Motovun & Glina

A long post today, to cover Saturday and Sunday...

Saturday was a remarkable day on many levels.  After an early breakfast, we hit the road to drive from the Plitvice Lakes region to Motovun, a mountaintop town about 3.5 hours due west, on the Istrian peninsula.  Istria is known for meats, cheeses, olives, and wine, and we've been looking forward to indulging our inner carnivores, but first, we had to get there…

…through the remnants of war-torn Croatia.

The first thirty miles or so of the drive went through farmland sprinkled with little hamlets.  A field of grapes, then a town. A field of corn, then a town. But these weren't just ordinary rural towns; these were towns that had suffered during the war 20 years ago. We passed memorials engraved with crosses and 5-10 names of Croatian soldiers (kids, really, no more than 19 or 20) who died during the war. We passed scores of buildings with bullet holes in them. Some holes had been patched up poorly, but most buildings just let their bullet holes live on in the building, either out of poverty or as a symbol of what had passed. We passed entire villages that looked brand-new - the war had leveled the town, and the people rebuilt. Except that the people couldn't afford the entire cost of rebuilding, so they put up the masonry and some internal structure to make the house livable, but didn't bother to finish the exterior. I don't know if they plan to finish the houses in the towns or what their timetable is. And, of course, we passed houses with roofs that had been blown off, houses with holes where walls should be, houses that had been toppled over by artillery or post-artillery abandonment by the owners. It was beautiful, and it was very very sad.

Soon, we crossed over from the war-town rural areas to Istria, where the people don't seem to have experienced the war in the same way. Istria is more closely tied with Italy than with Serbia or Bosnia, so there was not the same kind of ethnic strife here. We stayed in Istria for one night, in a former-castle-now-hotel at the top of the mountaintop town called Motovun:

We arrived shortly after noon, checked in, and grabbed lunch at an Anthony Bourdain-recommended place called Mondo Konoba (the Mondo Family Tavern). After a huge breakfast by the lakes, we were interested in a light lunch, so S and I split a tomato/mozzarella salad and gnocchi with truffles. See what I mean by Italian influence? Also, Istria is noted for its truffles, and many of the restaurants here offer truffle dishes. Unfortunately, we were a bit out season (truffle season is in the autumn, not the summer), so the truffles in our dishes were dried, not fresh, resulting in muted taste. 

After lunch, we hit the road to visit some wineries in the area:

We ended up at four different places. The first (right outside the main gate of Motovun) had three offerings - a white, a rose, and a red, none of which were particularly tasty. C bought a bag of apples in lieu of any wine.

The second (Tomaz) had some tasty wines, particularly the red.  We were the only ones in the tasting room except for the proprietress and her children. Tasting wine with screaming kids is a little unusual - the atmosphere quickly disappears. C & E bought some wine.

The third tasting room (Benvenuti) was fancy, with a big wooden table that seated a dozen. While we were seated, three other parties came and went. We tried five different wines, and bought a bottle of a very unusual white to share in Italy in a week.

The fourth room (Cesar) was actually more of an olive oil place than a winery. I didn't really like the wine, but the olive oil was stunning. There were four different presses available, each one from a different tree. S & I bought a bottle of the spiciest oil.  Yum!

Then, back to Motovun to scout out dinner and cool off in the hotel room.  The hotel is at the top of the mountain on the main piazza, and also on the piazza is a little bar with some amusing signage.  

After our wine tasting, S & I retired to our room for a siesta while C & E walked town. We met for dinner, followed by a nice walk along the top fortifications of town. We had anticipated a drink at the mustache bar, but we were all a bit tired from the heat. Instead, a quick trip to the terrace to view the stars (astronomer S led us on our gaze) before heading in for the night. 

One more thing - it is HOT! Dubrovnik was in the high 80s, Split was in the mid-90s, and Motovun topped 104 yesterday. Plitvice was a nice break, with temps only hitting the low 80s in the sun.  If you visit Croatia in the summer, get a/c whenever possible.

*** SUNDAY ***

On Sunday, C & I rose early for a run up and down the mountain holding Motovun. After cleaning up and checking out of the hotel, we drove back across Croatia to Glina, a small town in the hills where C's family (the part that I'm not related to) comes from.  The drive was very revealing, particularly as we got back into the part of Croatia that was under siege 20 years ago.  Glina is a very depressed town, with buildings in ruin and many buildings full of bullet holes:

We grabbed lunch at a small cafe and poked around town a bit. One of Glina's darkest moments happened in 1941, when a handful of Croats massacred around 250 Serbs.  The massacre occurred in a catholic church, and the Serbs who were there had come thinking that they were going to be converted to Roman Catholicism from Serbian Orthodox.  It was a terrible event, and though the church was destroyed later, we think we found the foundation of the church today, right off the center square:

Staggering. We were all four in awe.

We didn't want to leave the region without seeking out a cemetery for C to search for some family. We tried a few different churches before finding one with a cemetery. The church itself was at the top of a hill, and while modest, it had a terrific painting behind the altar that was beautiful, mindful of the history of the region, and full of hope:

We scoured the cemetery in the hot sun looking for possible distant relatives for C. At the back of the cemetery, we found about five graves of people sharing his last name (well, the Croat version, not the bastardized American version). C wrote a note asking the reader to contact him and left it on one of the graves, and we drove off.

On the way out of town, we were reminded once again that though the war has passed, this region of Croatia is still a dangerous place:

It took about 90 minutes of backcountry driving to get to the hotel near the Zagreb airport, from which we'll all depart tomorrow: C & E back to the US, S & I on to Istanbul. We shared a nice dinner, talked about the highlights of the trip, what we'd do differently, where we'd like to go next time, and have retired to our rooms to rest a bit before the day of travel tomorrow. After a long day in the car, we weren't much up for more excitement.

This week with C & E has been a lot of fun! S & I have enjoyed traveling with them, and we hope to do it again soon!

So long from Zagreb! Tomorrow at this time, we should be in Turkey!

Plitvice National Park

No running this morning. We didn't have time for a full run, so C & I just did some cross training. We had to be ready for a 6.30 breakfast of cured meats, cheese, eggs, cereal, bread, coffee-so-thick-your-spoon-stands-up, orange juice, and ladyfingers.  Yum!

The early breakfast came on account of our wish to get to Plitvice National Park before the crowds.  Plitvice is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it features over a dozen lakes interconnected by a series of waterfalls.  The lakes are set in a gorge, the water is super-blue and crystal clear (you can count the trout!), and the whole series of lakes is ringed with walking trails. The largest lake has a series of boats that crisscross it, and there's a tram (that reminds me of the San Diego Zoo tram) that runs back and forth between a few of the resting areas. We wanted to get to the park early to avoid the crowds, and our 7.20 arrival time was perfect. As we were getting out of the car, a busload of elderly Americans was also getting disembarking. Fortunately, our legs are faster, so we were able to hit the trail quickly and get ahead of the Wisconsinites.

We spent the day wandering the park, climbing paths to up waterfalls, wishing we could swim the water, resting our weary legs on benches, and taking lots of photos. The weather cooperated - the temperature felt in the mid-to-high 70s, and the sun spent half of the day hidden behind cloud cover. Like most visitors to the parks, we started at the lower lakes and walked up (the views are better, as the waterfalls are generally in front of you). On the way up the lake, I used my wide angle lens and took a bunch of photos (including some shots that I photoshopped into HDR composites).  Here are a few:

Yes, those are really fish.

At the top of the falls... which you can't see...

Long shutter speeds == more drama.

At the top lake, we stopped for lunch. S & E both had cheeseburgers, which were super-greasy and tasted like fried spam. The 'cheese' part of the cheeseburger was a kraft single that the staff didn't even bother unwrapping before tossing it onto the plate. C & I fared significantly better: we had sausages (with spicy mustard) and Ozujsko beer, one of the Croatian national brews. It's a tasty lager and goes well with sausage (and, as I've discovered, fish, pizza, squid, octopus, salad, and meat pies).

At lunch, I swapped out lenses to my LensBaby Muse, which adds a nice optical blur to the images. They're much less refined, much more mysterious. Anyhow, here are some shots from the walk back to the car.

After the park, we returned to the house for a bit of a siesta and downtime. I caught up on some emails (but not the big ones that require a lot of reading) and did some photo processing before dinner.

Dinner was at the pension and was exceptional. We started out with some plum brandy. Then a salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and two kinds of cabbage. A chicken noodle soup. A platter of food including roast chicken, chicken skewers, grilled veal, two kinds of sausages, grilled trout, sauteed escarole, roast potatoes, steamed veggies, and braised mushrooms. More plum brandy. A cherry/raisin cake for dessert. More plum brandy.  Yum!

Tomorrow we're up early again.  We want to hit the road to get to Motovun in time to spend the day there.  So far, this Croatia trip has been super-successful - only two more full days here before we go our separate ways!

We're splitting from Split.

I'm a great punster.

6.00 - C and I rise for a morning run. We intended to do 4 miles, but we got completely lost, and by the time we got back to the hotel, we had done over 6.  Oops.  It's still hot and way humid, but S assures us that as we take on the last half of our Croatian journey, the weather will cool off significantly.

8.45 - S and I are packed and clean. We grab a pastry on the way to tour the cathedral, baptistry, and crypt in Diocletian's Palace.  The place was packed with tourists on a port-o-call from a big cruise ship, so there were small groups of people following tour guides with strident voices. It made the entire experience in the cathedral a little disappointing. The highlight was the few minutes that we were totally alone in the crypt, but as we were leaving, S kept turning around to make sure that I hadn't turned into a zombie.  Mu-ha-ha.

After that, we did a little shopping for honeys - success!  We found rosemary, cherry, fig, peach, and raisin.

10.45 - check-out of the hotel, followed by a quick walk to catch our airport shuttle. Once at the airport, it took us a good while to get on the road. There was some mix-up with the rental car reservation, so we had to replace our first car (which was an economy and didn't fit all of our bags) with a full-size. Once we were on the road, the driving was fine, and we arrived at our pension at 3.30pm.

We checked in easily, dropped our bags, and headed out for lunch. C, E, and S got pizza, but I ordered a local meat pie speciality that I'd been seeing on menus since Dubrovnik.  I stuck to seafood before, but now that we're in land, I'm shifting to meat.  The meat was delicious! Lamb and beef, spiced, and filled with a little bit of cheese.  Yum!

The restaurant we ate at was also doubled as a ski equipment shop and what looks like it could only be a training hill.  Here's S in front of the shop (which was closed):

And C and I in front of the lift.

We wondered if perhaps the lift took skiers over the hill to another part of the mountain with more skiing, but a quick review of the trail map suggested otherwise:

After dinner, a quick drive around town to get our bearings, and then back to the pension for a chill night. I did some laundry, am going through emails, etc. We've been talking about a very early start tomorrow to beat the heat, so it might be an early night to bed for us all...

Solta

C & I got up to take a 6 mile run, and at 5.30am, it was already hot and humid. We were glad that last night, we decided to spend the day on the water, taking a day trip to nearby Trogir. Unfortunately, the boat to Trogir wasn't running today, so at the last minute, we booked a trip to Solta and the Blue Lagoon. The trip cost about $50/head and included lunch. At 9am, we boarded the boat and said goodbye to Split:

Goodbye to Split

 90 minutes later, we arrived in Solta, a sleepy island southwest of Split:

There wasn't much to do on the island, but we had three hours to kill, so we got a coffee, did some shopping, and went to the beach.  We found a shop that had some local-grown delicacies, and we bought some apple/rosemary marmelade and some honey bitters:

Then, we swam at the beach.  It was stunning. The bluest water I've ever seen.  Clean, clear, refreshing.  Awesome. The only downside was that you had to wear sandals in the water so that you didn't prick your feet on the sea urchins. Still, beat this: 

We swam this. Oh yes we did.

After lounging at Solta, we got back on the boat for a lunch of fish or chicken, and white wine. S had the chicken (two oily pieces, which she enjoyed), and I had the fish (six small grilled animals, which took a lot of time/effort to clean). While eating, we motored over to the Blue Lagoon, which, if you can believe it, topped the water at Solta. We moored the boat a few hundred feet offshore, and went swimming. C and I jumped off the top of the boat into the cool blue water, and we generally had a great time. S snapped this pic of E, C, and I near one of the abandoned islands.

Um, wow.

 Then, back to Split to get cleaned up and grab dinner. Along the way, I caught a few more shots of town:

Cathedral

The Riva (main promenade) full of diners.

Today was one of the best days ever. While it was sweltering in Split, we were comfortable onboard the boat.  Tomorrow, we leave Split and head north to the lakes. Excellent!

Split

Woke at 6 in Dubrovnik for a final run through the city with C.

At 8.30, Dino came and checked us out. We commiserated about the bad Croatian loss to Spain last night.

9.00am - we're on the move! Cab ride to the bus station.

10.00am - the bus to Split pulls out. 5 hours of twisty roads and bad a/c await.

3.00pm - we pull into Split and before we're even off the bus, we're accosted by an army of people shouting 'accomodation?' at us, as if we're likely to book a room with someone who verbally assaults a bus.

After arriving in Split, we find our hotel, start a batch of laundry, and wander the city for a few hours.

One of the main centerpieces of Split is Diocletian's Palace, the retirement home of an ancient Roman emperor that has now become a center of commercial excess. The basement of the Palace is a museum, so we wandered there.

After the palace, we wandered Split some more, discovering Sarah's house:

And two signs painted on a wall near a club, clearly meant to discourage what apparently is a common practice.

Dinner was excellent! Sarah had lasagna and I had sea bass. Dessert was tasty, and after-dinner drinks means that I have a drunk wife at home!  

Tomorrow, C & I will rise friggin' early to take a run before we all try to take a boat ride to a nearby island. Split hits 98 in the shade today, so we're anxious to get out on the water and away from the heat.

Busch Gardens Europe

C and I got up early this morning to take a run. We ran up to the top of the cable car mountain, then down the back of the mountain and along the highway (like, in the shoulder) for a bit until we were able to get back onto regular surface streets. The run took us about 1:10 and lasted just under 6 miles, only perhaps 1/4 mile of which was flat surface.

Our first stop as a fearsome foursome was to walk the ancient walls of Dubrovnik. The old town is surrounded by a huge wall, which has been in place for hundreds of years but has only been used in combat once (in the early 1990's). The walls are a major tourist attraction, so we had lots of company on our journey in the hot hot sun.

Good views from the wall.

Sports facilities adjust to the walls, not vice-versa.

Apres-walk, we were hot, tired, dehydrated, and hungry, so we sat down for some pizza at a place that the apartment owner Dino recommended.  C & E had a margarita pie; S & I ate mushroom. Then, fortified, we wandered in search of an art gallery and a music shop that S found in her guidebook.  Both shops were closed, but we did find some other jewelry shops that were quite lovely. Both ladies got a little something.

Then, ice cream and a siesta!

An observation: Dubrovnik is the most Busch-Gardens-Williamsburg-like place I've ever been. The Old Town is manicured and pristine. There are well-marked (in English) places to meet tours, buy food, buy gifts. The attractions are clearly labeled, the main part of town is ADA-compliant... There is an exceptional amount of effort put into making this town tourist-friendly.  There's even a cable car!

After the siesta, C, E, and I went to a beach half a block away for a swim.  'Beach' is a generous term, as it was really a rocky ramp with cement and a ladder. Still, it was a beautiful swim. The water was clear and comfortable. It was sunny when we swam, but I snapped this later.

Before dinner, we had a drink at Buza bar, a bar sitting on the edge of a cliff, literally through a hole in the fortifications. We sat at a table drinking our drinks, staring at the Adriatic, watching people jump off of rocks into the water below. Awesome.

Then, a dinner of gnocchi (for the ladies) and stuffed squid (for the guys). The food was tolerable, but the venue, a terrace covered with vines, was exceptional. Then, a walk home down the main street with some ice cream.

Tomorrow we leave Dubrovnik for Split. Five hours on a bus, passing through Bosnia on the way. Whee!

Dubrovnik HDR

I took a few HDR shots yesterday and processed them this morning.  Dig:

On to Dubrovnik

HAPPY FATHERS DAY TO DADS OLD AND NEW!

12.21pm - We got up shortly after 3am to get to the airport to catch our flight out of Cluj to Dubrovnik by way of Bucharest. The flight to Bucharest was fine, and we've spent the last 5 hours in the international terminal waiting for the connecting flight. Here's how we passed our time:

- Figure out how to get to the international terminal (hint: the words 'arrival' and 'departure' are used interchangeably when posting directions)

- Watch an episode of Mad Men (Don and Joan get drunk, Megan throws spaghetti, Lane has money problems)

- Read a book. 

- Eat overpriced airport food. 

- Wander the duty-free shops. Did you know there are SIX different kinds of Martini & Rossi vermouth? Rosso, Rossetti, Extra Dry, Bianca, d'Oro, and Golden. Yes,  know d'Oro means 'golden,' but I swear they were different bottles and different prices. I wonder - what do the last three bottles do?

- Watch the Tuscany episode of No Reservations. Yum! Now we've watched the programming for all of our destinations. 

- Play video games. 

We carefully managed our cash, and we just spent the last 5 lei in a vending machine. We are officially done with Romanian money.

1.05pm - in the airplane en route to Dubrovnik. Below us is either Romania or Serbia. Or both!

There are two in-flight magazines. Insight is your standard inflight mag, bilingual in Romania and English. The text was clearly translated from the Romanian - there's a lot of Engrish in it. Also, apparently Bucharest is getting its first Benehanna restaurant. It's in the ground floor of the Howard Johnson's. Suddenly, it's 1965!

The other inflight mag is called Sky Lady, and it's just for women! Because women like to fly places too! It's full of articles about where to go on vacation with your girlfriends and what kind of swimsuit will suit you if you have a grandmother-shaped body. 

10.14pm - We're here, safe and sound. It's now quite late and we're all tired, so I'll be brief: Dubrovnik is beautiful. Rocky, arid, formidable. C&E met us at the airport and we took a cab into town. We dropped our stuff, had an excellent seafood feast (grilled tuna, swordfish, squid, octopus, shrimp, and more!), wandered Old Town Dubrovnik, rode up the cable car to watch the sun set over the city, and then came home. 

When we got home, we had to pack up and move into another apartment, as the shower in our unit was leaking and causing damage. We were grumpy to move (none of us had slept more than 4 hours in the last 24), but move we did. Our new apartment is nicer. Tomorrow will start with a run for me and C.  Here are some photos:

S, E, and C outside the hotel.

E & C stare in awe.

S is dubious...

...but is pleasantly proven wrong.

Old things are pretty.

Old Town Dubrovnik from the top of the cable car.