Where are Ron and Ellen?
Italy, Montenegro, Croatia, 20 September - 25 October 2012
Ron and Ellen outside the old city, Budva, Montenegro, October 2012
Dubrovnik (Croatia), Kotor and Budva (Montenegro), Split and Bol (Croatia), Bari and Rome again (Italy), October 2012
To see photos of the old town in Dubrovnik (Croatia), click on the thumbnail at the left.
Dubrovnik old and new
To see other photos of Dubrovnik, click on the thumbnail at the left.
5 October 2012
Kotor, MontenegroDear Family and Friends
Last Sunday we took the train from Lecce to Bari, arriving in Bari a bit after 6 pm, then the city bus from the train station to the port from which the ferries leave. A note of caution: when we arrived in Lecce by train from Rome and purchased train tickets back to Bari on 30 September (on the local train that runs between Lecce and Bari), we were told there was a train at 16:10. When we arrived at the station to go to Bari we discovered there was no train at that time on Sundays. Luckily we were able to get tickets on the fast train that goes from Lecce to Rome, which left at 16:50 and arrived in Bari only about 20 minutes later than the earlier local train. So when getting tickets for a Sunday, be sure to double-check that whatever it is actually runs on Sunday. And be aware that many stores and restaurants close on Sundays, so don't count on that special place you wanted to go being open.
Anyway, we went to the ferry office and found we had to take their free shuttle bus 2 km up the road to the ticket offices to pick up our tickets and have passports checked, then take the bus back to the ferry terminal for loading and the real passport control. It was a big boat, with 3 levels of cabins and seats, 2 levels for vehicles (a huge number of tour buses), and the top level for lounge and restaurants (free breakfast included in our ticket price). The ferry left Bari at 10, arrived in Dubrovnik at 7 after our 6 am breakfast (perfect scheduling for Ellen but not for Ron!).
The tourist information office across from the ferry dock opened at 8, and by the time we got off the boat, went through passport control, and visited the ATM for Croatian kuna, we only had 20 minutes to wait. We sat in a little park and read and watched the activity on the many small cruise boats (maybe 25 people) tied up along the esplanade. From the tourist office we got maps, info on buses, and directions to our hotel - easy access on one of the bus lines. We arrived at the hotel, in a lovely location perched on top of a hill on a peninsula with a view of the harbor, and discovered that reception didn't open until 2 pm. However, the young woman who does the cleaning (and speaks excellent English) took our bags and locked them up, suggested we go to a nearby cafe that had wifi where we could sit as long as we wanted, and come back around 11:30 when our room would be ready. When we came back and she took us to our room and opened the doors from the room onto the large balcony, we took one look at the view and decided we'd stay three nights instead of just two! It really is spectacular, looking out over several narrow inlets of the harbor and out towards the open water, with the steep high hills on the land side. The steep, rocky, and fairly barren (it is a dry climate) hills make you really appreciate the military advantage of controlling the heights, no matter which war or which century, as the towns along the coastline below would be at the mercy of forces controlling the heights.
After settling in and visiting the local grocery store for water and yogurt, we headed off to explore a bit and to find a Croatian sim card. Americans should not buy the T-Mobile holiday sim card package sold in all the kiosks - after doing so we discovered that it is meant for Europeans, and all the flat bits of the 7-day package are designed for people who want to make calls to other European countries. By paying additional amounts at the T-Mobile office we got ourselves set up with two phones that can make/receive calls and one phone with Internet. We wandered around the small streets in a residential area, where everyone seems to have pomegranate, lemon, and fig trees in their small yards, all laden with ripening fruit, as well as grape vines and vegetables and flowers. We had a nice dinner overlooking the harbor (shrimp risotto for Ellen, grilled meats and mushrooms for Ron).
Dubrovnik has an excellent bus system, so on Tuesday we bought a day pass and explored the city by taking various buses on the full round of their routes. One route took us all the way up one side of one of the narrow fingers of water between the hills, under the huge bridge, around the end with the spillway, and along the opposite side. Another took us to a luxury hotel perched out on the very end of a promontory where we followed some walking paths before taking the bus back again.
We'd thought the ferry was a big boat until we saw the gigantic cruise ships that pull into the harbor we see from our balcony - floating hotels 8-10 levels high, disgorging hundreds of people into tour buses to visit the old city of Dubrovnik. We'd read that there are so many visitors to the old city, which is pedestrian-only, that there has been talk of limiting the numbers allowed in at any one time. We'd decided that the best time to visit the old city would be late afternoon, after many of the tour groups would have left for the day. And even then is was jam-packed with people, including groups. we immediately took a side street to get off the main walking road, and that helped some, but still way too many people! Shops and restaurants on the ground floor, presumably living quarters (and hotel rooms) above. Buildings and streets all made of stone. Some of the side streets are so narrow you can stand in the center and almost touch the walls on either side - definitely not built for vehicles! Ron and Ned were here in 2000, probably about the same time of year, and Ron doesn't remember anything like the mobs of people and hundreds of tour groups. (Ned, what is your recollection?). We escaped out the gates at the water end of the city and had tea in a cafe overlooking the water before wandering along the water's edge outside the walls. Then back to find the ticket office for going up and walking along the top of the walls, a somewhat less crowded way to view the old city. However, we discovered that we'd only have an hour before closing, and decided not to pay the approximately $15 to do that. Perhaps towards the end of the trip when we are back in Dubrovnik, by which time we're told there will be fewer tourists.
After looking at our guidebook for information on logistics of getting to Split and the Croatian islands and trying to figure out where we might want to stay and for how long, we decided that instead of going north, we'd head south to Montenegro first. We went to the bus terminal to purchase our tickets to Kotor, then came back to our balcony to look on the Internet for a place to stay. Finding a place took several hours, not because there were so few places but because 1) there were so many choices on various sites that offer apartments and hotels, 2) we had to send inquiries about rates and availability (and wait for responses), and 3) because the internet connection was very slow. We've spent a lot of time on the net finding accommodations, in Rome for the two nights at the end of the trip, in Lecce, in Dubrovnik, and now in Kotor. We've talked about the positive and negative ways the internet changes getting accommodation. We feel we have spent a lot of time checking for places to stay, but doing it ahead means you have a much better selection (let the keyboard do the walking!) and better prices. There seem to be no fixed rates - they vary by season, demand, service doing the booking, discounts and specials, and all the other ways hotels and apartments compete. Example: In Rome, we went to ask about rooms at the hotel where we had stayed when we were there for 10 days in 2003, and the guy at the desk told us he could only give us the list price for our dates, and that we should look at the internet for reservations and costs because we would do much better that way. We used to be able to arrive and look for a vacant place with a good rate (although that sometimes took a lot of walking around with luggage), but now one gets good rates and a much better choice by booking ahead on the internet a day or two before arrival, and can look at more possibilities and locations in the process. On a two-week holiday you may want to book well in advance and enjoy your limited time, but for our five weeks (or Ron's longer trips), where we don't usually have a fixed itinerary, finding bargain accommodations significantly reduces our travel costs.
Thursday morning we took the 10 am bus for Kotor, heading south along the narrow, winding coastal road (spectacular!), with stops for passport control as we exited Croatia and as we entered Montenegro. The trip was about 2.5 hours, with about half of it skirting around the many connected fingers of Kotor Bay, which like is a very long and winding fjord with mountains plunging down to the clear green water and towns perched along the narrow strip at the water's edge. Kotor is at the very end, with an old walled city, some of which dates to the 9th century.
First stop off the bus was an ATM (Montenegro is part of the EU and uses euros, Croatia is not), then a stop at a cafe in the shopping center for some lunch, then to purchase sim cards at another place in the shopping center (because our Croatian ones don't work here). For whatever reason (the wonders and mysteries of technology constantly amaze us), we would need separate sim cards for internet and phone here, which means you would have to swap them out each time you wanted to change functions (internet on the phone is apparently extremely expensive). We were going to get internet and phone for one phone and just phone for the other, but multiple people at the store tried and couldn't get the internet card to work on either of our phones, so we ended up with just phone cards. It took us a lot of walking around (Ron with his pack and me with my smallish rolling suitcase) to find the apartment we'd booked - there are no street signs, and, with a few exceptions, none of the lodging places have any identifying signs other than an occasional one that says simply "Rooms/Apartments." We had foolishly written down only the name of the place, Martiva 2, and its approximate location, but that didn't help - despite asking numerous people. We finally retreated back to the shopping center where there is wifi, got out the Netbook, looked the place up on the Web, and got the phone number (still no directions) and called them for directions. We had, of course, passed the tiny dead-end street at least once when looking for the place! The woman who gave us directions kept calling us during our ~5 minute walk from the shopping center to check on our progress - until we could see her waving to us from the house at the top of the street. The apartment has a small living-dining-kitchen area, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a large shared terrace with view of the water for 30 euros/night. We settled in and made tea and sat on our terrace and watched a cruise boat leave. Later, after dark when we headed out for dinner, another larger one was departing with lights blazing and a recording of "I think to myself, 'It's a wonderful world'" floating over the water. We wandered a bit in the old city - not crowded at that time of day.
Today we are off to explore the old city and surroundings by day, which probably means much bigger crowds.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
To see photos of Kotor (Montenegro), click on the thumbnail at the left.
Beautiful Bay of Kotor
To see photos of Perast (Montenegro), click on the thumbnail at the left.
8 October 2012
Kotor, MontenegroDear Family and Friends,
Words can't do justice to the spectacular Bay of Kotor, and I'm not sure the photos will either! Precipitous mountain slopes coming down to the sea, blue-green water, and towns along the small edge of buildable land (before the slope gets too steep), most with very old buildings surrounded by newer ones, and a few crumbling Tito-era Soviet-style concrete buildings thrown in for contrast. At the very end of the bay, just past the ancient walled city of Kotor, there is a gigantic Soviet-style hotel complex called the Hotel Fjord, completely deserted, roof disintegrating, windows gone, concrete walls cracked.
As in Dubrovnik, the old city is best viewed by looking above the ground floor, which is mostly (but not all) shops and restaurants. But there are some winding narrow streets that don't have shops, there is laundry hanging from balconies, and this is a city that is obviously lived in as well as showing itself off to tourists.
Our apartment is a little up the coast from the old city, but no more than a 10 minute walk. There are two small upstairs apartment above the family house - and there are (as we think we understood) three other houses belonging to the brothers and sisters of the husband. Apparently this kind of family cluster is not uncommon here. The husband (away at the moment) is a boat captain on a ship that is in Africa exploring for oil.
After eating dinner in the old town the first night (we each had a different kind of seafood risotto), and wandering around the old town during our first full day, we ate the second night at a restaurant on the esplanade just at the bottom of our street - better food and considerably cheaper than in the old town. We ended up eating there for the remaining three nights of our stay. We have each had a different pasta dish, Ron had a Montenegro steak with prosciutto ham and cheese, Ellen had a crepe with mushrooms and tomatoes and zucchini and peppers, and the last night we had a grilled seafood platter which the waiter assured us would be big enough for two even though it didn't say that on the menu (it definitely was, with not only various local seafoods, but also risotto and grilled vegetables). Plus the waiter spoke excellent English, having worked on Prince cruise boats for several years, Los Angeles-Hawaii route during the winter, Seattle-Alaska route during the summer. We asked him how many people cruise ships carry. He told us the smaller one currently in view in the harbor carried about 500 passengers and 200 crew, bigger ones carry 2000-3000 people and perhaps 1500 or so crew, and some of the huge ones carry 5000-7000 passengers and 1500-3000 crew!. For the larger boats, that's a total of 2/3 the population of Nelson County where we live! No, thank you, not for us!
The waiter suggested we take the local bus back up the coast to Perast, which we did on our second day here. It is a tiny town (our guidebook says population is 360) with a large number of elegant houses dating from the 1600s, when it had multiple churches and palazzos, was under Venetian influence (the winged lion of St. Mark can be seen on many buildings), and, according to the historical marker in the square, had 40 large ships and 100 small ones based here, and a population of 3,000 or more. We spent a lovely afternoon wandering along the only road, along the sea front, and exploring some of the narrow stairways leading up to houses and churches above the road.
Our third day we walked around the bottom of the bay beyond the old city and a little ways along the road up the other side. We had our bread and cheese picnic lunch in a little park directly across from the old city, watching the tenders carry people back and forth to the city from one of the three (!) cruise boats in the bay. A slightly smaller boat was docked at the city, and the third boat was barely visible around a point further north. Must take a fair bit of coordination getting these boats scheduled. From where we were sitting, we could see people walking along the tops of the walls around the city, so when we walked back we found one of the stairways leading up, and walked along for a very different view.
After late afternoon tea, we spent some time on the Internet looking at apartments in Budva, our next stop, a 40 minute bus ride further south along the coast. We were doing the internet sitting at the bottom of the steps beside the family terrace where the signal was stronger, and ending up chatting with Biljana, the mother, who speaks only a tiny bit of English, and her 12-year-old son, Martin, who is learning English in school and does quite well - with the help of Google Translate, with which he was quite familiar. We showed them the photos on the Netbook of our home and family. Later, after we came back from dinner, Biljana and Martin came up and presented us with a souvenir, a magnet with a picture of Kotor on it. They also asked if Ron was on Facebook, and wanted him to friend them, which he did.
The weather has improved greatly since we arrived in Dubrovnik, mid-70s during the day and cooler at night. Last night during the night it got very windy, and is still quite windy today, and cooler, although still brilliantly sunny. There aren't whitecaps on the bay, but it is not smooth and placid as it has been for the last several days. All much better than the 98 degree afternoons at the beginning of the trip!
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
To see photos of Budva (Montenegro), click on the thumbnail at the left.
Budva - 226 Steps
To see photos of Sveti Stefan (Montenegro), click on the thumbnail at the left.
Dubrovnik, Croatia
12 October 2012Dear Family and Friends,
Two hundred and twenty-six steps - that's what it took to get from beach level in Budva (or close to it) up the stairs between houses on the side of the hill (the alternative to the steps was a longer very steep road with a hairpin curve), and then up the three flights of steps to our apartment. One hundred fifty steps up the side of the hill, the other seventy-six from the apartment gate to our door. We did have a spectacular view from our living room and balcony, however!
Budva is a beach town that apparently is packed in July and August, but now, at the end of the season, is far less crowded, with things shutting down. The town curves around a big bay and climbs the steep hills around the perimeter. We wandered through the old town, charming and far less crowded than Dubrovnik or Kotor, and walked the length of the esplanade along the sea front multiple times each day. Lots of benches to sit and read or watch people and boats.
One day we took the bus to Sveti Stefan, a small town about 10 km south of Budva, that has a very old town on an island connected by a narrow causeway to the newer portion of the town built up the side of the mainland hill. The entire town on the island is now a single resort hotel, but according to our guidebook one could pay an entrance fee and be able to cross the causeway and wander through the town. Wrong.... There are guards at the entrance to the causeway, and one can only go across if one is a hotel guest. However, there is a beautiful wooded area on the mainland with walking paths and we walked through that at the top of the cliffs until we got to the next little bay with its beach, then headed back out to the road and took the bus back to Budva.
Later that afternoon we took a 1.5 hour boat ride that makes a big loop through several of the nearby bays, and also passes Sveti Stefan from the water - closer than we got to it via land. The water is very clear, so even when it is 2-3 meters deep you can see the bottom.
We had planned before leaving home to rent a car in Budva and go inland to some of the national parks, including one with a huge lake. However, after looking at and riding in the bus on the steep and winding roads, we decided we really didn't want to drive in this very mountainous country. So then we tried to figure out how to get to the lake via bus - difficult, but it could be done. And so then we tried to make hotel reservations at the town on the end of the lake where the bus drops you off and discovered that of the small handful of hotels there, several were already closed for the season and the one that was open had such horrible reviews we didn't want to stay there. So we abandoned the idea of that trip. We saw that many travel agencies have day trips out of Budva that would go to the lake and to several other places we were interested in - but discovered that it was too late in the season and they weren't running tours any more. All in all, very frustrating! Differences in travel style are apparent here. Ron would be happy just to get on a bus and go somewhere and assume he'll find someplace to sleep and eat. Ellen would be willing to just go if we were going to a larger town, but not to a place in the middle of nowhere.
We decided to head back to Dubrovnik for two nights, which is where we are now, and then go north to Split. We were able to book at the hotel we'd stayed in when we first arrived in Dubrovnik - even the same room with the gorgeous view. However, their internet is very very slow, so after trying for a bit this morning to find an apartment in Split we got so frustrated with the slow internet that we headed to the nearby cafe for tea and to use their wifi. Further frustration - their modem wasn't working. So we went to the bus station and bought our bus tickets for tomorrow (13 Oct) to Split and looked for another place with wifi. We went to a nearby busy pizza place where everyone else seemed to be connected just fine, but we couldn't get connected. Left there and walked back along the water (the bus station is just a bit past the ferry terminal along the waterfront) to the tourist information office to ask about an internet cafe, since after our difficulty in getting connected at the pizza place Ron was wondering if his Netbook was having problems. A few doors past the tourist office there was a restaurant that had a computer with internet, so we used that to check out apartments and - finally! - made a reservation for three nights in Split. Our piece of good luck here was that the rain shower happened while we were inside doing internet.
By now it was time to go back to our hotel for late afternoon tea and snack, but the traffic was horrendous at the bus stop where multiple buses including ours stop. We realized it was the time of day when all the charter buses are taking all the multiple thousand people from the old town back to their cruise boats, and when our bus finally came it was so packed that we and half the other people who wanted that bus couldn't get on. So we decided to walk home, a distance of maybe 2-3 miles.
As Ron said when we got back, this day was a bust! However, travel is like that sometimes. And we did enjoy the walking we did in various places along the way.
Tomorrow we are off for Split on the 11 am bus. We just got email (yes, the Netbook seems fine - just a slow connection here at the hotel) from the apartment owners saying they would meet us at the bus station to lead us to the apartment. We've had a hard time finding our apartments in both Kotor and Budva. We've had street addresses, but people tell us, "No one knows the names of streets - they just know where places are." We didn't see any street signs in either Kotor or Budva. Thus, we are very pleased to have someone to lead us to the apartment in Split!
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
To see photos of Split (Croatia), click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of the ruins at Salona (Croatia), click on the thumbnail at the left.
Bol, Croatia
To see photos of Trogir (Croatia), click on the thumbnail at the left.
17 October 2012Dear Family and Friends,
Our 4.5 hour bus ride up the coast from Dubrovnik to Split was spectacular. The road hugs the coast all the way, mountains on one side, water on the other, sometimes high above the water, sometimes down close to it. Sometimes the road goes through the towns, and at other times you look down on small towns and tiny villages tucked into the curve of a bay below. There were islands of varying sizes off the coast almost the entire way. At one point we curved around a huge flat area the size of a small city (probably the alluvial plain of a river) that was all agricultural, the largest agricultural area we've seen. There were acres and acres of mandarin orange trees ripening, grapes, pomegranate trees, cabbages, etc, but mainly the oranges and grapes. We've bought oranges in the market - they are really good and obviously local!
The apartment owner met us at the bus as promised, led us to the apartment, gave us a map of Split, gave us lots of good suggestions on what to see in and around Split, and suggested a good restaurant. The restaurant was so good we ate there all three nights; we had grilled fish with grilled vegetables, smoked salmon salad, rumpsteak stuffed with proscuitto and cheese, for example, and each meal included a complementary little glass of excellent home-made cherry brandy (cherries are big in Croatia - we've been eating a lot of cherry strudel with our morning tea) . The apartment was a studio and was absolutely tiny - we expected a studio but not such a tiny one - with barely enough room to walk around the bed, a tiny folding table and two folding chairs, kitchenette, and small bathroom. Other than the size, it was a good location, in the old town just outside the palace and the big daily green market.
A main attraction in Split is Diocletian's Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Diocletian built the palace between 295 and 305 for his retirement and it has been in use ever since, first by Roman rulers and then by ordinary people. The medieval town grew up inside the palace walls and people are still living and working (and selling stuff to tourists) in the narrow streets and passageways and courtyards. When you look at the wall of the palace that faces the sea front, you see original white stone walls as well as buildings and walls added over many centuries since. It is quite a lively place, and despite all the shops and restaurants obviously aimed at tourists, has a much more of the feel of actual real life going on than other old city centers we've been in.
The apartment owner had suggested a day trip (via public bus) to the Roman ruins at Solin (aka Salona) outside Split and then to the old city of Trogir about 30 km further up the coast. We made that trip on Sunday, since Monday was forecast to have showers. The Romans had been at Solin from 78 BC onward, and it flourished until attacked by the Slavs in 614. It has been in ruins ever since. It is an extensive site, with good signage explaining the various buildings (several basilicas, aqueduct, gates, baths, walls, amphitheater). It was almost completely deserted - we saw maybe a dozen people the whole time we were there, and at least half of them were locals walking their dogs - Sunday afternoon in their local park. The apartment owner told us that beginning next year they plan to charge admission, but right now you just wander through.
After the ruins we caught another bus for Trogir, the smallest of the old cities we've been in, with many buildings still intact from its heyday in the 13th-15th century. Even when the rest of Dalmatia stagnated under Venetian rule, the arts continued to flourish in Trogir. The buildings are lovely - and Trogir is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. We wandered around, and enjoyed sitting on the sunny esplanade in front of the town watching people and boats (and eating ice cream, of course).
On the alternately showery and sunny Monday, we wandered through Diocletian's Palace and spent time along the large seafront, watching people and the busy harbor. Because Split is a transport hub for the many islands off this part of the coast, there are far more ferries coming and going than in Dubrovnik. And, happily, a lot less cruise boats - we only saw one each day.
Our waitress at the restaurant where we ate our three dinners was a young woman (early to mid-20s) who spoke excellent English. She told us she had studied economics in university, not because she was really interested in it but because that was the school that was available where she lived. She really wants to join the police department, but says it is very difficult to get that kind of job unless you know someone or can pay. She said the job situation for young people is very difficult in Croatia.
We'd decided to go to Brac (the c in Brac has a circumflex over it, so in Serbo-Croatian, it is pronounced like sh, which means Brac more or less rhymes with the English word squash), the first island off the coast from Split, to the beach town of Bol on the far side of the island. During one of our retreats to our tiny studio during a rain shower, we picked out and reserved an apartment, being sure it was bigger than where we were. Quarries on Brac, by the way, are the source of the white stone used to build Diocletian's Palace, and also, surprisingly to us, the White House in Washington DC.
Tuesday morning we took the 11:00 ferry (50 minutes from Split to Supetar, Brac's port), then took the bus from Supetar to Bol, an hour trip on a coastal road along the north side of the island (ups and downs and hairpin curves) then up and over the mountainous spine (up and up with hairpin curves) then down the other side (more hairpin curves). Olive trees on the dry slopes, orange trees and grapes tucked into the narrow valleys. Our one-bedroom apartment is palatial, the largest one we've had yet (Ron maintains the bathroom is bigger than the entire studio in Split), with a big balcony looking through trees to the water and to Hvar, the next island out into the Adriatic. The town is very quiet, with many shops and restaurants already shut down for the season. Our laundry is drying on the clothes rack on the balcony, and today we're off to walk along the coast to the big crescent beach the town is famous for, Zlatni Rat. [Note: one of Ron's camera chips went bad, so we lost most of the photos of Bol!]
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
Back (briefly) in Split
To see photos of Bol (Croatia), click on the thumbnail at the left.
20 October 2012Dear Family and Friends,
We thoroughly enjoyed our lazy days in Bol, a beautiful beach town that is closing down for the season. The restaurant where we ate the first night was closing after one more day, and our waiter told us he was looking forward to going home for six months. He's from Serbia, and for the last 12 years has spent the 6 months of the season working at the restaurant in Bol, the other 6 months at home with his family (wife, 7 year old son, 18 month old daughter). He said he would rather be at home, but this is what he needs to do to make a living. The town has 2000 permanent residents, but huge numbers of visitors in the season, and is apparently jam-packed in July and August. The owner of the restaurant where we ate dinner our second and third nights was talking to a couple at the table next to ours (German or Scandinavian, not sure which) he apparently knew because they had bought a house in Bol 6 years ago, and was saying that everyone works like crazy for the 60 days at the height of the season because that is when they make their money for the entire year. It was hard for us to imagine the town with so many people in it - we think you would hardly be able to move!
We liked the fact that there were so few people, although we would have liked it if there were a few more shops and restaurants open. Not a single one of the many bakeries was still open, so we had to rely on the not very good bakery selection in the small local supermarket (which is open all year).
The town has made an obvious effort to attract visitors. The wide seafront esplanade is about 5 km long, and has benches and sculpture (from the local white stone) all along it. The 3 km between the town center and the famous Zlatni Rat beach is all polished white stone and is shaded by beautiful cyprus (we think) trees, so it makes a really lovely walk. Going from the center in the other direction from Zlatni Rat is the harbor (all small boats) and, at the far end, a small bay and beach that we thought was much more beautiful than Zlatni Rat, with an old church and monastery perched on the promontory at one end.
We did a lot of walking along the esplanade, watching the comings and goings of small boats, and also spent a lot of time sitting on our wonderful balcony, reading and looking at the view.
Friday morning we took the bus from Bol back to Supetar, the ferry port (all those hairpin curves and gorgeous views again), and then took the 12:30 ferry back to Split. We have a studio apartment in the old town inside Diocletian's palace (this time we checked the sq meters carefully, and it is a spacious room!). After dinner we wandered around and through the old town and palace - lots of music at various places, and many of the buildings are beautifully lit up.
Today we take the 11:45 bus back to Dubrovnik. We hope we are close enough to the end of the tourist and cruise boat season there that we'll actually be able to enjoy walking around the top of the old city walls!
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
Rome, Italy
To see photos of Bari (Italy), click on the thumbnail at the left.
24 October 2012Dear Family and Friends,
We arrived back in Rome yesterday at 5:30 pm, so today is our last day before flying home tomorrow. We plan to head to the big market at Campo de' Fiori this morning, then a last bit of wandering this afternoon. We're looking forward to being home again - our daughter tells us there has (remarkably) been no frost at our house yet, so we'll still have some dahlias blooming in the garden.
We got back to Dubrovnik on Saturday evening, staying in the same room with beautiful view over the harbor as we'd stayed before. The owner, who lives in an apartment in the villa (which has both rooms and apartments) had a big setup on one of the terraces of boiler, distiller, etc. and was making brandy from the grapes left from making wine. As many people here do, he makes his own wine and brandy.
We've seen many olive trees loaded with olives, and have seen people picking them, both in orchards and in back yards. Ron sampled one he picked off a tree and it was terrible - very bitter - and we suddenly realized we had no idea of the process by which olives get from what comes off the tree to what people eat (people other that Ellen, who likes olive oil but hates all kinds of olives), so we looked the processing up on the internet. Essentially they are brined with lemon and various seasonings (probably depending on taste and tradition) for about a month.
Sunday we spent the morning sitting on our terrace reading and enjoying the view. There was only one cruise boat in the harbor, so at about 2 we headed for the old city center. Amazingly, when we got inside the old city walls, there were tourists, but not in huge numbers, so we walked around some (we had hardly been able to move when we'd been there several weeks earlier) and then paid our admission and climbed up (and up) the stairs to the top of the walls. The walls are very thick, 6 meters in some places, so seem almost like a narrow road with stone walls of different heights on both the town and outside edges. There are towers at various commanding and defensive points, and one climbs more stairs or goes down stairs depending on the terrain over which the walls were built. The old city is on a peninsula, and about half of the 1.9 kilometers of the walls face the land and half face the sea. The views over the old city and over the water are wonderful, and in some places you look down on hidden courtyards that you would never see from the street level.
When Ron was here about 10 years ago, he struck up a conversation with one of the ticket takers up on the walls (you buy your ticket on ground level, and at each of the several entrance points there is someone on the walls who checks your ticket). The man was a veteran, and gave Ron a long explanation of how the city was attacked, where the guns were, from which direction the planes came, and so on. This time we had a long conversation with a ticket taker, aged 39, whose feeling about the war was that it was horrible and stupid, and brother against brother because "we are all the same blood." His mother is Serbian, his father Croatian (or the other way around), and he said he decided he couldn't marry either a Serb or a Croat because each would make some part of the family unhappy, so he married an Italian "because Italians don't know how to hate." She's a professor of chemistry at the university and he teaches mathematics.
On Monday, there were three (!) cruise boats in the harbor, so we were very glad we had walked the walls the day before. The young man who works at the reception desk in the afternoons told us about one day this past summer when there were seven cruise boats docked for the day in Dubrovnik, four at the harbor we could see and the other three in the water off the old town. He said there were 15,000 people from the boats in the city that day (Dubrovnik's population is about 25,000), and the whole city came to a halt because of pedestrian and bus traffic. He said everyone was late to work or wherever they were going. We'd already experienced the way the tour buses that take people between the boats and the old city slow the traffic during the times they go back and forth, and that is just when there are two or three boats docked. He told us that there is currently a petition circulating among Dubrovnik citizens to pass a law limiting the number of tour boats that can dock each day.
After checking out and leaving our bags with the hotel, we set out to walk the coastal path that goes around the perimeter of the peninsula (Babin Kuk) on which we were staying. We'd walked a small section of it on one of our earlier times in Dubrovnik, but this time we walked the entire path, several miles - or we would have if the portion we'd already walked had not been blocked off. Through the fence we could see a piece of machinery, and could see they were digging up the paved path and putting in a drainage pipe. So we went up and walked along the road for that section, ending up at Lapad Beach, where we sat in a cafe and had fresh lemonade. We got back to our hotel a bit after 5, and sat on the terrace beside the pool watching the view and the sunset.
Eventually we collected our bags and took the bus to the ferry office where we checked in and got our boarding passes, then had pizza at a nearby restaurant before going through passport control and boarding the boat. The ferry coming from Italy to Croatia on 30 September had been absolutely packed, but there were far fewer people going back, maybe only 100-150 instead of well over 1000 - the tourist season is ending.
We arrived in Bari, Italy at 8 am Tuesday and our train for Rome was not until 1:15, so we checked our bags with the "left luggage" at the station and set of for several hours of exploration. We really liked Bari, and if we had it to do over again would have spent several days here instead of in Lecce (which was nice, but not nearly as interesting or lively). There is a Norman fort and the Basilica is also Norman, and we went into both. In the St. Nicolas Basilica (where St. Nicolas of Christmas fame is buried, his bones having been stolen from a town in what is now Turkey in 1087 by fisherman from Bari) there was an Eastern Orthodox service going on downstairs in the crypt - gorgeous music. We wandered around in the narrow streets of the medieval town and watched ladies making pasta by hand, wandered the extensive pedestrian shopping streets, and had tea and croissant at one cafe and sandwiches for lunch at another before collecting our bags and taking the train back to Rome.
Now off for our final day of explorations in Rome....
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
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Last updated: 8 November 2012
