Blogs from Dalmatia, Croatia, Europe - page 67

It’s all over!!! – We’re home! But to complete the story… Our 2 days in Split were excellent. It’s a town very much worth visiting in it’s own right. The history of the places we’ve visited in the UK, France, Italy and Croatia is fascinating and makes Australia’s white occupation history period look very ordinary and insignificant. I tended to find myself looking at buildings that were newer than 250 years old as being of much lesser interest than those much older. I mean they’re nearly new aren’t they? Many of the really old buildings (ie the Palace in Split) have been used ever since their construction including for everyday life and the stone and marble steps and floors have been worn smooth by countless footsteps from countless people from a myriad of backgrounds and powers ... read more

Saturday 25th update. Well we’ve now completed week two sailing the Adriatic with our second week being on the bigger 13 metre cats. There were 9 of us on each Cat. My cat (Lagoon 440) had me Margie & Kate; mum, Chris, Jules & Glen, Tim and Therese. Richard’s slightly smaller Belise 43 had himself, Feathers & Kitty; Hannah & JD, Jesse, Janet, Josh & Maeli. The Lagoon 440 that I skippered was a very nice boat but bristled with electric pumps, 3 fridges (!!), 4 bathrooms, too many lights and other battery draining things that tended to stress the batteries badly when at sea or anchored in secluded areas. Some careful energy management was called for and it was really a boat designed to be plugged into shore power each night. Not really my cup ... read more

When I say zooming, these things are relative on Croatian buses. Just say 12.30pm bus from Rijeka (ticket bought when I arrived) took 4 ½ hrs to get to Zadar (about 200km?) which is about normal. You cannot exactly race around here too much and the travel-time has to be factored into your planning. Which is almost certainly why my trip down the Croatian coast will end at Split and then head inland into Bosnia-Herzegovina, where there will hopefully also not be the same public holidays! The trip to Dubrovnik from Split is 4 ½ hrs, some of which may have to be repeated coming back due to tortuous ways out of Dubrovnik, mostly involving very long bus trips (like 10hrs) to get reasonably in the direction of Vienna. Travel whinges aside, and they are obviously ... read more

Although reasonably well adjusted to this time zone, we are clearly still sleep deprived slept easily until 9am. We showered quickly to make it down to the included buffet breakfast – always a big thrill for Andrew. Finally settling into the vacation spirit – the plan for the day was to have a leisurely visit to the beaches on Lokrum Island – so we lingered over breakfast. Lokrum Island is 15 minutes by boat from the Dubrovnik harbor. The harbor was ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE CITY from the hotel, a journey that takes less than 10 minutes on foot. We arrived just in time to hop the ferry and then meandered on foot across this small island to a beach. On the way we saw peacocks, peahens and peachicks (and mused about the difference between ... read more

We set an alarm for 8:45 thinking that we wouldn’t need it and even thinking we would get up early enough to see some more of Vienna, but we were all startled awake with the buzzing of the alarm. By the time we were showered, packed up, and taken the U-Bahn to the train station, we had missed our planned train to the Vienna airport. We were relieved to find that one can check-in and even check bags for Austrian air flights in the train station – reminding us once again that there is no need for stress in Vienna. Travel by airplane then taxi all went smoothly and we arrived at our hotel in Dubrovnik, 100 yards from the Pile gate. After briefly enjoying the air conditioning, we headed out to explore the walled city. ... read more