Ljubljana and Bled

Working our way back north near the end of our trip we spent two days in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a lovely city with a canal running through it. The city was full of college students but we never saw the college; actually we did see bits and pieces. Ljubljana has an excellent university, it just doesn't have a campus.  College classes are in buildings scattered all over town. I really enjoyed Ljubljana and the fact that their were lots of gelato stands made it even more fun.
After Ljubljana we traveled to Bled and were taken across the lake there in a pletna boat to visit a beautiful 17th century cathedral (modest on the outside, beautiful Baroque interior) where we took turns ringing the "wishing bell" for luck and admired the flight of 90 steps leading up from the docks to the cathedral.  Traditionally, grooms carried their brides up the 90 steps to the wedding.  Makes "over the threshold" seem like a piece of cake.
While we admired the view of the cathedral and the castle across the lake, we also, I must admit, enjoyed the view of our plenta oarsman.  The plenta is a sort of super-size gondola that holds about 18 people and is rowed by a man standing at the back, a very good looking, extremely fit young man in our case.  Obviously standing up and rowing a big old boat back and forth across a lake is a wonderful form of exercise.

Now that's interesting.

Here are a few interesting bits of information picked up on my Croatia trip:
Marco Polo was technically Venetian because Croatia was ruled by Venice at the time but he was actually born on an island off the Croatian coast.
Nicolo Tessla was born in Craotia when it was part of Austrio Hungary.
Croatia's first king was named King Tom (well Tomeslav actually,but they call him Tom).
They have some interesting road signs in Croatia.  One of my favorites was an inverted triangle with a giant snowflake in the center.  This one was in the mountains of course.
"I need ti examine the tiles." is a euphemism like "powder my nose" (does anyone use that one anymore?) for going to the bathroom since all of their bathrooms are finished with tile on the walls, some rather nice.
The necktie was invented in Croatia.  It was originally part of their military uniform with a name that sounded like 'cravat'.

a culinary feast

"a culinary feast prepared in the way of their ancestors" that's what we were promised in Cilipi at our second dinner at a family owned agrotourist establishment.  The food was delicious to be sure and the singing (by two men of the household) was highly entertaining but I found myself thinking that their German/Austrian heritage was showing.  This and several other meals consisted of a very nice salad, usually with cucumber and tomatoes, meat, potatoes and some kind of greens (chard or spinach) and a fruity coffeecake type dessert, with plenty of wine, of course.  It was delicious but no better that many meals I remember as a child cooked by my mom or one of my aunts "prepared in the way of their ancestors".  I guess I didn't know how good I had it.

They weren't wearing white robes and halos

but they might as well have been.  They sang like angels.  This evening I heard a performance of the American Boychoir from Princeton, NJ and they were wonderful.  This group of 30+ 4th-8th graders presented their concert at Trinity English Lutheran Church, a fine old church in downtown Fort Wayne that proved to be a perfect venue.  The choir opened with a Gregorian Chant called "Ave Maria Stella" and they stood in the two balconies on either side of the nave for this song.  This created an amazing effect.  At one point in the performance they were joined by the Fort Wayne Children's Choir and they made beautiful music together.
Their director told us that they have recently performed in a movie called BoyChoir staring Dustin Hoffman and Kathy Bates.  Not sure when it's coming out but I am looking forward to seeing it. According to information in the program, it received rave reviews at the Toronto Film Festival.

from Ston to Split

From Ston we continued on to the second largest city in Croatia, Split.  The awesome site/sight here was Diocletian's palace from about 300ad or 300ce if you prefer.  Diocletian was the last Roman emperor to persecute Christians.  He was actually also the only Roman emperor to retire. The others all died in office, from natural or not so natural causes. The palace in Split was his retirement home. Constantine came next and he became Christian, which meant hey presto so did most of the population of the Roman empire.  The basement of the palace has been excavated and is a great example of Roman architecture.  Of course, above ground lots of "new" buildings, churches, etc. now stand where the palace once was.
Another interesting thing about Split according to our guide is that there are lots and lots of tall people living there. I felt right at home.

The Great Wall of Croatia

On our way to Split, the second largest city in Croatia, we stopped for the morning in the little town of Ston (pronounced stone) not to be confused with Mali Ston, the next town over.  Ston, near the sea coast but still up in the hills, is famous for its salt flats, but the most amazing feature, built 1500 years ago, is a defensive wall which wanders up and over the hillsides for several miles.  It looks just like pictures of the Great Wall of China in miniature.  In fact, our guide said that a person on one tour asked him (seriously) if it connected to China's Great Wall.  A wall from the Adriatic to China?  Now that would be "great".
It was also in Ston that I truly first appreciated the Croatian practice of enjoying leisurely cups of coffee. The coffee there is very good but the idea of a "to go" cup is practically unheard of.  In Ston we had time to actually sit still for a half an hour or so on a typical restaurant terrace, shaded by a grape vine "roof" and simply enjoy the view, the cool breeze and the small heard of cats roaming around.  As I sat there I could feel myself relaxing. It was probably good that my friend Sandy wasn't on this trip.  She would have wanted to adopt the cats and bring them home.

A little place in the mountains

One interesting fact that came out on my Croatia trip was that, from prehistoric time, the people of the Croatian area lived in villages built high in the hills.  Even though there are miles of beautiful sea coasts there were also constant threats of pirates.  Living in the hills was safer.  On one of the early days of the trip we were driven high into the hills to a farm for a lavish afternoon dinner.  The food was delicious and I appreciated the way it was served.  We were seated at long narrow tables and as each course was served a platter of food was put down between every four people at the table (two on each side) so, while it was essentially being served family style there was no need to pass anything.  Each of the 4 people could easily serve themselves, very nice and simple.  many of the meals we were served on the trip consisted of meat, often veal, and potatoes and greens cooked together, also lots of good cheeses, fresh vegetables, and one of my favorites - octopus salad..  We didn't have octopus salad on this farm trip.  The Croatian government is encouraging agrotourism and our dinner at the farm was an example of that idea.  We were at a private home that has opened its doors to tourists.  I remember thinking, as I stood outside after the meal enjoying the vast rolling landscape in all directions, that if my bother, who has a farm on a hillside near Spokane, Washington, was Croatian this would be his place.

one strikingly different feature

One feature about the old city of Dubrovnik that roused my curiosity was the width of the main street through the old city.  I've had the pleasure of walking through several old cities but I don't remember any where the streets were 20+ feet wide. Usually they are much narrower.  I finally got the explanation from a guide - turns out that what is now the main paved streets (paved by the way with shiny light limestone that has become so polished with use over the ages that it looks like marble) used to be a canal separating two competing cities.  According to the legend (there is always a legend), people from the two different cities began to meet and marry at such a rate that having to go to bridges to get over the canal became such a bother that they decided to simply pave it over. good decision.

Is that a pirate ship on the horizon?

On the evening of the same day we got "lost" in Dubrovnik we walked back through the old city to the water front for our sunset cruise.  We're all standing around looking at the fairly normal looking boats tied up at the docks when what should appear gliding into the harbor but a big brown sail rigged boat that looked for all the world like a pirate ship.  Even our faithful guide Steve was surprised when it turned out that this boat was the one we would be cruising on.  Usually up to 100 people sail on one of these little ships but on this evening it was just 25 of us who had opted for this extra excursion.  It was a lovely little cruise and we all enjoyed the sunset over the water and the story of the vindictive monks.  Seems the Hapsburgs, when they came into power in the area coveted an island owned by a group of monks so they forced them our, but the monks, being a little miffed at this turn of affairs, walked around the island several times with upside down candles dripping wax and curses, and no owner since has lived to a ripe old age.  Be warned, it's not good to covet your neighbor's island.

It wasn't our fault

Well, not entirely.  We were dutifully following our local guide into the old walled city of Dubrovnik, another beautiful UNESCO site, listening intently on our little radios to her voice, when another group swirled among us in the crowded entrance and somehow six of us got separated from our group.  We could still hear our guide and it took us a while to realize that she and the rest of our group were nowhere in sight.  We knew they couldn't be too far but, no matter how many corners we turned, there was no sign of them.  Finally, after about a half hour of aimless roaming (with several stops for picture taking of course), the wife of one of the men in our little group came rushing up and lead us back to the rest of the group. We had assumed he was married to one of the other ladies lost with us, but that's another story.  Our guide was a little huffy with us, as though we had wandered away on purpose.  While we were apart the guide had acquired a sign on a long pole.  If she had had that in the first place we probably wouldn't have lost sight of her.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

the waterfalls

After two days of enjoying old buildings and historic sights we were taken inland to Croatia's most beautiful national park, a UNESCO World  heritage site called Plitvice Lakes.  It's a beautiful forested area with 16 (according to the guide book) terraced lakes.  Because the lakes are on different levels everywhere you look there are waterfalls - not huge Niagra Falls type waterfalls but long beautiful streams of water plunging from one lake to the next.  We took a two hour walk around the lakes and saw countless falls, sometimes 20 or more along the wall of rocks between one lake and the one on the next lower level.  Some of the falls were babies, only 4 or 5 feet tall while others appeared to be at least 30 feet or more. It was a lovely place to visit and we stayed overnight in the hotel there.  Our guide commented that, being a state run facility, it still had something of the communist feel about it and I could see what he meant, everything was perfectly clean, the food was good but not exciting, the people who worked their didn't seem to smile as much as in other places we stayed.  Maybe the falls themselves used up all the exuberance that was allowed.

the second largest coliseum...

On the second day of our adventure we explored the small city of Pula on the Istria Peninsula, where I took many, many pictures of the world's second largest Roman Coliseum.  Unhappily, I'm not able to share any of those with you this evening.  I attempted to download the 813 pictures I took on this trip onto my laptop.  However it only wanted to download about 25 of them, for some reason couldn't download the rest.  The ones I was able to transfer came from much later in the trip, so no pictures tonight but I will continue to try.  In addition to seeing the coliseum we walked through the lovely old city. All through Croatia I was interested in the variety of architectural styles.  It's easy to see proofs of 15th century Venetian domination and 17th century Austrian rule.  Unhappily, the signs of 21st century independence are usually found in the form of bullet holes in the walls of old buildings from the fighting in 1991.

I'm back!

I've just returned from a lovely two-week vacation to Croatia with side trips to Montenegro,
Slovenia and Venice. It was a fine trip, led by Collette Tours.  We had an excellent guide, a skilled, comfortable bus driver, really good local guides, (even Miss Croatia of 1998), good accommodations, good food (that I didn't have to cook). Altogether, an excellent adventure.
Over the next several days I plan to hit the highlights., perhaps with pictures as I get them sorted out
Tonight just a few good words about Collette.  After an overnight flight from the US, and a transfer in Amsterdam, we landed at Marco Polo Airport in Venice and were led to our bus, met our Italian driver, Marco, and were driven around the northern edge of the Adriatic Sea to our first stop, Opatiji, Croatia.
The first evening we met our fellow travelers - 43 of us - from Canada, the US and Great Britain.  Several couples and several single women, ages ranging from 50-80 (I'm guessing here). Not an eligible man in the bunch (not that I'm looking but just saying).
Our guide, Steve, seemed and proved to be very well organized and extremely patient, even with two rather demanding travelers.  They were a mother/daughter couple who made their first impression on the group by showing up to the bus a little late the first morning, then about 20 minutes into the drive, the mom loudly announced to the entire bus that she couldn't find her glasses, must have left them at the hotel and seemed to be waiting for Marco to turn the bus around. Steve calmly went back to her seat, looked around, found her glasses on the floor. He also, I thought with great restraint, went on to explain that it was important to everyone that we leave promptly in the mornings and once we leave a place we won't go back.
That did seem to improve their promptness - I think he was secretly hoping they could be left behind.

taking a break..

I've decided to take a break from this blog writing endeavor.  When I started I envisioned writing about something humorous each evening, but my blogs seem to have become more serious, so I want to step back for a while, maybe a week or two and ponder my next direction.  See you in a week or so.

a treat for my tickly toes

Once or twice a year I indulge myself with a professional pedicure.  It's hard to beat as a feel-good experience with the soaking and massaging and shaping  and painting.  And, wonder of wonders, while my tootsies are being pampered the chair I'm sitting in is massaging my back, bliss!!! And my toes look really pretty now. They'll look great in sandals.  Unfortunately we're supposed to have a high in the 40s on Saturday so I suspect my sandal wearing days are about over for this year. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

Trying something new

It's my turn to take a treat to a meeting tomorrow morning so I baked some gingerbread.  Nothing new there, I love to make gingerbread but I decided it needed an interesting topping.  I flipped through my cookbook and discovered "hard sauce>" Turns out hard sauce, unlike ordinary sauce doesn't need to be served warm.  It's supposed to have a consistency like firm whipped butter.  Actually, it is whipped butter with a bunch of powdered sugar and orange juice mixed in.  So then I thought "how will I serve this tomorrow, seems a little time consuming for people to have to spread it on their gingerbread."  "Huzzah," I thought, "I'll spread it on the gingerbread like frosting." and so, now that the GB is cool, I'm going to do that right now.  Then I will arrange some orange slices on top, and hey, presto, an easy fancy dessert.  I love it when something new works out.  Let's hope it tastes good.