Zelenogradsk was called Cranz when East Prussia was German, and it was one of the Baltic coast's best-known seaside resorts, a place where the people of Konigsberg came by train for the sea air and the long sand beach. Today it is a small Russian town of about fifteen thousand people on the Kaliningrad exclave, wedged between Lithuania and Poland, with a promenade, a pier and a scattering of old villas whose carved wooden balconies survive from the earlier era. Cats are the town's mascot, and statues of them appear in squares, on walls and on lamp posts.
It is also the gateway to the Curonian Spit, a narrow sandy peninsula nearly a hundred kilometres long that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. Created by waves and wind over thousands of years, the spit has dunes up to sixty metres high, forests of pine and birch that were replanted to stop the sand from burying villages, and a shore of pale sand with amber washed up after storms. UNESCO recognised it in 2000 as a shared Russian and Lithuanian site. The road south from Zelenogradsk runs along it between the sea and the lagoon.
Amber is a major theme in the region. The world's largest deposit lies along the coast to the west, at Yantarny, and for centuries it was gathered, traded and worked into jewellery, and the amber road of antiquity led from here to the Mediterranean. Small shops in Zelenogradsk sell it, and locals will tell you how to tell real from fake by a drop of salt water or a gentle heat. It is worth buying a small piece as a souvenir.
Zelenogradsk has about fifteen thousand people, and so has fuel stations and shops, and it is the last reliable place to fill up before the spit. The roads here are flat and straight, running through pine woods, and the surface is generally good, with speed cameras and police checks that are common. Traffic is heavy on summer weekends. The Baltic is cold, the beach wide and windy, and the weather changes quickly, with rain and fog rolling in from the sea. Bring a windproof layer. Travel to this region requires attention to current visa and entry rules, so check them well before you go.