Holiday snaps part 2
Back again to Eastern Europe.
I don’t have any decent photos really of Montenegro because my little phone camera’s no good at capturing the Best Sunsets Ever. Because that’s we watched each night, sitting on the tiny pebbly “beach” that we’d found, sipping on a cold, cheap beer in the balmy evening.
At first I was disappointed – this was meant to be the beach part of the holiday after mountains and cities, castles and museums. The newest country in the world (remember it only just split from Serbia), surely we could escape the crowds? Nope. No chance. Plus, the mountains plunging into the turquoise water of the Adriatic was spectacular, but not beach forming. Every tiny patch had a ridiculous number of people, and the whole thing just caused my Australian heart to shudder in horror (when you grew up within an hour of the Gold and Sunshine Coasts… well).
When we left Montenegro and the lovely lady who had rent us a room in her house with whom we had several conversations in sign language, we headed (sadly) north (and towards home). First stop, the famed Dubrovnik. Once again I defer to the excellent article and photos here at the ever-wonderful Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik.
After Dubrovnik, we headed north along the coast to land at a little town called Biograd. Lots of reportedly wonderful places like Split were missed along the way, something for another day. Biograd was one of those lucky strikes you get sometimes when travelling randomly. I was using the Eastern Europe Lonely Planet book, as before going we weren’t even sure which countries we were going to, so the details on Croatia were limited to the major locations. Biograd was just big enough to be shown on the map; it looked around the right distance and so that’s what went into the GPS.
The next day we went out on the boat around some islands (Kornat), where I swam for the first time in a super salt lake – 5 x saltier than the ocean. It was like swimming in soup! The density was so high you couldn’t have sunk if you’d tried. Otherwise it was just a lovely day out on the sparkling water
Then there was Plitvice. A supremely beautiful national park full of waterfalls and lakes, which due to some sort of geological thingy are constantly changing. The waters were a clear turquoise. Take for example this idyllic scene…
Of course, pan out a little bit and you see what it was really like. Add this one to the list of places to see but not in August.
One slightly bizarre night in a town called Bizet (the “Town of Truffles” with its fabulous Stari Grad perched on a hilltop where we got a taste of Croatia outside of peak season – come early if you want dinner!) and then it was back into Slovenia.
The Scojcan caves were certainly impressive, although more for their size and depth than the stalagmite formations. The picture, taken on the way up and out of the caves, is me exploring my vertical panorama capabilities
Then it was time to say goodbye to Slovenia and head back west again, this time through Italy. We stopped for the night at Fair Verona, saw Juliet’s balcony and many other marvellous things, before going on to Milan where I was to fly out.
Now I didn’t particularly rate Milan. But they did do a pretty mean cathedral. Of course, I had to spend €5 on a scarf thingy to get past the “shoulder police”. No, literally – the police were checking bags and shoulders…
Inside was spectacular but the only picture I talk was of the confessional below because it tickled my sense of humour. You might have to click on the photo to make it bigger and spot the sign saying this priest has lots of languages. You see similar signs all over the place, but normally in restaurants or tourist shops!
The following series of photos represents each corner of the main plazza in what is clearly the poshest shopping district in Milanao. See if you can spot the anomaly....
By the way, this blog might need a new title before too long...
I don’t have any decent photos really of Montenegro because my little phone camera’s no good at capturing the Best Sunsets Ever. Because that’s we watched each night, sitting on the tiny pebbly “beach” that we’d found, sipping on a cold, cheap beer in the balmy evening.
At first I was disappointed – this was meant to be the beach part of the holiday after mountains and cities, castles and museums. The newest country in the world (remember it only just split from Serbia), surely we could escape the crowds? Nope. No chance. Plus, the mountains plunging into the turquoise water of the Adriatic was spectacular, but not beach forming. Every tiny patch had a ridiculous number of people, and the whole thing just caused my Australian heart to shudder in horror (when you grew up within an hour of the Gold and Sunshine Coasts… well).
But after a fortuitous detour to look at an old monastery on a cliff, we noticed a monstrosity of a hotel being built down below. When it’s finished, there will probably be about 20 rooms per square meter of pebbly beach, but for now it was our own little heaven with a perfectly reasonable number of people having discovered it.
When we left Montenegro and the lovely lady who had rent us a room in her house with whom we had several conversations in sign language, we headed (sadly) north (and towards home). First stop, the famed Dubrovnik. Once again I defer to the excellent article and photos here at the ever-wonderful Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik.
After Dubrovnik, we headed north along the coast to land at a little town called Biograd. Lots of reportedly wonderful places like Split were missed along the way, something for another day. Biograd was one of those lucky strikes you get sometimes when travelling randomly. I was using the Eastern Europe Lonely Planet book, as before going we weren’t even sure which countries we were going to, so the details on Croatia were limited to the major locations. Biograd was just big enough to be shown on the map; it looked around the right distance and so that’s what went into the GPS.
The next day we went out on the boat around some islands (Kornat), where I swam for the first time in a super salt lake – 5 x saltier than the ocean. It was like swimming in soup! The density was so high you couldn’t have sunk if you’d tried. Otherwise it was just a lovely day out on the sparkling water
Then there was Plitvice. A supremely beautiful national park full of waterfalls and lakes, which due to some sort of geological thingy are constantly changing. The waters were a clear turquoise. Take for example this idyllic scene…
One slightly bizarre night in a town called Bizet (the “Town of Truffles” with its fabulous Stari Grad perched on a hilltop where we got a taste of Croatia outside of peak season – come early if you want dinner!) and then it was back into Slovenia.
The Scojcan caves were certainly impressive, although more for their size and depth than the stalagmite formations. The picture, taken on the way up and out of the caves, is me exploring my vertical panorama capabilitiesAnd here we see a lifelong dream – I was really meant to be working on a Lipizzaner stud farm not tripping the world fixing power stations…
Then it was time to say goodbye to Slovenia and head back west again, this time through Italy. We stopped for the night at Fair Verona, saw Juliet’s balcony and many other marvellous things, before going on to Milan where I was to fly out.
Now I didn’t particularly rate Milan. But they did do a pretty mean cathedral. Of course, I had to spend €5 on a scarf thingy to get past the “shoulder police”. No, literally – the police were checking bags and shoulders…
Inside was spectacular but the only picture I talk was of the confessional below because it tickled my sense of humour. You might have to click on the photo to make it bigger and spot the sign saying this priest has lots of languages. You see similar signs all over the place, but normally in restaurants or tourist shops!
The following series of photos represents each corner of the main plazza in what is clearly the poshest shopping district in Milanao. See if you can spot the anomaly....
Finally, a picture from our stay in beautiful Innsbruck, Austria.
By the way, this blog might need a new title before too long...
