Nida sits half-way down the Curonian Spit, a 98 kilometre-long, Unesco-protected slither of banana-shaped sand stretching from Kaliningrad’s Sambian Peninsula in the south all the way to, but not quite touching, Klaipėda. Separating the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea, the Curonian Spit covers an area of 180 square kilometres and is home to some of the highest drifting sand dunes in Europe, which at times can reach up to 60m. The Lithuanian part of the spit covers about half its total length and includes the settlements of Alksnynė, Smiltynė, Juodkrantė, Nida, Pervalka and Preila, of which the latter four make up the municipality of Neringa, the smallest municipality in Lithuania and the only one named after a figure from ancient mythology and not an actual town. Both Nida and Juodkrantė lie inside the Curonian Spit National Park, set up in 1991 to protect the flora and fauna of the region. About a quarter of the park is forested, there are some 960 plant species, just under 40 mammals including elk, wild boar, otters and badgers, 200 kinds of bird, eight amphibians, over 460 types of butterfly and countless bugs and beetles. Among the 40 or so types of fish living on either side of the spit are bream, eel, cod, Baltic herring and plaice. Below are just a few things to see and do outside Nida itself.