Description
The Visitor Centre is the gateway to Gražutė Regional Park and the best place to plan and start your journey through the park. The centre provides professional, comprehensive information about the park's natural and cultural heritage sites, landscape and biodiversity. We will give you detailed information free of charge about museums, crafts centres, nature trails, water and cycling routes and campsites, as well as useful information about rural tourism homesteads, places to eat and various active leisure opportunities in Gražutė Regional Park. At the centre you can use Wi-Fi and buy a park visitor ticket and souvenirs. In addition to the nature exhibition presenting the diversity of Gražutė Regional Park, the Visitor Centre also houses the Salakas Region Ethnographic Exhibition. It introduces the way of life of the people of Salakas in the late 19th and 20th centuries, their households and the utensils they used, the character of the townspeople, the finest local festivals, old crafts and trades, local notables and national minorities. Old photographs, maps and restored exhibits introduce the history of the Salakas region. In the exhibition you can also browse and read a collection of 40 manuscripts – material collected very thoroughly and carefully by teacher Vida Žilinskienė about the region's tales and legends, vanished villages, people, crafts, festivals and games, volunteers, cultural heritage and the development of the town. Bibliophiles can explore a collection of old books, consisting mainly of textbooks used in Lithuanian schools in the early 20th century and methodological publications for teachers. The theological section consists of prayer books, hymnals and theology textbooks used at the end of the 19th century. For more than 10 years, the Gražutė Regional Park Visitor Centre has also been home to V. Žilinskienė's “Sea Museum”, perhaps the sea museum furthest from any ocean. The Sea Museum is a unique collection of sea creatures, colourful corals, shells, souvenirs and fossils gathered over more than 50 years. According to the collector, teacher Vida Žilinskienė, the number of exhibits has already exceeded 4,000, and the collection keeps growing. Visitors will be amazed by a huge lobster, a sea urchin from the Sea of Japan, a dried small shark, a predatory piranha and shells once used as money in the Indonesian islands, while the good Kaukutis will grant your kind wishes. In the museum you will not only hear breathtaking stories about dangerous sea voyages, poisonous shells and healing cuttlefish powder, but also see a multitude of unusual and never-before-seen inhabitants of the deep. And if you really miss the sea, you will surely hear it murmuring in the shells. Every 1000th visitor wins a special prize from V. Žilinskienė. What prize? Come and see – perhaps this time luck will smile on you! 1. Guided presentation of the Visitor Centre exhibitions and the “Sea Museum”: 1.1. in Lithuanian, per person, 1 h – €3.00 1.2. in English, per person, 1 h – €4.00 1.3. self-guided visit, per person – €1.00 2. Organising and leading hiking and cycling trips (with a guide and the park directorate's equipment): 2.1. in Lithuanian, per person, 1 hour – €3.00 2.2. in English, per person, 1 day – €16.00 With a guide only: 2.3. in Lithuanian, per person, 1 hour – €2.00 2.4. in Lithuanian, per person, 1 day – €13.00 3. Educational programmes: 3.1. in Lithuanian, 1 hour – €2.00 3.2. in English, 1 hour – €3.00 A 50 percent discount applies to people with disabilities, pensioners, students and schoolchildren; a 100 percent discount applies to pre-school children; to a teacher accompanying a group of 10–15 pupils; to 2 teachers accompanying a group of 15 or more pupils; and to a guide accompanying a group of pupils or adults of more than 10 people. To book a group excursion, call +370 670 97 265. At the Gražutė Regional Park Visitor Centre: you can use Wi-Fi and buy a park visitor ticket, souvenirs and maps.
