Jen and Rebecca Leave Zagreb in Search of Open Museums

Because we felt like we’d pretty much already seen what there was to see of Zagreb without being able to go into any museums, and we still had a car, we used the old trusty Google to see what we could explore outside the city for the day.  (Both of our guidebooks are for all of Eastern Europe, so there’s not as much detail for more out-of-the-way places.)  Jen was able to find us some castles along what seemed to be good grape-growing country (and thus possible wine tastings?), and we sure do love castles, so we hit the road leading out of Zagreb.  First stop:  Varazdin.  We were so excited to see that the castle doors were open, ready for visitors!

Sadly, the museum inside the castle was closed.  Really?! Don’t tourists other than us ever travel on Mondays?

Shaun loves castles too

Not to be deterred, we took a lot of photos of the outside of the castle and the cute little town.  We tried to check out the market, only to arrive as it was closing down for the day at 1:00.  (Apparently people only shop in the mornings.)  We avoided running over the throngs of high school students flooding the sidewalks and streets to drive to the town’s cemetery, purportedly one of the most beautiful in Europe (but we’re pretty sure all European towns think that about their cemeteries.)  This one was designed to look like a park with lots of trees and bushes, so we agreed, it was pretty.  But you can only spend so much time in a cemetery, especially on a hot day.

Having seen pretty much all there was to see, since again, none of the town’s museums were open, we went a little further down the road, through some gorgeous scenery, to another castle, at Trakoscan.  This one looked even more castle-like than the last one, and was situated on a lovely hill.  We were fervently hoping the trek up said lovely hill would reward us with a castle actually open for visitors.  And lo and behold, it was open!  Huzzah! Even better, there were pretty much no other guests, so we were able to wander at our leisure.  And almost the whole castle was open and well-refurbished.  Definitely worth the trip.

Success!  We found an open museum!

And it even had gorgeous scenery!

The goal for the drive back to Zagreb was wine.  We realized we’d missed the entrance to a winery a bit too late, but instead of turning around, we kept going, assuming we’d see more.  Alas, no.  Only one winery on the road back! But we figured we would just treat ourselves to a bottle of wine with dinner, as it was our last night and all.  Don’t judge us too harshly, but we wanted to have a good, nice meal on our last night, so we ate at the same place we’d eaten at the night before.  And we were not disappointed.  It was just as delicious as the previous night (and we even ordered different things!)

Before going home to pack, we stopped in at the one museum in Zagreb open on Mondays, the Museum of Broken Relationships.  It’s pretty much what it sounds like.  People have donated items that remind them of relationships that have ended and each tells a brief story of the object.  Somewhat funny, somewhat sad, somewhat depressing.  But Rebecca in particular likes quirky museums, and this one was actually open!

We are definitely sad that vacation is over, but we both seem to be allergic to Croatia (or each other) so maybe going home will at least result in less sneezing and watery eyes?

Jen and Rebecca See Zagreb from the Outside

We had a leisurely morning, in part because the restaurant was pretty busy with fellow breakfasters and in part because our first stop of the day was only 10 km away and didn't open until 10:00.  Because Rebecca likes freaking Jen out with below ground enclosed spaces, and we hadn't seen enough caves the day before, we went to the Barac Caves where we toured the Upper cave system.  We're pretty sure most of the people in our tour were Italian, and we were the only native English speakers in the group, but the friendly tour guide gave his tour in English.  Rebecca also did her good deed for the day by exchanging some kunas for Euros with fellow tourists, so that they could see the caves without having to drive into town to find an ATM.  Now where will we be able to spend Euros?

All helmeted up for the cave tour.

Cave.  We saw more wildlife today...bats!

Sadly, the cool air of the cave didn't seem to have the healing properties for our sniffly noses/allergies/sinus issues as one of the signs promoted about the cave indicated it had.  At least we still have some Kleenex. 

A few more miles down the road, we stopped to see a few more waterfalls because we just hadn't seen enough yesterday.  The Rastoke park in Slunj had a little ethnographic museum (quaint and quick to walk through) and a nice grassy park area to walk around (plus another small cave!) on our way to talking more waterfall photos.  It was a nice road stop...before we'd barely even gotten on the road to Zagreb.

Jen with waterfall.

Rebecca with waterfall.  (I think it's the same one as above. That one was the most photogenic.)

Shaun with waterfall.

We got back on the road, stopping a bit further on for lunch.  We were congratulating ourselves on ordering before two tour buses showed up to unload their guests, but little did we know that these tour buses must be regulars here and the cooks srved up the bus drivers' meals before they got to ours.  An hour later, with both buses back on the road again, we finally got our lunches.  They were pretty greasy, but we ate them anyway.  At least the Cokes had arrived early, so we could nurse them while we waited.

Getting the rest of the way to Zagreb was a breeze, and we finally made use of the wifi to GPS our way to our apartment, which is outside the city center. Given our relatively museum-light trip thus far, we figured we'd make up for lost time during our time in Zagreb.  But apparently we should have read the guidebooks about Zagreb BEFORE booking the dates of our travel.  Apparently museums in Zagreb are closed Sunday afternoons AND Mondays.  So we spent our afternoon walking around a relatively quiet Zagreb, walking past all the museums we wouldn't be able to enter.

Rebecca put out at the closed Museum of Arts and Crafts.

Jen outside the closed opera house.

At least there were pretty things to see outside too.  This is St. Mark's Church.

Once we felt like we'd seen pretty much all the outdoor sites of Zagreb we were bound to see, we headed to Tkalciceva Street, the town's main promenade and home of a lot of outdoor seating for drinks.  It was fun to sit in the bustling atmosphere, enjoying a beer as the sun set.  We were also pleasantly surprised with the restaurant we chose for dinner.  Delicious food, delicious Posip wine (from the same vineyard we'd done our tasting at), good friendly service, and some fun conversation with the Brits sitting at the next door table.  Zagreb redeemed itself in our estimation in the evening, even without museums to see!

Jen with big beer.

Post-dinner happiness.

Jen and Rebecca See a Waterfall, then Another Waterfall (But No Wild Boars)

Our hotel near Plitvice Lakes National Park is in a pretty remote location, so now that we're back from our hike for the day, we're forced to break into one of the bottles of wine we bought on Peljesac Peninsula for entertainment--though we stopped at about 5 road-side markets looking for a corkscrew and after failing to find one, ended up politely asking the fine folks at the neighboring restaurant to open it for us for the small fee of a sip.  We have not yet learned our lesson from the Johnsons, to travel with our own bar set!  We have also turned on Croatian television for the first time this trip to see what it's like, and it turns out it's very religious.  We can find religious-themed shows in several languages, including English, but nothing much seems entertaining.  Where's the USA network with its mindless crime shows when you need it?

We did find Iranian Bob Ross on Iran TV! We may find this funnier because we've drunk a bottle of wine. (Bob Ross ended, so we've found an old Bob Hope-Bing Crosby On the Road movie in English to watch.)

But back to our day outside of the hotel room...  We outfitted ourselves in sporty-girl attire (little did we know hiking in Plitvice in pointy ballet flats or wedge heels is perfectly acceptable), were served more food than we could possibly eat for breakfast to fuel our day (included with our room, hooray!), and then we spent the entire day hiking in Plitvice.  But maybe "hiking" is too extreme.  Given the crowds, and relatively low-impact paths, it was really more of a walk, or at times, a stroll.  But that didn't make the views any less pretty or breathtaking.  It was fairly relaxing meandering through Croatia's first national park (declared as such in the 1950s).  Our only disappointment was that the guidebooks told us there were wild boars in the park.  But the only wildlife we saw was ducks and trout.  Harkening back to our Galapagos trip, Jen had much fun taking oodles of fish and bird pictures.

Big fish, little fish.

The lakes were all very blue, and clear, and there were plenty of happy little trees.  And there were so many waterfalls that though certain parts of the trail had too many people, we could pretty much always hear a waterfall.  It was peaceful and beautiful, and a great way to spend the entire day!

Blue, reflective water.

Rebecca with a waterfall.

Jen with another waterfall.

Shaun with yet another waterfall (in his ducky tie, worn today in honor of the many ducks in Plitvice.)

Yup, this is a different waterfall.

Have you gotten the point yet that there are a lot of waterfalls in this park?

Can't stop uploading awesome waterfall pictures!

We took many, many photos of all the great scenery, making it hard to choose the best ones here.  (Jen hopes to have a new wall photo and screen saver photo from this batch of photos and we think she has an excellent chance of finding the perfect ones.) But lest you think all we saw were lakes and waterfalls in Plitvice, we also saw caves!

Rebecca in a cave.

Jen in a cave.

After close to 8 hours in the park, including a few ferry rides, refreshment breaks, and a tram ride most of the way back to the car park, in addition to all of the stopping for photo ops, we left the park in our search in vain for a corkscrew, but we were successful at finding dinner at a restaurant other than the one attached to our hotel.  Spaghetti for us, followed by ice cream, per the norm for our trip (Rebecca's truck-stop ice cream from the previous day left a little to be desired, however.)  Now that we've exhausted ourselves with all that hiking, a bottle of wine, and the sad Croatian television options, we should hit the hay for tomorrow's adventures.

Wine opening victory!

Jen and Rebecca Split for Split (and Points Beyond)

We managed to leave our soba earlier than every day proceeding it to pick up our rental car to split town. But in vain!  No one was at the rental car place when we arrived, and once they finally showed up, the renting process took forever.  So an hour and a half later, we finally had the car loaded up and heading north to the city of Split (yes it's called Split). At least we got the promised automatic car, so Jen could take her turn driving, and it was even upgraded for free to a Passat.  Fancy!

Though we took the "fast route" it really only cut 30-45 minutes off the drive time to Split since the divided highway hasn't made it all the way to Dubrovnik.  So Jen got to experience driving on plenty of curvy mountain roads too!  We made it to Split in time for lunch (Jen had more pizza, Rebecca a risotto with gorgongozola.  (We love that that Venetians ruled this coast for awhile, brought their food with them, then left it behind at all the restaurants.)  Then we had a few hours to wander through the Old Town, originally built by Emperor Diocletian for his retirement.

Here we are with a bust of Diocletian in the excavated palace cellars.

Jen in the cellars. We escaped the throng of tourists below ground!

Rebecca at the Silver Gate entrance to the palace.

We also went into the Cathedral of St. Dominus, which we liked for the ironic, poetic justice that it was once built to be Diocletian's tomb, but was re-purposed and rennovated to be a church by later generations, dedicated to several saints who were martyred by Diocletian.  Ha ha, Diocletian!

The bell tower of the cathedral, which we didn't actually climb, with the older portion of Diocletian's palace columns in the front.

Above our heads at Jupiter's Palace (which became St. John's Baptistery post-Diocletian.)

We only spent a few hours in Split so that we could get back on the road and find our hotel for the night near Plitvice Lakes National Park, about three hours north of Split.  Because of the very handy A1 expressway, this wasn't a challenging drive.  It went pretty quickly, and because of those well-labeled roads, we even found our cute, nicely kept hotel easily.  And there's even a restaurant attached, and since we're kind of located in a remote area, we were able to eat and head to bed early to energize for a full day of hiking tomorrow!

Jen enjoying her much-deserved Croatian beer after a full day of driving.

Jen and Rebecca Wait out the Storm

This blog post is coming to you live from our rental car.  Why?  Because we have wifi in the rental car and we'd better put it to good use.  We thought it would come in handy for GPS purposes should we get lost on our way up north, but thus far, the path to Split has been very well labeled.  So blogging it is!

Yesterday morning we ventured out in the thunder, ominous clouds and finally the inevitable rain to our kayaking embarkation location.  Not surprisingly, the weather had thwarted our kayaking plans.  The nice guys putting away all the kayaks told us we could come back at 4:00 to kayak later, but for safety reasons, we could not go kayaking in the storm.  No problem, we said.  We had no intention of risking life and limb (or being that cold, wet, and miserable) on kayaks with lighting all around.  Safety first!  So we scurried into a nearby cafe to wait out the storm, enjoying our coffee like the Europeans do, which is slowly.  It rained long and hard enough for us to have to flag the waiter down (no easy task) to get second rounds of coffee since they don't like to serve the venti size in Europe.

Rebecca relaxing with cappuccino number two.

After an hour and a half of lingering, however, we wanted to get up and move around, even though it was still raining.  Sadly, Rebecca's umbrella broke upon opening it, so we were on a mission to find a new one before going too far.  Because she is a lover of tacky touristy items, she bought one that says Croatia all over it.

Yup, still raining.

Since outdoor activities were not at all appealing in the rain, we decided to head to some of the museums and religious houses of Dubrovik's Old Town.  We went to the synagogue, St. Blaise's Church (Dubrovnik's patron saint), and then the Rupe Ethnographic Museum which used to be a granery and now houses a collection of traditional clothes with their Konavle buttons, farm equipment, and other handcrafts.  The rain was mostly done by this point, but to let the dripping from rooftops dry up, we stopped for pizza at Dubrovnik's oldest pizzeria (so they say).  With the sun now peeking out, we decided to head out of Old Town to take the cable car up to the top of Mount Srd where we would have good views of the city and could visit the Museum of the Defenders of Dubrovnik to learn more about the impact of the recent war on the region.

The sun returns!  This was before Jen realized how far the drop-off was on the other side of this wall.

Jen from Mount Srd with the Old Town and Lokrum Island below.

By the time we came back to town, it was time to meet for our sea kayaking adventure.  Apparently the later departure time is the "sunset" kayaking time, and as we all know, sunsets are supposed to be romantic.  So it was us with four other couples.  How romantic for us!  Oh well.  We had a few issues maintaining a straight kayaking trajectory, but we never got lost from our group, and only hit one rock head-on (though we bumped into fellow kayakers' kayaks a few times.)  We had sandwiches and some swim time at a beach that is only accessible by kayaks, though it wasn't so exclusive as that makes it sound, because there are a lot of kayaking trips departing from Dubrovnik throughout the day.

Ready to take off.

On the open sea, with the Old Town in the background.

The one bonus of the sunset tour was that we got wine when we got back to shore.  After three plastic cups of wine and some fun conversation with the Brits in our tour group, we cleaned up before having a late dinner, as we were still dripping sea water.  Jen was pretty well tuckered out, but apparently wine wakes Rebecca up, so we managed to be a moderately lively twosome for a late meal.  Jen was generally pleased with her fish, but Rebecca should have asked about the shell status of the scampi on the menu.  Having to work so hard to get to the food you've ordered is annoying (and messy.)

We had to finish this blog post from our next hotel since the car wifi failed, and once we got that fixed, the computer battery died.  So more later on our drive up the coast from Dubrovnik, through Split to our destination for the next two nights, Plitvice Lakes National Park.

Jen and Rebecca Drive Through the Land of Vineyards

It’s Thursday morning and we thought we’d be doing laundry right now at the launderette conveniently located down the stairway into town and near our room, but we foolishly forgot to check the opening time yesterday and it doesn’t open for another hour. Oops. So we have some time to blog, listening to the thunder roll in that may jeopardize our sea-kayaking excursion. (Noooo!)


Yesterday morning, we hiked to the public car park to retrieve the rental car and headed out of town again, and again north, though not crossing any borders this time. We veered to the left instead, crossing over to the Peljesac Peninsula, known as good grape-growing territory. First we stopped in Ston for Rebecca to search in vain for coffee in a to-go cup, and for Jen to get throat lozenges (not in vain. Jen ate them like candy the rest of the day.) We snapped a few photos of the great wall of Ston surrounding the old town but we were too early in the week for the Ston Wall Marathon that will be held there this coming weekend. Sounds fun?

Second longest wall in the world, after China's.

We drove the rest of the way to Orebic to catch our ferry to Korcula in a rainstorm, on twisty turny roads, sometimes behind slow-moving garbage trucks.  We feared that it might interfere with our plans for the day, but luckily, the skies had cleared by the time we parked the car and boarded the ferry for our 15 minute ride to the island.

Town of Korcula.  It has a wall around it too, but nothing compared to Ston's wall.

After a not-so-quick lunch (it’s Europe, after all), we set out to explore the Old Town of Korcula.  We stopped by the City Museum for a history lesson.  In its long history, Korcula has been invaded by several different armies:  the Venetians, Ottomans, and Hapsburgs (and probably more that I can’t remember).  Because Rebecca likes to climb high things and she knows that it freaks Jen out, we had to venture up to the top of the church tower.  Admittedly, the views were impressive.  And, it gave Jen a chance to find the Marco Polo house, technically the house that was rebuilt on the site where he was presumably born. 

Jen, very excited to see the house where the house Marco Polo lived may have once stood.

And there wasn’t much to see at the “Marco Polo House” so we ventured out of the city walls to find a swimming spot.  This time we found a small pebbly beach—pretty much any small patch of land next to the water seems to quality as a beach in this country—and took a dip.  On our walk back to catch the ferry, we had our daily dose of ice cream.

Why yes, ice cream IS delicious.

Sadly, we didn’t plan well with the ferry schedule.  We assumed it was hourly, but it wasn’t.  So with an hour to kill, we got Jen an alcoholic beverage and Rebecca her long-awaited coffee for the day (though Rebecca may have dozed off waiting for it to be served.)  The drive back through the peninsula went a lot more quickly than the rainy drive there, which was good because we hoped to find a few wineries to stop at for tastings.  Our first stop was unsuccessful, but happily we found two willing to give us tastes a little further along.  We like the posip white the best!

Jen, sad that this winery was closed.

Posip tasting victory!

We were happy to find a bottle of posip to go with our pasta dinners back in Dubrovnik.  We wandered through town a bit more and managed to find parts of the small old town that we hadn’t stumbled across yet.  And because we could, we had second ice cream cones for the day.

Yes, we're on vacation, and are therefore being a bit gluttonous.

An overnight thunderstorm woke us up with booming thunder right over our heads, and that storm seems to be returning this morning.  Gr!  Time to figure out if we’ll be able to get on kayaks or if we’ll have to find something else to do with our day.  Rebecca still hasn’t dragged Jen up the cable car, so there’s that!

Jen and Rebecca Cross Borders

We picked up the rental car with no major issues this morning, but Rebecca did have to remember how to drive a manual as it had been two years (when we were in Scotland) since she'd driven one (and then the gear shift was on her left rather than her right).  Given that Jen has driven a manual much more recently, maybe she should have driven?  But she is still a little nervous about her new driving skills, especially in the hilly/mountainous region of Croatia where we are right now, so Rebecca put her mind to it and realized it wasn't so hard to remember.

It took a few hours, three border crossings and one filling of petrol to get us to Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but we made it in time for lunch.  Because Bosnia wanted its own route to the sea when they were creating borders after the recent war, we actually went through a stretch of B and H along the coast, then drove through more of Croatia, before crossing another B and H border to get to our destination.  Much to Jen's chagrin, none of these border crossings elicited a passport stamp.  We must look pretty innocuous, because the border guards hardly even looked to see if we were the people in our passport photos at all.

After lunch in a quiet off-the-main-busy-tourist-drag (chicken kebabs for Jen, more grilled mushrooms than she could possibly eat for Rebecca) we started seeing Mostar in earnest. We began at the Crooked Bridge, which was built as a small practice run for the rebuilding of the main attraction, the Old Bridge (Stari Most), destroyed in the recent war, but rebuilt and reopened to much fanfare in 2004.

Jen with the Crooked Bridge.  It's really not so crooked.

We proceeded along the Rick Steves' proscribed walking tour of Mostar (because Rebecca is a nerd like that) and saw the rebuilt Franciscan Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, some buildings still pockmarked with bullets and mortar hits from the war, crossed the Stari Most and survived a trek through the bazaar selling all sorts of trinkets to get to the Koski-Mehmed-Pasha Mosque on the Muslim side of the Neretva River.  (Mostar's river divides the Catholic side from the Muslim side still today.)

 

Self portrait from the top of a minaret with Stari Most in the background.

(We're so respectful, we wore head scarves to enter the mosque.)

View from Stari Most of the minaret we climbed, despite the heat.

Once we made it back down the twisting steps of the minaret, we headed back into the heat to find the New Muslim Cemetary.  During the war, the Bosniaks remained indoors much of the day and only emerged after dark in order to avoid the violence of the war.  Due to this, much of the existing cemetary space was unavailable, however, this area was relatively safe from the Croat sniper fire.  Thus, every tomb in this cemetary is dated 1993, 1994 or 1995.



Our tour continued onto one of the three Turkish-style houses open to visitors, with a detour through the fruit market (a lot of confusion later, we ended up with two pounds of grapes).  No one lives in the Biscevic Turkish House today , but it did give us a view of what life was once like.  Plus we had to take our shoes off, which gave them a nice rest from the walking on cobblestones.  It also gave Rebecca a chance to have a photo shoot with Shaun.

Shaun at the hookah.

Turkish house pet turtle, having his afternoon cucumber snack.

We walked through the modern, non-touristy end of the road for a respite from crowds, then, after our daily afternoon ice cream cone, we headed back to the car from whence we came.  This time, we didn't fare so well walking through the market, and may have left a jewelry store a few Convertible Marks/Kunas/Euros/Dollars lighter, but with pretty sparkly things to show for it! (I hope Misty understands our need for foreign jewelry.  Sorry, Misty!)

Outside of town, we stopped at a vineyard and despite a language barrier with the friendly owner (Jen's high school German came in handy here, as it was the only common language spoken) we had a refrehsing glass of wine, grown and fermented on site, with some cheese olives and fresh grapes. We even got a tour of the casks downstairs.  We survived the ride home in the dark on the twisty sea-side roads, and were thoroughly exhausted by the time we made it back for a late night snack and bedtime.

Shaun with rental car.