Saturday trip to the Lithuanian town, Radailiai, where, today, the illuminated dinosaur festival opening is taking place at Dino Park, and this light show can be enjoyed at the park until the end of February.
From Dobele to Radailiai, it's exactly 200km, and the journey took us 2.5 hours. To avoid driving straight home after the show, we booked a family room at Radailių Dvaro Spa. The room has two rooms and a large terrace, which faces directly towards Dino Park, and you can see the dinosaurs across a small pond. Breakfast is at the nearby restaurant, and the spa complex is just 2 steps away, consisting of a pool, jacuzzi, and two saunas. While relaxing in the spa area, you can look out through the large panoramic windows at the dinosaurs and a small children's playground where our youngsters found a trampoline and competed in various tricks.
Having arrived at the hotel and settled into our room, we set up all the cameras with which we will film the park tonight. After all, we want to show you this festival opening as well, and you'll be able to see it very soon on the Gold Barbell YouTube channel.
Since it's around 0 degrees outside, we need to dress warmly. I have my snowboarding pants, proper snow boots to keep my feet warm, a long winter jacket, a good winter hat, and gloves. Once we are all warmly dressed, we head out of the room, and across the pond, we can already see various light installations. It's a one-minute walk to the Dino Park entrance. The park opens at 4:30 PM, but we arrive at 4:10 PM. There aren't many people, about 20 of us at most. After 5 minutes, people start coming in droves, and after 15 minutes, there's a long queue at the entrance. To avoid standing in the long line and getting cold, we decide to go back to our room and warm up a bit. After having some tea, we head back, and the queue is even longer than before. However, since we have an invitation to this Dino Park, which we received at the hotel upon check-in, we are lucky and manage to bypass everyone and get in without standing in the long queue.
Once inside, we are surprised by the darkness everywhere, but on the right side, we see some lights and many people. We also head in that direction and, it turns out, there's a fire show happening there. People juggle with fire torches in their hands, and to the rhythm of music, it looks exciting, especially the concluding performance where rockets shoot into the sky with firecrackers.
After this show, there's a short speech, lights come on everywhere, and the Dinosaur Light Festival is declared open.
Our youngsters run in all directions, starting with the labyrinth house, queuing for carousels, disappearing at some point, then reappearing, overflowing with emotions, sharing what they saw and experienced, then disappearing again. Meanwhile, Evita Eidina and I calmly take some pictures by the lights, buy some sweets at the market, and look for the youngsters to go deeper into the park.
There are so many lights everywhere, all the dinosaurs are illuminated, the attractions are illuminated, we enter a fairytale forest with many butterflies and chairs tied to trees above the ground, many light balls, shiny jellyfish in the trees, and various other light sources. Approaching the pond, a magical view of the restaurant on the opposite bank unfolds, as it's perfectly reflected in the calm water.
We go down to the pond, and there's a small house with a laser shooting gallery for children. You can shoot with both a pistol and an automatic rifle, and you have to hit small red dots on the wall. Whoever hits all the targets fastest wins. The children aren't ready to beat me yet, so we can safely move on.
From a distance, we see a big hill where it might be possible to slide down on an inflatable tube. We head in that direction, and indeed, there's a tubing slide here. We all enjoy it, and it brings joy to both adults and children.
Having caught our dose of adrenaline and joy, we head back to the beginning, the park entrance, where a meeting with Santa Claus is scheduled!
We see families with children coming out of a building, and all the children have sweets in their mouths, so Santa Claus is there, handing out sweets. We also go into this building, and in addition to the long queue waiting their turn with Santa, you can also buy something to eat and a warm drink. The interior of the building is decorated in a Christmas theme, and they have done it very beautifully. Various decorations, many gifts, a Christmas tree, many toys, and many snakes, as 2025 will be the Year of the Snake.
After queuing for Santa Claus, Rodrigo and Aleksis get their sweets and are ready to ride the cars that are just around the corner. Closer to eight in the evening, there are fewer people in the park, and the queues for various attractions are shorter or non-existent. The youngsters ride the cars, then the carousel again, and finally they are hungry, so we head to the nearby restaurant for dinner.
Our 3 hours at the park flew by unnoticed, and the children were happy and joyful here, and we rejoiced with them! A great place to spend a weekend evening with family and children.
Dinosaurų parkas Dino.lt Radailiai
Second day in Lithuania, after the opening of the Dino Park light festival!
Last night, our youngsters still managed to go to the pool; they ate quickly and ran off to enjoy the hotel's spa complex, which operates until 9:30 PM. With Evita Eidina, after dinner, walking to our room, we watched our hooligans through the large window, calmly sitting on the edge and enjoying the warm pool water, as we had agreed earlier. But the reality was completely different; both of them were jumping into the pool and competing to see who could make the biggest splashes!
Sleep after the long walk in Dino Park was excellent, so this time we skipped the morning workout and went straight to breakfast after 8:00 AM. Breakfast here is excellent, a very wide selection, and everything is very tasty, only the expensive coffee machines were acting up, and a long queue formed for them, but the girls who served breakfast brought ready-made coffees from the bar, and we could continue to enjoy our breakfast at leisure.
After breakfast, we still have time to go to the spa center together and warm up in the saunas and bubble in the jacuzzi. After an hour in the water, we lie on the hotel beds, and there's such a weakness that all we want to do is fall asleep and sleep for a few hours, but we have to check out of the hotel in 15 minutes. We gather ourselves to pack all our bags, put them in the car, say goodbye to our apartments, and before leaving completely, we enter the house that is upside down. We take several interesting photos and decide to go to the nearby Klaipėda Zoo, where you can see many tigers, many other felines, and other animals.
We put the address in Google Maps navigation; it shows that it's already open, and we set off. After 15 minutes, we've arrived, but all the gates are closed, a chain is in front of the parking lot, and a sign says, "See you again in spring." So much for Google Maps saying it's open today! You can't always trust this smarty-pants! We drive a little further, to the gates where this zoo ends, and there we can see white tigers; one specially walks past us and goes upstairs, lies down, and proudly looks in our direction. Then two ostriches come, and we feed them with Evita's homemade buns from yesterday. They enjoy them and ask for more, but unfortunately, we don't have any left, so we get in the car and start driving towards Dobele.
On the way, in Mažeikiai, we stop at Charlie's pizzeria and eat sweet pancakes and pizza. Rodrigo says this is the tastiest pizza he has ever eaten in his life.
So our holidays passed, fun, interesting, exciting, and delicious! Have a great Sunday evening and adventurous travels!
