Croatia September 2009

We've been in Europe 2.5 weeks, in Florence 4 days, and we're just getting the first two weeks in Croatia published because this is the first day that hasn't been blue skies and Paul cannot bear to spend any time indoors when the sun shines. For those of you who prefer a high-level, here's the executive summary:
. Croatia has some really beautiful old historic places, with amazing fortifying stone walls.
. We saw only a few, but the islands are fantastic, both historic and resort-ful.
. Croatia ended up with one of the longest, most breathtaking coastlines we've seen, with stony mountains running right along the coast.
. Prices are about half what they are in major US or EU cities.
. The food is really good, especially grilled sea food. Spectacular oysters in Ston.

Following are lots of details, for those who have plenty of time.

Dubrovnik
A short 19 hours and 4 legs after departing San Francisco, we arrived in Dubrovnik September 16th, and were most delighted when our luggage was delivered early the following morning, We’d anticipated this eventuality and carried sundries, undies, meds and computer. Our apartment rental hosts (found via the home exchange web site) Pero and Rachael, met our plane, spoke fluent Croatian to the nice Lost Luggage Lady, then gave us a quick orientation of old town Dubrovnik (Wow!).

Our first two days we visited every church, synagogue and museum in old town; the pictures of the 120 young men who lost their lives defending Dubrovnik from the Serbs gave us a more visceral understanding of the tragedies of the 1991-1992 Serbian invasion. Then we climbed the hills (especially nice at sunset) to view the amazing fortification walls and forts from above with pink skies and the blue Adriatic sea beyond.




















Third day a boat trip to three islands with a freshly grilled fish picnic and barely enough time to hike to an ancient fort at the top of one island,














then to scamper back down for a quick dip in the refreshing Adriatic.

We met people from many parts of the world, most noisily eight (8) Texans who shared the objective of getting drunk 11 days in a row. Free wine on the boat and bar visits on each island helped them to once again achieve their goal. I overheard one say that Obama doesn’t have a birth certificate, but decided it best to leave him in his ignorance.

On the other hand, we met a quiet, just retired, family doctor from Canada who wondered why the US is making such a big deal about universal health care. He and Paul had a rousing time agreeing on every point. On the third hand, the Croatians seem to be a gentle civilized people who love one another and speak in gentle tones, but never ask me (Danice) to compare them to the Italians with their joy for life.

The fourth day we hung around Dubrovniks old port like old timers, ate lots of grilled squids, mussels, etc., watched swimmers and divers, and then just before sunset took a long walk atop the town’s fortified walls, rebuilt after the bombings of 1992. Great time of day - not too hot, beautiful light, great views down across the town and out to sea. Then beers at Buza II, a bar on the rocks high above the Adriatic that played good Joe Cocker blues and provided an incredible view of the sunset at sea. Or perhaps the sea at sunset?




















Montenegro
Monday we picked up a rental car and drove south to Kotor, on an incredible Montenegro bay, Surrounded by mountains it is a beautiful place. The huge glassy smooth bay is well protected due to a bottleneck opening that was easily defended throughout history.



Kotor was one of many cities under the control of Venice during their turn at power in the Mediterranean. Guidebooks indicated much of the architecture was in the Venetian style, but they mostly just looked old.








For us the most interesting sight was the great wall making it’s way over 700 feet up the mountain. One can walk the wall, but on this hot day we skipped the experience. We saved ourselves, as it turned out, for a better wall to come in Ston.

















On the way back to Dubrovnik we stopped at a little town, Perast, right on the bay. Very charming and the view was gorgeous. A town that was very prosperous until the plague hit it in the 14th century.















The fall was most evident in the partly finished church, financed by a Venetian who apparently
lost his fortune as a result of the plague and left town.

















Up the Dalmatian Coast
Next day we drove north along an amazing coast to Ston on the Peljesac peninsula, where we climbed and walked a huge wonderful wall, then rewarded ourselves with a lunch of the best raw oysters ever, scampi and octopus salad.














We drove further up the peninsula, following a slow moving truck through the narrow, twisting mountain roads,nervously arriving just in time to catch the ferry to Korcula.

It is a beautiful island town jutting out on a peninsula (this geography, much like Dubrovnik‘s made it easy to defend).




















There were, regrettably, the dreaded cruise ships, but the cruisees go back to the boat for dinner so we had the island in a pleasant off season mode at night.

Two ferries back to the mainland














and we found a wonderful beach town, Brela, further up the coast. One of the things that makes Brela so physically attractive is how the trees c0me right down to the water. We had a great room just off the beach so decided to invest in more sunscreen and stay another night.

The Adriatic is warm and inviting, with island mountain vistas across the way, the town had good restaurants, our local bar had great domestic brandy, there were just enough people parading the beach walk, and the sun really knows how to set.














We spent one night in Split, to see (heck live in) Diocletian’s Palace, built as his retirement home by the Roman Emperor of the same name around 305.














When we arrived late morning all the cafes were mobbed with young people. This party continued until the middle of the afternoon, when (we guessed) they went to lunch. The original outer walls are still pretty much intact and provide the back wall to businesses and homes now occupying the palace.

It was great to see the town after the tour groups had left. At night the atmospherics are terrific. The lighting is subtle. The din of all the out door cafes and restaurants is more of a hum. Drinking the local brandy in the small courtyard of our local bar, the warm summer breezes, the low buzz of the conversation, the ancient walls created a total atmospheric hit. The real entertainment at the café was a beautiful young woman hosting what seemed to be a promotional party for Beck’s beer. She was flitting around in some of the longest thin legs, tightest jeans, highest heels, flowing blond hair and an off one shoulder Beck’s black tee shirt. Paul almost had a heart attack when we were first sitting down and she asked him to join the party. He turned her down, and she may never get over it.





Next day we pushed North along a coastline that makes us want to throw rocks at Big Sur. We stopped to see a beautiful Gothic and Venetian cathedral in Sibenik,
















with a huge statue of the architect out front… I’m sure (my ex) Patrick deserves but has not yet received such tribute,
Heading on north along the coast; however, our new GPS we call Gertie led us terribly astray. We told Gertie no toll roads to keep us along the coast, so she routed us up a long peninsula which apparently requires a ferry ride, with no regard for schedules, to rejoin the mainland. We discovered the error and were so angry over the time lost, which could impact our sunset drive, that we turned her off for the remainder of the day, hoping by the next day she would be chastised. This "time-out" apparently worked.

in Karlobad we found a nice lady, Nada, sitting on the highway corner advertising a Sobe in her house for $40/nite. An OK place, so we took it and still made it to the waterfront in time for sunset.














Then to a Pizzeria for a grilled squid dinner.

Here we explain what we understand about Sobes. These are rooms or apartments in private homes - sort of. They can range from a single room with shared bath to an apartment with kitchen, living room, etc. What makes them particularly attractive to the retired traveled is their price. Staying in the old town in Korcula was $50, in Diocletian’s Palace $90, staying right on the beach in Brela was $70. By contrast a hotel room in the middle of old town in Rovinj was $200. Of course, we never would consider a shared bath.

Croatia’s Istria Peninsula
On up the coast towards Opatija on the beautiful Istria peninsula… Gertie the GPS proved her value getting us into and right back out of an overcrowded resort, casino, port city. Carrying sufficient fruit we were not desperate for a touristy lunch. We held out for authentic food in Pazin.



















This was like visiting the large port cities in Italy, then finally going inland to the hill towns; well not that good, but like that. We spent the night in Motovun, a very lovely hill town with spectacular views.


































Paul watched the only channel we got, a terrible Snypes/Harrelson/Lopez action drama about the NY subway police; terribly implausible and badly written, but hey it was in English.

Toured more hill towns, then on to Rovinj or Rovigno as the Italians call it (the Italians essentially controlled the peninsula until 1945 when Tito and the Slavs took control, and in retribution for their oppression under the ethnic Italians caused a mass exodus of the Italians).













v
So close to Italy we can smell the garlic, but not there yet. Sept 30th we take a 7:00AM Ferry to Venice, then the train to Florence.

Vienna Venice Todi

Hi Friends,
We have been in Vienna, Venice and Todi, Italy since we last posted. Finding the time and getting connected in Todi has proven to be quite a challenge, so we’re writing this in Word, hoping to log in somewhere and paste it to our travel blog.

Vienna
Our home exchange in Vienna provided a great internet connection, but we used our spare time at home on the prior Budapest posting. Culling photos and reporting from the field is a lot more time consuming than expected. So for now, we’ll write a briefer narrative, with the plan to provide photos on the blog and Flickr once we get a more than brief connection.

Vienna was amazing. Our home was well located just across the Danube canal from central Vienna and its excellent public transit. We became very fond of our local Underground annd Tram station. Our hosts, Liesl and Ferdinand, have set a new standard for home exchange that will be a challenge to meet. They drove in from their primary home in the Vienna woods to meet our train and serve tea cakes, and orientation on Sunday; provided a full day tour of castles and the wine region along the Danube on Tuesday;















took us out to a favorite restaurant on Thursday; while constantly providing all sorts of useful information and a brief Austrian history at least as far back as Maximillian.

The days were radiantly sunny and pouring rain, to ensure we saw Vienna in all her character. We were dazzled by the vast monumental architecture, all clean and spiffy (there apparently has been a major cleanup over the last five years, so no faded beauties) , classic, gothic or baroque mixed with some Secession and Art Deco. If you are patient and have time to waste, we hope to get way too many posted on Flickr. (Link will be provided later.)

Museums contained an overwhelming bounty of great art, an extensive survey of western painting. Paul became overwhelmed at the Kunsthistorische by the grandeur of so many Reubens (we didn’t have time to see the early Greek, Roman or Egyptian art; Danice’s back starts aching after two-three museum hours and coffee, lunch, or beer

followed by active walking is called for.) Klimpt and his secessionist buddies had a special showing at Belvedere Castle we really enjoyed, another great Van Gogh show at the Albertina -far superior to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, and we have a new appreciation for Schiele after seeing the collection at the Leopold.
And the modern museum (MUMAK) had a nice Hopper show, with some interesting touches.


On our 5th anniversary we ventured out to what, according to our guide book, was a deco gem of a movie theater which was showing a sneak preview of an Amercan indie movie. Both the theater and the preview were forgetable. The theater had a sconce that may have been considered deco, but otherwise it was quite drab. The movie was a very light G rated romatic comedy. We met the scheduling director in the lobby who said that this wasn't the first time she has had folks come looking for the deco gem; she had no idea how the rumor got started and thinks all the travel writers copy one another. The best part of the evening was getting the brief version of her life story; and hearing she's written a screenplay in English she hopes to get produced. - Ah youth!!!

Venice
After a week in Vienna we took the train to Venice, with our compartment companiions, a friendly Austrian university professor and a young Japanese architecture student/sculptor studying in Vienna, who helped us negotiate a special train-bus-train transfer feature that day only. Venice was beautiful but packed with tourists. We had only 1 ½ days but seemed to walk every tiny street and Vicolo. We checked out the Architecture Biennale in the lovely Giardini way down past St. Marks Square, away from the crowd. The exhibits, by country, were about sustainability, re-use, technology….good stuff. Still time for a long vaporetto ride.


Next day we banged roller suitcases up and down the stairs of those highly elevated bridges (Gondoliers ‘gotta stand up going under to look really tall and slim) to pick up our first rental car of the trip that did get us to Todi, Italy. DO NOT ASK HOW MANY TIMES WE WENT THE WRONG WAY GETTING OUT OF VENICE. DO NOT ASK WHO’S FAULT THAT WAS.

Todi
We are now living on the second floor (four flights up) of a lovely Pallazo in the center of Todi - way up high overlooking Umbrian farmlands and vineyards. I get vertigo when I hang out the laundry - one tiny slip of the clothes pin, and my undies could fall 5 stories down an ancient roman wall. We have been traveling to all sorts of lovely castles in hill towns around southern Umbria, getting lost, never knowing where our next lunch is coming from, basically loving it.

With no TV, English newspaper or easy internet access, we are suffering from a total election and economic news blackout. But we are confident that our friends are taking up the slack and will ensure that everything turns out right.

We found an Enoteca serving fine, creative food; another night Paul produced a delightful Spelt pasta with truffle sauce, luscious green salad, pecorino cheese with juicy bosc pears for desert, with a lovely Montefalco Rosso left for us by our hosts. The CD player previously only played late Bob Dylan, which got old much faster than I’d have expected; so Paul fixed it to only play early Ray Charles, quite an improvement.

Staying for a week was a luxury. We had time to visit all the sites and explore every viale and ruin we could find; visiting the very lovely and tranquil Piazza Del Populo many times daily. (At left is Palazzo de Capitano, below is the Duomo.)
Fortunately, Todi in October has very few of those tourists - like us - cluttering up the scene.
















We motored around the area visiting hill towns, abbies, churches, castles. (Paul brakes for ruins!!).














One of our favorite hill towns was Monte Castello di Vibio. They claim to have the world's smallest theater, a 99 seat gem.
The main part of the castello has been converted into a nice hotel with a very nice restaurant, lots or arches and country elegance, but with a sore thumb of a large screen TV - made no sense to us.

We departed Monday 10/27, to join our hiking group in Lucca for 9 days hiking Maremma’s rolling hills and good times with Mario our loveable leader, Vittorio his able assistant and picnic provider. Looking forward to a great trip, (just saw rain forecast the next 9 days - this can not be true!!), but no time for posting during the hike...so this may be the last for a while.

We’ll be home November 7th, IF Obama is our President Elect; otherwise, don’t count on our coming back. We’ll hide out in some little hill town sampling the wines and truffle sauces til the funds run out…. then perhaps beg inside the local duomo. But we hope that wont be necessary. Vote No on 8 and Yes on Obama and we will return to rejoin a California and a Country looking forward.

Budapest

We are staying in a beautiful apartment, high on Rose Hill in Budapest. (We are now actually in Vienna and just now getting this posted.)


This means it takes us at least an extra hour each morning to determine what combination of bus, tram and metro will get us to the destinations of the day. This is the time we would have spent organizing photos and posting to our blog. The bakery and small grocery are "just around the corner" according to our hosts, but actually require complex counter-intuitive turns on many curving streets; we took over half an hour and got lost getting there, AND returning home, ending up on Bimbo street both times. ( Amsterdam had a simpler city plan and we walked nearly everywhere.) That was on Monday. We rarely ask directions as few people speak English and we cant figure out how to ask where, "Ujilipotvaros" or Szigetbecse" street is.

By Friday we pretty much figured out how to get around, so it must be almost time to move on.

But first about beautiful Budapest. Our first visit was to Castle Hill.


and the next was to the huge Jewish Temple that looks a lot like a Catholic church (they were trying to assimilate.)

There's a really moving Holocaust memorial in back with sculptures that beautifully commemorate those who died in the WWII Budapest ghettos and those who never came home from the concentration camps.

















We've seen many, by which I mean many, interesting museums, mostly Hungarian or German artists I hadn't heard of, like Victor Vaserely (of 60/70s Op-Art fame, Paul loved this one)


and Ferdinand Hodler; but I guess that's why they say travel is so darned broadening. There are an amazing number of small and large museums dedicated to a specific artist. In Szentendre there are a number and at least two we found in Obuda.









There is a modern development, the Millenium Center, of which, the Palace of Arts and the Concert Hall are the main cultural attractions.
















A high point was the Ludwig collection at the Palace of Art (beautiful large spacious galleries) at Budapest's very modern Millenium Cultural Center, right on the Danube. Old Ludwig really appreciated Modern Art... only two Picassos and a smattering of Impressionists, but a David Hockney I could actually cry for it's so perfect, and lots of other great art, much of it from the 1960's. Paul enjoyed a temporary exhibit of Keith Haring, but I didn't really go for his stuff, in the same way I didn't "get" Phillip Guston at SF MOMA a few years ago. If we were here longer, we'd get tickets to the Opera, or the Concert Hall, or a dance concert; but we haven't figured all that our yet. Enough about the arts...

When one considers the Soviets "liberated" Budapest from the Nazis and have just slunk off less than 20 years ago, Budapest has done so much. There are amazing clean beautiful old glorious buildings, there are huge expensive modern buildings, there are dirty beautiful old glorious buildings, and there are dirty old ugly buildings.

Mostly, though, we are amazed what they have done to beautify a majestic old European capital. Many of the cleaned up or new buildings are majestically lighted and stunning in the full sense of that word. We would never waste so much electricity in California, but do appreciate the effect here. There's demolition and construction everywhere, yet it seems there's so much left to do. Paul continues to photograph faded beauties, most of them with incredible art deco and the Hungarian variant Secessionist (which we have no idea how to differentiate) detail or statue adornments that one hardly notices due to the years of smog and dirt.


They definitely display a pleasant sense of humor,
this is sinking columns in front of the National Theatre. we were told the Theatre was intended to look like a (Paul thinks he heard) sinking ship, (Danice thought she heard) ship.


There is good food too. Our hosts directed us to Donatella's Kitchen for a delicious thin-crust Pizza, Caprese salad, and a decent gnocchi; we felt great in the Art Deco interior of Spinoza's Kafehas (coffee house)

for dishes like Pumpkin Soup, Matzo Ball soup with goose broth, Hungarian Goulash, and the Hungarian version of Cassolet with Goose leg and beans. One night at a neighborhood tavern in the Pest area we ordered Pork Knuckle for two, with spaetzle, sauerkraut, sausage and potato croquettes. It was enough for four and we were surprised and pleased when the nice waitress packed it up for us to bring home for the next evening's dinner as well.

We love it all and feel so fortunate to be here - qualified for senior rates at the museums, yet still healthy enough to tromp around in our tourist outfits. Danice wonders whether the young women in spike heels envy her hiking boots; it probably varies with how far they've already walked that day. We're talking serious cobblestones.

Last Days in Amsterdam

The final two days of our nine in Amsterdam, it continued to rain so we just " got into" it. No one is checking out old farts, so we gave up thinking about how we looked and just walked around looking mussed but happy. We checked out the Greenpeace headquarters, a beautiful art deco building. Interestingly there is no indications that it's related to Greenpeace



And took a picture of another art deco building, the Tuchinski movie theater, where you may remember we saw the Batman movie; the inside is really great.



The Theatre museum in a grand old canal house with this beautiful staircase,

We also checked out the Amsterdam Historical Museum, the Jewish Museum with attached synagogues and Rembrandt's house. We visited one of the numerous marijuana coffee shops, a very nice experience; although Danice asked for a glass of wine and they said, "Oh, no alcohol here, just coffee." It got cold and blustery so we finally gave in and went home to pack for the early Sunday (10/5) trip to Budapest.

Paul's Overall impressions of Amsterdam.
The center city is uniformly charming. We enjoyed walking all over, barely using our Tram Strippenkaart. The people are generally friendly, but we did experience some of the rudeness, or dismissive attitude our hosts warned us about. I experienced some physical rudeness as we were entering the Anne Frank Museum, of all places; a young man leaving put his forearm in my chest and shoved me aside. (DMF: Paul does not shove easily). This was really shocking - the kind of behavior that could result in violence in some parts of the US.

The political climate seems to be progressive and tolerant (see marijuana coffee shops). We saw few minorities; but in our small sample, they seem to be better integrated and on more equal footing than in other countries; they didn't have the service jobs we see so often other places.

The cutest blond kids are all over town. Something must happen to the males around puberty, though, since there are very few blond men. But tall blond women are everywhere. And everyone is tall. Most young men look to be about 6' 1" or more, but not many really tall people.

There's a lot of culture in Amsterdam. On the average four live theater pieces open everyday. There are book stores, galleries and exhibits all over. I particularly like this exhibit of working men.


Most people speak English and many very well. It's nice to be able to have real conversation with the natives. And the town is full of young people filling bars, restaurants and all the outdoor tables on the sunny and warm days. Rain does not deter them. In down pours, they walk and ride their bikes around unconcerned, without raincoats or umbrellas, but their cell phones still plastered to their ears.

As we were having a beer in a cafe watching the rain come down, about eight energetic young guys were meeting up. Most were dressed in a similar costume of baggy jeans, contrasted with skinny pin striped suit jackets, dress shirts and ties. They hung around for a beer and took off. Taking their place was about four, shall we say older, guys in suits and ties, not nearly as energetic. I could only think that we had fast forwarded 40 years and these same guys were showing up at their old haunt, older but wiser?

It's been a great city to spend a week or more, and we're sad to leave.

Amsterdam - The Rainy Days

The weather has changed to light rain interspersed with heavy rain and some teasers of beautiful sun light, and still Amsterdam is beautiful. (Visualize P&D scurrying in and out, changing plans, futilely trying to stay ahead of the changing skies.)

We've donned our hiking clothes and set out for the shelter of museums. The Van Gogh Museum has a comprehensive collection of you know who, but we missed the great ones we love in the Musee D'Orsay like the man and woman sleeping in the shade of the haystack. The Reijksmuseum has beautiful old Dutch masters, but only two Vermeers. Wim told us the best Vermeers are in New York and Washington, and the famous "Girl With a Pearl Earring" is in The Hague. We might take a train there, but with the rain it seems like an ordeal to figure out another public transit system. (We think we have Amsterdam's nailed.) The Stedelijk (modern art) is closed for renovation but directed us far across town to temp quarters which had some beautiful vibrant and sad African photography, and some video art some, in our humble opinion, more successful than others. We went back to the Olde Kerk (church) to see the grand organ, which was obscured by renovation, but saw a very interesting modern art show. Some meager examples follow.



Danice and clinging men on wall.















Everybody loves a parade.



We went to the Anne Frank museum, which is a beautiful memorial to her and all persecuted people. I'd read the book and seen the movie years ago, but still found myself shedding tears over her innocent hope and faith in her future and mankind's basic goodness that was not to be rewarded. No one knows who made the anonymous phone call that led to their arrest, as the Nazi's were starting to lose the war.

Now that we've located the street market and the super market, we are eating at home more. Mostly salads, pasta, some cheese, fruit, roasted chickens, focaccia with tomatoes, smoked mackerel and halibut - all quite tasty.

We've nearly grown accustomed to the rocking of the houseboat when a big boat passes - a bit like a small San Francisco earthquake. It's very cozy here and we sleep well.