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With its empty beaches, mild climate and unbelievably low prices, Lithuania's Curonian Spit made a perfect family holiday destination, – so begins an article published on guardian.co.uk and  in The Observer on Sunday, 20 September 2009. 

Ms. Viv Groskop, the journalist, visited Lithuania with her family, and shares her personal experience of how a family of four can holiday anywhere outside of the UK for an affordable sum instead of a holiday in expensive countries such as Spain, France or Greece.  She says that one couldn't find anything for less than EUR 3269 in France, Spain and Greece.

“I don't mind investing in a good time, but this is ridiculous. I reluctantly resigned myself to that idiotic concept, the "staycation" (holidaying at home – also known as not going on holiday at all). And then I heard about Lithuania,” – tells Ms. Groskop.

According to her, getting to Lithuania is not dirt cheap, but once you're there, it's the 70s: boutique hotels cost from EUR 65 a night, and holiday apartments from EUR 44. It would be even cheaper if Lithuania's national carrier had not gone bankrupt earlier this year, which meant the end of direct flights between the UK and the Baltic coast, and that’s why return flights cost around EUR 272.

Lithuania is a small, fascinating Baltic State (population of 3 million), admitted to the EU in 2004, defiantly resurgent but still struggling to cast off its Soviet past. Its big selling point is the coastline. For decades German and Soviet tourists flocked to the Curonian Spit, a Unesco World Heritage Site that stretches 99 km along the coast of Lithuania and Russia. On one side is the Curonian Lagoon; on the other is the Baltic Sea. At its narrowest point, it's only 400 m wide. At its widest, near Nida – the Spit's unofficial capital and the closest it has to a resort – it's almost 4 km from the lagoon to sea. It feels like a curious no-man's-land, an hour's drive and a short ferry ride from the port of Klaipeda. Once you arrive there, you feel cut off from the world.

The hostess at Nida’s guest house told that mainly Germans and Russians were arriving, but now more Brits seem to be coming. “It was perfect, with a pine-scented breeze from the forest wafting through the windows. Nida is the sort of place where you feel healthier just for breathing in the air,” – says Ms. Groskop.

The British family made daily treks to the beaches, which are stunning: miles of white sand, unspoilt and virtually empty. It was perfect for the children, who set to building sandcastles and playing in the dunes.

“In one way this was an appalling indictment of the natural beauty of the Curonian Spit. But in a more important way it was a high praise. In Lithuania we had a beach holiday – packed with illicit treats – and it was just like a beach holiday anywhere else. Only cheaper, “– ends the article the British journalist Viv Groskop.