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Published: October 11th 2007
Beautiful Lake Bled
With the church on the island in the lake in the town :)Another week, another country! Well that's how it feels at the moment anyway... we are barely back from one trip and next weekend we are going to Berlin! Whoa.
But first things first. We finally had a chance to take the holiday we'd been thinking about for a while, a road trip to Croatia. And while we were at it we also chucked Slovenia and Bosnia into the mix. We don't want to lose our Australian ability to drive long distances (people get soft in Europe!), and there's not much chance of it after that effort! And all done sans GPS... handy having a GPS with 'Europe maps' when apparently anything east of CZ isn't considered Europe!
Slovenia After travelling to Ljubljana, and staying in our only pre-arranged hotel room of our trip, we decided to go back almost the same direction we came from to see Lake Bled. The traffic was crap but it was sooo worth it. Bled is amazing, and looks just like the pictures we had seen in Anthony's trusty Lonely Planet. It is a small town but the most beautiful part is the lake itself which is surrounded by mountains, and has an island right
Plitvice Lakes NP
One of the pathways winding through the cascading lakes - how insane is the colour! in the middle with a big church built on it. It looked like a picture book - the photos speak for themselves. We walked all the way around the lake and found ourselves in the middle of the Triathlon Junior European Cup... very, very fit kids 😊. We also climbed up to the castle which overlooks the lake but didn't go in because it was a bit of a rip-off.
After our day in Bled we hopped back into the car and travelled to Plitvice Lakes National Park which is roughly in the middle of Croatia.
Croatia Croatians are apparently very proud of their freeway which runs from Zabreb to Split and we were pretty impressed too, with the exception of the fifty tollbooths we passed through! After a 2 missed exits, 2 petrol station stops for directions and endless driving around in the dark we found ourselves in the town of Zimmer - or so Anthony thought due to the signs on ever shop saying ‘Zimmer’. It turns our ‘zimmer’ is Croatian for ‘room’, which may explain why the hotel was so confused when we called and asked for directions from there…
But we eventually made it
and the following day we went to the famous Plitvice Lakes (along with about three thousand other people). The lakes were spectacular, and so different to anything either of us have even seen. They are so blue, and each flows into the next via small waterfalls and cascades, but really the colour was the most stunning part. Again the pictures probably give you an idea. The National Park is quite developed, but in a good way, with wooden walkways leading across and around the lakes, and well sign-posted tracks, which you can walk along one way and catch a boat and train back to the beginning.
Afterwards we travelled to Split, still with absolutely no plans (beginning to sense a theme here?)... Once we got there we asked about ferries and on the spur of the moment booked onto a car ferry to take us to Vis, and island off the coast of Croatia. We had a few hours to kill in the famous Mediterreanean port. The old centre was beautiful (albeit with a slight touch of the Gold Coast creeping in). So with no idea about what we would do when we arrived in Vis, or even how
long the journey was, we drove onto the ferry and got out our trusty friend - Nintendo DS. We had figured that at the very least we had our sleeping bags and a tent should we get stuck in Vis... but unfortunately when we finally arrived at midnight we discovered that camping is forbidden on the island. Oops. We did manage to find a hotel though (there are only 2 on the island!!) and stayed for two nights on our deserted (not quite!) Croatian paradise...
For some really strange reason we decided it would be fun to rent bikes (and Anthony wouldn't let me get a scooter!), which turned out to be not so smart when we discovered how hilly the island actually was... and also discovered after cycling (read: cycling, swearing and some walking) about 80% of the 'loop' around the island that there were road works and having to go all the way back again... haha. We did spend half the day lying on a little beach paradise and swimming in crystal clear water though so no real complaints... except for the part where Anthony's brakes didn't work (fun on the hills!) and Stephanie's off road antics
Salt encrusted pretzel!
Anth after swimming at Lokrum Island, Dubrovnik resulted in two flat tyres 😊 oops again.
After some lovely recovery time and ice-cream (it makes everything better!) the next day we headed back to Split, and continued out journey down the coast to Dubrovnik. The drive along the coast to Dubrovnik was long, winding and very cool but again we arrived at night with no accomodation planned. So after trying out a few hotels with no success, we were a approached by a lovely old man outside one hotel and he told us that he had a place we could rent! This wasn't as bizarre as it sounds - we had read that most people stay in private accomodation in Dubrovnik but I'll admit it was still a little scary... nevertheless Anthony did some bargaining, and after going to check the place out we ended up staying there for two nights. A lady called Mary and her son lived downstairs and we had the upstairs section to ourselves which included 2 bedrooms, bathroom and kitchette. Mary was also really nice and on our arrival she gave us hot tea and a box of chocolates, together with a map and a complete overview of the sights of Dubrovnik!
Dubrovnik by night
The light just shines off every part of this city. YEAH!
Dubrovnik was INCREDIBLE (Anthony’s favourite city we’ve visited actually). There are two parts of Dubrovnik we particularly enjoyed - the walled old town sitting on a head above the sparkling Adriatic and the island of Lokrum 15 minutes off the coast. We spent the morning walking the wall of the city and the little side streets, then a sunny afternoon on Lokrum swimming, sun-baking and sipping coke 😊 The water was so salty that Anthony looked like a pretzel when he was dry - I took a picture of his eyelashes which were all white and crusty with the salt! Lokrum also has an old monastery and a nude beach which we almost accidently entered... eww.
The next morning we left bright and early to start our journey homewards.
Bosnia Bosnia was sort of just an after thought - the "well we're in the neighbourhood and it sounds cool so why not?!" - which very nearly got cancelled when they wouldn't let us into the country... but after purchasing some dodgy car insurance cover that they said we had to have, we were on our way!! I won’t say we loved it in the same way
What Once Were Homes
The whole drive through northern Bosnia was filled with sad sights like this. as Slovenia and Croatia, but it was an eye opening experience we’re glad we had. Our first stop was Mostar, which is talked up in the Lonely Planet but it was rather underwhelming. There is a very well known bridge which was bombed during the recent conflict and rebuilt but other than that the whole place (ie. particularly the tourist areas) seemed totally deserted. There was even a guy on the street charging anyone with foreign number plates for parking there! Dodgy...
We continued on to Sarajevo, which was a little stressful with crazy drivers and people everywhere. We saw some really interesting sights including the place where Archduke Franz Ferdinand & his wife were assassinated, thereby starting World War I. I somehow didn’t realise that it was a Serbian (well a Bosnian Serb anyway) who started World War I. That was very interesting but I was even more amazed by the more recent conflict.
We saw the “Roses of Sarajevo” which are apparently quite famous - when the city was under siege in the mid 90s, the holes made by mortars were filled with red concrete, which gave the appearance of roses on the pavement. One was
The bridge at Mostar
Apparently in summer locals will dive off it for cash from tourists ?!? made following a bomb which hit the footpath near a busy open market place and killed a lot of people - and it happened on 28.08.95 which was 2 days after I turned 15. It’s just impossible to comprehend that when I was off in year 9 at some diving carnival or something equally inane that people no different to me were stuck inside their buildings being starved to death because they couldn't leave home with the bombs and snipers. The layout of Sarajevo made it obvious how easy it was to keep the siege though because it’s completely surrounded by heavily wooded mountains for the snipers to hide. The city is still full of soldiers which made me a bit nervous, but on our way out of the city in bumper to bumper traffic we were targeted at every red traffic light as “foreigners” by children “praying” and begging for money at our windows… I learnt when I went to Vietnam not to give money to children (because it encourages their parents to send them back out to beg) so I heeded that warning but it’s hard to ignore. The other absolutely shocking part was driving through Northern Bosnia
The bridge where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated
In the background you can see the mountains which surround Sarajevo (the Serb strong hold) and seeing the shells of houses, completely gutted by fire or bombs. Apparently after they got the Serbs out they torched their houses so they couldn’t come back. It was so eerie because the houses were these huge concrete places without roofs just standing there empty and with no-one around… and then came the hundreds and hundreds of new graves. Some of them didn’t even have a church or anything in the grounds but were just paddocks filled with these shiny, new graves. Just absolutely shocking.
So overall Bosnia was an “experience” but not something I am keen to repeat.
After Bosnia we were planning to drive to Zagreb or Vienna to stay the night but ended up deciding that we just wanted to go home (and it’s not like we’d made plans!). . So after starting the day at 6:30am in Dubrovnik, we finally arrived home the following morning at 3:30am... whoa.
So ends a rather mammoth blog entry... congratulations on making it to the end. 😊 Next trip is to Berlin to see Crowded House in concert! Woo hoo!
Steph
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Rick
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Gasp !
Truly amazing stuff ! Could even make travelling in Eastern Europe a priority for me - almost !