Dec 9, 2018 - Zagreb

Our third and last day in Zagreb. On Friday, we got up at 3:30 am in Split and one of our friendly, helpful (good looking) hotel friends came and got our bags, gave us a bag full of breakfast goodies and walked us out of the old city to a taxi for the airport. Got to our hotel in Zagreb around 9, sat in the lobby until around 11:30 until we were able to check in and go to our room. Both of us just crashed. I think we were drugged. Slept most of the day and went downstairs for dinner and then back to bed. We are at the Hotel Esplanade....

Dec 6, 2018 - Split is really beautiful.

Got a late start yesterday. We pretty much both hit the jet lag wall at the same time. Spent the day in the Diocletian Palace, just wandering around. Dioclese was a 4th century Roman Emperor who lived and died here and had a palace that spanned many city blocks. You can just wander through - it’s part of the city, not a museum or tourist attraction. His mausoleum is now a Catholic Calthedral. The old city has a boardwalk kind of thing facing the sea. All outdoor restaurants on one side and little pop up food and drink places on the other....

Dec 5, 2018 - The story so far........

This is the first time I’ve tried to do this on an iPad....for the first time, I miss my laptop. Well, here goes. After being up for about 28 hours, we finally arrived in Dubrovnik. Just a beautiful city. Right on the coast of the Adriatic, surrounded by mountains. The drive from the airport is about 45 minutes and the driver talked to us about the war when the Serbs and Montenegrins surrounded the city and tried to starve them out. You can easily tell which buildings had been bombed - all of the roofs were bright red instead of faded...

Oct 28, 2018 - Visit to a Croatian national park

We traveled from Zagreb to Opatija, but stopped on the way to visit Plitvice Lakes. This is a lovely national park filled with lakes and waterfalls, and we hiked for several hours making our way around both the lower and upper ones. It was a long day but a terrific one. It was fun to have a day outside, and we lucked out with the weather.

Oct 28, 2018 - Back to the Adriatic coast

When you look at our map you can see the spots we stayed; we drove along the Croatian coast after we made our way back from Zagreb. Once we reached the coast, we stayed two nights in Opatija, a resort town on the Adriatic. We did not spend much time there, but used it as our overnight when we visited the Istrian peninsula hill town of Motovun (see next entry). Opatija is charming with lots of gardens and villas.

Oct 28, 2018 - Countryside north of Zagreb

After taking a look at the capital city of Zagreb, we made a bus tour north of town near the Slovenian border. The sculptures in the town of Klanjec are by Antun Augustincic who made the monument in front of the UN building in New York. He knew Marshal Tito, and copies of the statue he made of the politician are popular in various places around the former Yugoslavia.In Kumrovec we saw the open air museum of many reconstructed buildings from the former Yugoslavia. Included are Tito's family home and assorted buildings that showed how...

Oct 28, 2018 - Hill towns in Istria

Istria is a peninsula just south of Trieste in Italy. We visited a "hill town" called Motovun which really did remind us of trips to Tuscany. The claim to fame in the area is also truffles, wildly expensive funghi that the locals use dogs to locate. We did a tasting, and frankly I don't think I will be making fast tracks to the specialty grocery store, but we did have a lunch at an Agrotourism place that made a mean pasta dish with a bit of the stuff. Motovun is also the birthplace of Mario Andretti back in the day (1941) when it was a part...

Oct 27, 2018 - Villages in Croatia; Motovun and Groznjan

Today was another beautiful day, although it's overcast and a storm is coming. We left Trieste in a small van; there's only 5 of us on this pre-trip. (Venice to Malta is the main trip; Rome is the post-trip). If you can see on the map, when we left Trieste, Italy and drove south, we passed over its border into Slovenia; then a few miles later over its border into Croatia. We will visit two small villages and have lunch at a truffle house. This part of Croatia is the peninsula off the northern border of that country called the Istria...

Oct 25, 2018 - Getting to know Zagreb

Zagreb is the largest city in Croatia and its capital. We did a walking tour that showed us the highlights. The history is new to me, and the names are spelled and pronounced in ways unfamiliar to English speakers, so the tour was a very superficial introduction, but a good way to get the broad strokes. The town goes way back, and has had a lot of Hungarian influence since Hungary is so close. Food is lots of meats; there is also vegetables stuffed with minced meat and rice (such as stuffed peppers). On the coast in Dubrovnik we found a lot...

Oct 24, 2018 - A day in the life of a small Croatian village

The village we stayed in is actually called Karanac, and it is a bit beyond Osijek, but it is so tiny it doesn't appear on our map. We had a fabulous experience staying in a B and B sort of place where the folks make cheese and soap and do all sorts of crafty entrepreneurial activities. "Dennis the Menace," our host, is so much fun! He and his wife have turned an older home into a place where tourists can see the old ways of doing things. They were hospitable, and we had lessons in how to make cheese and soap; we had a home hosted dinner...

Oct 20, 2018 - Diving into the Adriatic

Quick reference guide: I am writing these down for helping my memory from the last few days; readers are invited to skip to the narrative below unless you are trivia buffs. Croatians are Roman Catholic Serbians are Eastern Orthodox Bosniaks converted to Islam; they were Serbs or Croats; conversion may be several hundreds of years ago Everybody wants seaports Dubrovnik paid off the Ottoman Turks to help fend off Venice Line of rulers or groups: Illyrians-Greeks-Romans-Slavs-Venetians- Hungarians-AustroHungarians-Ottomans Migration of Slavs...

Oct 3, 2018 - Last days in Croatia - photo's added

Saturday 22 September We left Cavtat mid morning – we were pretty well dug in, must have brought up around 10kg of mud. We passed Dubrovnik again and then took scenic routes around the islands. Passed Lopud with it’s church and fortress ruins and then proceeded across the bay and anchored off Sudurad which has a tower which dates back to 1577 and a fortified house, both of which were use to protect inhabitants from pirate attacks. Sunday 23 September Today we took the scenic route around some of the islands. Anchored off Broce and took the...