forest that you need to walk through to get to the beaches, but every hundred meters or so there are wooden walkways that go through the forest and lead to the beaches, and at almost every point where you access the beach, there are mobile freezers wheeled out daily selling ice cream and cold drinks... then on the beaches themselves, about every 500m or so there is usually a beach bar/restaurant... All in all the place has a very chilled out & relaxed vibe, and while it can get busy during the summer months, it's nothing like what you's see in the 'traditional summer destinations' for Irish tourists....
One of the big things here is bike and electric bike rental where you can travel pretty much the entire length of the coast through the forest on special walk/bikeways, and away from roads with cars etc...
A few years ago I jokingly suggested to herself we should buy a little holiday home here... and low and behold we did just that last year!! It should have been ready last summer but the war in Ukraine delayed a few things being completed, but we eventually got the keys in October and have been back a few times since, and are going next week for a few weeks for our 1st summer holiday in the new house (which is in Sventoji in the video above, which is about a 25 minute cycle/10 minute drive to Palanga).
And to think if I'd never have been sent to Lithuania to build a power station, I'd have never met my OH, and I'd have never have ever even known Palanga existed, or probably ever visited Lithuania (Which was about a million miles off what I expected before I first went there in Jan 2011).
I know as well that theres a resort about 60km up the coast in Latvia that gets similar feedback to Palanga, in that its very beautiful, and relatively still 'untouched' by western tourism.....
So I guess the point of my post is that there is an awful lot more out there than your typical Southern Europe sun destinations.... Have a look around, and maybe try and find that gem before it goes mainstream...
In Winter the place is also something to behold....
And in a few days I shall be sat on this deck drinking an ice cold local beer.... giving as few iotas as possible...
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