England and Croatia May 2019

People of Iceland lied, there can be bad weather AND bad clothes.

Photo Album

Wed-Thurs May 22-23rd

“Where you off to this time?” Off to London, England to see some of my buddies who recently had a baby and after visiting them we’re going to head to Croatia. But for some reason Rebe thought it would be a good idea to fly through Calgary on the way to England… well the travel agent might have dropped the ball on this one but the flight and layover were great so I won’t really complain too much. Flying through Canada got us into England around 1130am and after getting bags, figuring out how to get to our friends house got us settled around 2. And though we ate on the plane, the breakfast of fruit on the plane wasn’t enough to hold me over I was getting hangry. So we dropped off our bags at our friend's house and headed out with the intention of eating at a Sri Lankan place in the middle of Victoria Park (London). The place was a short walk from their house and of course just as we walk in someone put up a “Kitchen Closed” sign so… a new place had to be chosen.

Victoria Park Sri Lankan place that was closed to us :(

Our journey continued through the big beautiful park over into South Hackney to a pub called “The Empress,” and sat down to eat with Arlene and baby Annelise and of course have a pint of the local fair. Just as we finished food Arlene’s husband, Travis, rolled up on his bike to join us for another beer.

After another drink it was time to pick up their almost 4 year old from daycare and back to the house to chill for a bit, I even took a cat nap before we would head back out with just Arlene. The intention was to hit up a Hong Kong waffle shop in this shipping container park (stacks and stacks of shipping containers put together to create a mini-mall of stores).

Inside the shipping container park

Get there, stand in line to get in, even patted down only to find out that the waffle shop is permanently closed no longer on site. Rebe had a highly rated fish a chip shop on her list that was reasonably close and we headed over there to catch a bite. Ordered the haddock and the cod, split it 3 ways between us and we all agreed that cod was the way to go. Maybe it was just a sub par piece of haddock, don’t care food was goooood. Also got some sticky toffee pudding, again AWESOME.

Fish and chip shop

After this we were a bit knackered (see what I did there?) caught the bus back towards the house and the bus driver had the nerve to drive past our stop. Made it home and called it a night.

Friday May 24th

The plan was to get up at 8am, but of course I woke up to a bright sunlit room at…545am. Damn you England. Instead of getting up and being productive I grabbed my eye covers and went back to sleep only for Rebe to wake up at 845. Looks like were off to a late start and we had the full intention of skipping breakfast in an effort to make it down to St Paul’s Catherdral before the crowd but Arlene decided she wanted to cook breakfast and who were we to try and strop her. I was expecting a piece of toast and jam or something but she threw down some awesome eggs for a right hearty meal.

St. Paul's Dome

After breakfast we headed to the tube and rode 4 stops over to St. Paul’s, walked right in as there was no line at 1030am and signed up for the 11am free tour. We strolled around to kill time before the tour started at 11am. Our tour guide from the church who was member and usher was very knowledgeable about the church and gave us a really amazing detailed tour of the church. The church has been built I believe 3 times previously and the most recent was after the Great Fire of London. The latest rendition was the brain child of Sir Christopher Wren and is a classical English Boroque design and while nice and unique inside it does not compare to other masterpieces that I’ve seen in the last two years such as La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona or St. Peter’s in Vatican City. Under the church there is the usual crypt where all the greats of London and persons associated with the church are buried such as Sir Wren, Duke of Wellington and Admiral Lord Nelson. Sorry pics were not allowed in the main cathedral of the church :(

Harry Potter stairs anyone?

After the tour we made a trek up to the top of the dome of the church, what I haven’t mentioned is that Arlene had contracted Rebecca and myself to tote her daughter around all day in one of of those Baby Bjorn backpacks. Rebecca started the day on backpack duty until the baby needed a feeding break during the tour and then Rebecca climbed to the top of the dome with little Annelise on her chest and then back down but with Annelise screaming on the way down.

Rebe, Arlene and baby Annelise atop St. Paul's

"These ain't mommy's boobs, and why you staring?"

Leaving the church it was lunch time and our chance to meet up with Travis for lunch after his morning study session. We were in the mood for Indian and stopped at a spot called Sheba over on Brick Lane for a fabulous meal. And this wasn’t just good food this was upper level of what we consider good and this is coming from the great stuff we get in Houston. From there we tooled around on Brick Road, stopped to buy some ‘broccoli’ and then stopped in a chocolate shop to get some snacks but everyone was so full from Indian that we chickened out because we were so full.

Dual feeding

Travis shopping for broccoli, note Rebe holding my camera and missing baby Annelise (I was carrying her at this point and since St. Paul's)

All the chocolate we were able to resist

From here we headed down to Farringdon Tube station to meet our tour guide who was going to give us a 'ghost tour' of the surrounding area, which included stories about the building of Farringdon Tube Station itself, Charterhouse Square nearby, the nearby market, St Bartholomew's Hospital, St Sepulchre's Church and the Central Criminal Court.

Dinner was to be had at Old Bell Tavern a small pub nearby where all sorts of pie was on the menu, you know Shephard's pie and such.

Travis and Arlene don't have a television, so when Theo gets some screen time it's always a good laugh to watch him become a zombie for a second. Emphasis on the fork hand going in for the strike and then deciding the next bite can wait.

Saturday May 25th

This day was reserved for a visit to the famous Tower of London, and like most folks I'd heard of the Tower of London and like a lot of people I thought the tower was actually the Tower Bridge. You know the bridge, the big one with the "towers" you know the one everyone calls "London Bridge." So to clarify this is Tower Bridge:

Tower Bridge

This is the Tower of London, it is literally next to the bridge
[Duncan] from Nottingham, UK [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

Got up early with Travis this time to head into the city for our 830am early tour, and being on the early entry tour was special for 2 reasons. First we were able to witness the opening ceremony of the Tower, this is where the Yeomen Warders of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London (also know as Beefeaters) do the Ceremony of the Keys, formerly only performed for the closing of the tower but is now also performed in the morning.

As my friend Kathryn says, "This is a dude"

Opening Ceremony

The second great reason to get to the Tower early is to see the Crown Jewels before the line becomes outrageous. Definitely cool, but I mean jewels are just rocks so if that's your thing I get it.

After seeing the jewels our tour guide showed us the rest of the tower and hit upon the highlights and history of the place. I will not bored you with the history of the Tower as it's really too much to type here but you can read here and here.

Here's a few pics from the grounds:

White Tower and the Shard

Armour of King Henry VIII,
you know the one with 6 wives (divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived...)

White Tower, built in 1078 also namesake of the complex

Us on the walls of the complex

After a few hours of touring the Tower and surrounding castle walls, the three of us headed across the Tower Bridge because...well I just wanted to walk across it and also do a little more exploring of the area. We could have taken a tour up and across the upper bridge of the bridge but decided to pass on that and decided to admire it from below. If you look closely at the pic below you can see they've installed a glass panel in the bridge to give it some 'new world' flair. But I can't be bought with such gimmicks, and since I'm on the subject of glass floors if you're ever out at the Grand Canyon avoid the skywalk. It looks great from the pic but it is the epitome of the term tourist trap.

Glass floors at top center of image

During our walk across the bridge Rebe consulted her map of all goodies that were in the area, and of course we were near a desert place called Bad Brownie. So we're walking and looking for this place and it's all car shops garages in the area, walking up and down alleys trying to figure out where this shop is.

Looking for a shop in all the wrong places

Then we stumble upon this Maltby Street Market and there's vendors selling everything under the sun, and at this point we are still looking behind all the vendors thinking the desert spot was going be on the street but of course it was just a vendor at the market.

Where's Waldo? (Maltby Street Market)

We got our BROWNIE, which for some reason I didn't take a picture of (geez I'm bad at this) and then had a debate on what was the fastest way back to the house to get to Arlene and the kids. Slow ride on the bus, trek over the a tube stop, uber back across the bumper to bumper bridge or hoof it a bit and then catch an uber. Some how Travis convinced us to hoof it back across the bridge and catch an uber.

We all got back to the house, settled for a little while and I might have taken a cat nap while discussing plans before we headed over to Crate Brewery and Pizza. A really cool spot with a good variety of beer and a good variety of pizza, the evening was focused on spending time with Arlene and Travis and just catching up like the old friends we are. Travis who is in school pursuing his doctorate in material science or some shit and had to nerd out on us and give us a BASIC discussion on stress strain curves. Neither Rebe or myself are mechanical engineers but we nodded along like we really understood what Travis was putting down...

No day is complete without a pit stop for desert so we hoofed it, kids in tow, passed the Olympic Stadium to a spot called La Gelateria for gelato of course. Right next to this place there was a park with a climbing wall but the wall was only 10' high and the object of the wall was to work your way across it. Of course Travis had to show everyone how it was really done. After scaling across the wall a few times we headed for a bus stop and finally got back to the house. We called it a early night, said our goodbyes because Rebe and I had a 630am flight the next morning.

Sunday May 26th

The alarm clock went off at 330am... Rebe told me she didn't sleep very well due to the fear of missing the alarm, which would lead to missing the bus and then the flight to Croatia. Me, well I slept like a champ for the few hours that I had. We flew out of Stansted Airport, I like to consider myself an airport nerd and try to know all the airports by their 3 letter code and for this one I was at a loss. Of course I know Gatwick (LGW) and Heathrow (LHR) and I'd even heard of London City Airport (LCY) but what was this Stansted place and why are international flights going out of here. Well, I was expecting a tiny airport like Houston's Hobby (HOU) but this was a huge airport, equipped with a full fledged duty free shopping mall inside. You know the kind where you have to walk past 14 people with perfume sprays to get to your gate and so big that you need to catch a train to your terminal. Needless to say I was shocked.

All in all, a normal flight which arrived on time in Dubrovnik and just from getting off the plane I could tell this was going to be a beautiful country. When you step off the plane and see this:

you know it's going to be a trip filled with good scenery. Now the airport at Dubrovnik (DBV) was about what I expect at Stansted granted both have one runway but....ok enough about airports...

We pick up our humble steed for the trip which I expected to be a typical European econobox but they gave us a Jeep Renegade. This was not something I would expect to see in Europe but later in the trip we were glad we had it. Still was a shitbox...

My subpar European parallel parking job

Hit the road snack, Lemon and Elderflower Fanta...tasted like soap

Our plan in Croatia was to head northwest and slowly work our way back over the week, so this first day was going to be a lot of driving. Croatia is actually split in two by Bosnia and Herzegovina (one country, two names), both of these countries used to be apart of the former Yugoslavia but broke apart in the early 90's. This split meant that in order to get to our destination we would have to cross in to Bosnia and since we were crossing into Bosnia we might as well just cross wherever we wanted and take the scenic route. We let Google take the wheel and lead us on the quickest route to our destination which was Mostar inside Bosnia and Herzegovina. Google says turn right, so we turn right and head off into the mountains enjoying the beautiful country side plus a few Adriatic Sea views. We start to see fewer and fewer cars as we drive and then we see the boarder checkpoint, pull up and handover our documents. Board guard says, "Locals only" in his broken english. What? What you mean locals only? He tried to tell us where there is a non-local crossing but we clearly didn't understand him. We turn around and see where google is going to lead us now, ah another curvy road over the mountain only to lead to a second boarder guard with better english this time telling us there is really only one crossing in southern Croatia where we can get into Bosnia and then head north. So we turn around AGAIN, cross the boarder with passports and WOOT WOOT new country. Driving driving driving, and we make it to Mostar.

Croatian coastline

Thus far I have not spoken about the weather. Going to London is usually a cloudy, rainy affair but our days in the London capital were simply sublime. Sun, sun and more sun I mean it was damn near hot in London. We landed in Dubrovnik and it was cloudy and during the drive the rain just wouldn't stop.

We arrive in Mostar, a sleepy little town in Bosnia and Herzogovina and Google actually tried to make me the wrong way down a one way, so be careful when listening to Google Maps when abroad. I see street parking so I get my parallel skills in order and the local parking attendant comes out to assist me with my parking. Hop out and he's like "10 euros please," and I'm all.... "Uh... ain't got any cash, where's the ATM" and of course he points me in the direction of the ATM. I head to the ATM, get a bit of local currency out, which is not euros, pay the man and head on our way. As we're walking into town another local who speaks English asks us how much we paid and then informs us that he's not really a parking attendant but rather part of the local parking mafia who scams tourists. Kudos to the parking guy, he got me. A bit mad, but hey I can't hate the player...just the game and at this point no since in crying over spilt milk.

Old town in Mostar (in the rain)

Mostar is a cool little historic town known for it's "old town" and its bridge. The Bridge which originally constructed in 1567 but was destroyed during the breakup of Yugoslavia and rebuilt in the early 2000s. We had decided to have lunch in Mostar and for some convenient reason, everyone's credit card machine was down but they did take Euros which we didn't have because 1) we're not European 2) we just came from England where they do use Euros 3) we're going to Croatia where they also don't use Euros. Thus this led to another adventure to the ATM to get MORE local currency, and of course just enough not to leave us with extra money after lunch at Šadrvan (restaurant) that we couldn't use in Croatia.

Outdoor patio at Šadrvan

While at lunch the restaurant had wifi and we discussed our plan for the next day which was to visit Plitvice Lakes National Park and it seems that you could buy tickets online, but the tickets appeared sold out online. UGH, don't tell me that we're going to drive all the way up to this place and there be a chance that we might not get entry. I mean, what kind of National Park sells out? Never heard of such, but we called ahead and it seemed that if we got there early we would have a spot and it would not be that big of a deal. But this had us worried for sure, not to mention that we had left our rain boots in Houston because we didn't think it would be THIS rainy.

New "Old Bridge"

From Mostar we headed to our final resting place close to Plitvice Lakes National Park which was still another 4.5 hours away after who knows how long we had been driving with all the border turn arounds.

Finally made it to the hotel at 920pm, showered quickly and went to bed as we were spent after this eventful-uneventful day.

Monday May 27th

Plitvice Lakes National Park

One of the Upper Lakes a Plitvice Lakes National Park

Since we were worried we didn't have tickets for the park we decided to get there as early as we could hoping there would be space for us to get in. Of course we get there and there is plenty of parking and also plenty of space for us to get in with the first of the attendees. With all the rushing we really didn't have a concrete plan of what we were going to do, like we never do, but we'd follow the crowd for the first bit and let it play out how it does.

The crowd decided to take the tram to wherever it was going, and we followed suit. This happened to be the tram to the top of the park and the rest of our day would be mostly downhill. Another win for us. Plitvice Lakes National Park was the first national park of Croatia and it is well deserved. The lakes are apart of of tufa formation, or travertine barriers and resulted in the creation of the lakes. Basically the waters of the Korana river have settled into little lakes in this canyon and produced quite a few waterfalls in addition.

Sign showing the cross section of the formation

Like I said we started at the top of the park and in the rain, without our hiking boots but with some rain gear. Not our best packing job but I was convinced we would survive they day. Luckily it wasn't a gullywasher, but just a light rain and annoying enough get you wet but not soaked.

Here's a few pictures from the top to the midsection of the park.

I'd like to make a note of the Croatian children who were visiting the park. Every time I would walk past a class of them they would all yell "HELLO" at me and at the beginning I thought they might have been making fun of me because there were not a lot of dark skinned people in the park. All they would say was "HELLO" and maybe that's about all the english they knew, but as the day went on and the stares continued I had a few raise their hands for high fives, hell even a few wanted selfies. Now this is where I thought the stares went from bad to good. Sure maybe they thought I was weird or unique or hell maybe they thought I was a basketball player or something. Either way in the end I did not think they were coming from bad place and usually when I'd catch them staring I'd wink and they would put on a happy smile. I even came up with a quote to represent this day:

"Never been to a place where white people are so excited to see a black person"

Mad house boat dock

Large central lake

After walking the upper section of the park, we reached a boat dock that was a transfer point to get to the lower section of the lakes. Thus far in the park I was really delighted at the pretty waterfalls we had seen that were streaming in to the lakes. Also the upper section of the lake was not so crowded so it was very peaceful. The boat dock on the other hand was a slight madhouse of people lining up and trying to be the first to get on the boat. The boat ride across the largest lake was very peaceful and when we arrived at the other boat dock the sights were kind of forest like and I was sensing a lack of waterfalls. We headed down the path and the sights kept getting better and better.

Note the boat in the background, this was the boat we were on earlier

After leaving the park we came back to room to dry off and had a good dinner at Degenija Restaurant where Rebe had gnoochi and I had a breaded veal cutlet. Then home to discuss plans for tomorrow.

Tuesday May 28th

Tuesday was moving day, and the original plan for the day was to finish Plitvice Lakes if we did not have enough time on Monday and then head south. But since we finished all of the park on Monday we decided it would be a good day to sleep in. Of course even that didn't go as planned as we slept like crap and did not get a good nights rest.

Got on to the road about 10am and it was a beautiful morning which we knew was a bad sign of things to come. And sure enough as we headed south more and more rain started coming down putting a damper on our plans to get a hike in before reaching our next sleeping point. We stopped off in the first town we passed to grab some supplies for the day, a goo filled pastry which we had no idea what was in it. Luckily it turned out to be apple (I think, Rebe disagrees) and a chocolate croissant.

Apple pastry?

Lunch - One of our sad self made road sandwiches lol

We also grabbed some meat to go along with the cheese and bread we previously purchased to ensure we had a snack for lunch while driving south. The plan was to visit a few nature spots on the way south before settling in to Zadar, a quaint historical city for the evening.

First stop was to be Velebit, a rocky, craggy mountain range in the northern part of Paklenica National Park. We set course in the rain, letting google tell us where to go as usual until the road ran out and google announced "You have arrived!" I looked at Rebe and I said, "well I guess Google messed us over again, you didn't happen to tell the phone to navigate us TO the mountain literally did you?" Her lack of a response let me know that that was indeed what she had done. Well since we were...somewhere I guess we would keep exploring and kept doing down this unmarked road that google had led us to. Of course the rain starts to pick up and who wants to get stuck in the mud with no cell signal in the middle of no where Croatia? While out here we passed this super random monument which was a tad scary and never saw another soul while we were 'lost.'

Random monument we found was memorial to the Jadovno Concentration Camp and atrocity

View from the mountain while trying to get to Velebit

With the rain in full force now we headed back toward where we had come from and set course for another spot on the map. Made lunch while on the go and made it back to the main roads only to be met with more rain and this time fog, fog so dense that I had to drive ~25mph. This lasted for probably an hour, I imagine we missed some beautiful landscapes and probably even a few sightings of Velebit (the original mountain we were trying to visit) but we'll never know. We finally popped out of the fog and were over looking the coast and it was a wondrous sight to see. Hell anything was better than the fog at this point.

Fog above on the mountain

View of the coastline when we were below the fog

View further down the coastline

We were now heading to our second planned stop in Paklenica National Park, the weather was still continuing to produce on and off again rain. But when we got closer to the park we were actually able to park and go for a hike. We arrived at the park around 2pm and apparently the park ranger who mans the hut had already decided to call it a day. No one else was around to tell us where the trail leads so we decided to see where it led and maybe we would see something cool.

Trail head and ranger station

Mountains surrounding overlooking the trail

Trail ahead

Rebe making it over the rough terrain

 So we get to the end of the trail and we hear a lot of rushing water, and come to this waterfall.  All along the trail we had noticed markers to assist and to let you know that you are still on the correct path.  But the trail does not just end at the water, we noticed trail markers on the rocks in the water and on up the path on the other side.  If the water was not so high it would have been easy to hop, skip and jump our way across but it was running way too fast and way too high.

Trail end

From the park we made our way into Zadar, tiny town where there is the current town and the "old" town where the Romans once lived in a fortified city. As we were learning and should have known parking in these 'old towns' isn't the best and sure isn't cheap. But since we got there later we only had to pay for a few hours before it was free of charge. Zadar is the first of the coastal towns we would visit and all of them have a special flair to themselves. After parking we met up with our host who showed us our nice room, she gave us the rundown of the town and then we were off to see the sights.

Roman forum with Church of St. Donatus (the round one) in the background

Main St where our room/apartment was located

Opposite view of the Roman forum

After strolling around town of a bit we settle for dinner at 4 Kantunas (4 corners), where we had a great meal of gnocchi and pasta with truffles.

I would give you a photo of my food but I always
forget to take a pic cause I'm usually too hungry

After dinner we did a full walk around the town to see each of the gates. The city is also know for it's art installations along the water call the Sea Organ and the Greeting to the Sun. The Sea Organ is a sort of pipe organ that generates sound from the waves, and the Greeting to Sun is a light show that is solar powered and plays after the sun goes down.

Bridge to the "new" town

Old Roman column and glass to ruins below the city

The Land Gate and local marina 

Us at the Sea Organ, you can ignore our silly faces

People walking around at the Greeting to the Sun

We wanted gelato this night, but not one of the 5 shops we talked to took credit card. So as a note to any future visitors of Croatia, get some cash if you want gelato.

On a side note, later in the week one of our tour guides, who was actually from Zadar, told us that a mad man in broad daylight decided to damage the Greeting to the Sun and this happened two days after we left.

Wednesday May 29th

Plan for the day was to wake up early and assess the weather and if the weather was bad we would just head to Split (our next sleeping destination) and tour the city. We woke up and the weather was rainy as expected and could potentially get better by 1-2pm so if we got a late start it could work to our advantage. We finally got up around 915, packed our bags and got in the road towards Krka National Park. Krka is known for its river and 3 big waterfalls in a addition to a monastery on an island in the middle of the lake.

We again stopped for breakfast at a local supermarket, grabbed more supplies for the day including an umbrella to combat this oncoming rain.

Mexican Pie Burek, apparently the locals laugh at the name. 
We didn't name it, so why you laughing at me when I order it?

We arrived at Krka at 1130am and of course it was still raining, I convinced Rebe we should wait 20-30 minutes to see if the rain would let up a bit before we entered the park. 25 minutes passed and the rain wasn't letting up so we had to just fight the good fight. We geared up and headed into the park and the lakes or river is situated in a valley of its own making. The park provides a bus down a steep hill to reach the first attraction or you can put your big boy pants on a hike down the hill. The signs say it was only a half mile...don't know who measured this for the park, sure looked longer to me. At the bottom of the hill there are 3 options, first hike the lower loop which is about an hour or two, second is to take a boat directly to the Visovac church and Monestary on the island in the middle of the lake, or third see the church and the second waterfall on the lake. Since there was a potential for rain we thought it would be smart to do the lower hike first and then take the boat later in the day.

We set off around the first loop and hiked around to see the first waterfall, below are some pics from the first section of the park.

Upper Fall before making the loop

Another view of the upper fall

Boardwalk path that leads around the backside of the fall

Minor fall around back...I'm hiding the people here

Note all the people at the above pictured waterfall

There were a couple of other little waterfalls in this area and of course people were lining up to take pictures.  Of course Rebe and I like to get in on the selfie action (though you probably can't tell by my lack of posting them).  Rebe is patiently standing in line and folks are taking their sweet time, I on the other hand try to avoid these traps.  Rebe keeps waiting, folks still posing and then out of no where she erupts says some choice words to no one and storms out of line.  I spent the next 15 minutes laughing to myself.

Skradinski Buk (waterfall) at the south end of Krka

Another view of the Skradinski Buk. 

After seeing Skradinski Buk we were going to see the rest of the park by boat but we had missed the last boat by 30 minutes. We could have taken a boat just to the Visovac Monastery which is a monastery on an island but we decided it wasn't worth the time and plus we could get in other sites before the end of the day. Instead we drove to a viewing point for Visovac for a rear/side view of the island and monastery.

Visovac on the right

Close up of Visovac

Drove over to the Roški Slap which is the sixth water fall on the river Krka. While on the way to parking we had to drive across this one lane bridge that was controlled by a red light. We get to the light and wait our turn, then proceed to cross the bridge and as we are crossing the bridge there are tourist walking on the bridge just taking in the sights. Of course me being the angry Houston driver that I am now, I was like, "...these idiots are walking on the road with no sidewalk and now not moving out of the way. If they slow me down and then the light changes on the other side now we are going to be stuck on the bridge." But the people finally allowed us past.

There were multiple trails to hike in this area, we of course did the short ones for time and simplicity. There was a 5 miles long educational trail that went up the mountain, that would have been cool to do if we had time but sadly we did not. The first trail led down to a viewing point of the big waterfall, Roški Slap.

Roški Slap (center right, at the end of the lake)

Roški Slap from the edge of the lake

We then hike around the area above the waterfall, a section of the river locals call 'The Necklaces.'

Upper section of The Necklaces

Lower section

As we completed our trail around The Necklaces we found ourselves the on bridge where we had found the idiots and now we were those idiots. Luckily no cars came up on us to push us off the road.

There was one more accessible fall, Manojlovac Slap which was even further up the road and the weather was starting to get a bit rainy at this point. We drive up, see the sign and pull into this dirt road barely wide enough for our car and we're praying that no one else is trying to exit and also that we do not get stuck in the mud. Luckily our trusty steed was a jeep but knowing me I still would have driven down this road in a rental Corolla. We arrive at the muddy parking lot, and we cannot really see anything, we can hear the fall but there are no real signs of where to go and of course the rain starts picking up even more. We find a good worn path and head down it and then spot a couple of benches down the way and head to them. This was the place to be, all of the tourist spots we had been earlier had been crawling with tourists and this place was a ghost town. Maybe it's because it's a little harder to access or maybe it was the rain either way Rebe and I were happy and able to enjoy this spot alone.

From Manojlovac Slap we got back on the road in the pouring rain and finally headed to Split, Google once again let us down but we sorted it out and finally got to our destination. Parking in Split was nightmare near our apartment. There was street parking, but multiple zones and then a 24 hour lot which cost way too much. Parking was like what I expect to pay in NYC. Either way we figured it out... Met our host who appeared to be renting part of her house, either they had remodeled and put up a wall to rent out our room/apartment or something. Either way good for them for taking advantage of the space they had in order to make a better living for themselves.

We walked around the city to get our bearing on what was where, had a bit of gelato and plotted our plan for the next day. Rebe used all the hot water of our little water heater so I had to take a cold shower ☹️

One of the main streets of Split (yes I went into the beer shop) 

Saint Domnius Bell Tower at dusk

The city of Split was originally a palace and this mall is located
in what was previously the cellars

Silver Gate on the eastern side of the city

Thursday May 30th

Another day, more rain. The night before we reviewed the weather and saw the forecast was slated for some rain early so we slept in until 9ish. But of course it did not rain early and looked decent out so we decided to check out the local city market, or what we would call the local farmers market. The market was bustling with many vendors all trying to sell their fruits and vegetables to foreigners and locals alike. Rebe really had her heart set on some strawberries and was successful. I will say they were probably the best strawberries I have ever had, I think American fruit must be bad or something...

Farmers Market

After leaving the market we decided to take a hike over to Marjan Hill. Marjan Hill leads to Marjan Forest Park which is just west of the old city and is a beautful park that over looks the city. The hill from the city consists of 500 steps but does provide some interesting views of the city.

Steps up

Steps down, ignore the power lines

There was also a Jewish cemetery at the midpoint on the hill, we thought we could cut through it but we could not find a exit. We had walked further up the hill in the cemetery only to have to walk back down to continue our hike up the hill.

View of Split from midway up the Marjan Hill

As we got closer and closer to the top of the hill, we could see the weather changing behind us and coming straight for us.

Beautiful day for a cruise?

Probably not... (note the incoming rain)

We walked back down the hill in the pouring rain, getting harder as we got into the city. Stopped at a local beer store for a rain break and refreshment.

Plan for the afternoon was to do our own food tour, so we headed to Makarun a place that makes its own fresh macaroni and a charcuterie plate. The specialty of the restaurant is the homemade Korčula’s macaroni prepared according to the ancient methods of their Croatian ancestors. Simply amazing.

Of course while eating lunch the rain died down and we did some more exploring for unique food and looked for a famous "100" layer cake that is famous in Croatia but apparently it is more commonly served further north.

I then convinced Rebe I needed a nap before our evening activity.

When I got up, we hopped in the car and headed to the Klis Fortress. Klis Fortress is an old Croatian fortress high up on a mountain above Split. Of course it was not raining in Split, but it was up on the mountain. The fortress was built around 3 BC and served as a strategic defensive post to protect the coastal towns from invaders coming over the mountains. Game of Thrones fans will recognize it as where scenes from Mareen were set.

Klis Fortress

Klis Fortress

Split as seen from Klis Fortress
The big hill in the center right is Marjan Hill/Park

Came back down and tried a new parking area, free over night instead of the pay 24 hour parking we had been paying. After battling for 15 mins trying to get the car in the tiny parallel spot we stumbled into the parking attendant who gave us the run down on how street parking works. Rebe then went to the newsstand to battle with a lady who obviously spoke english but wasn't very comfortable with it, even pulled out the phone to get some Google Translate on. Rebe wanted to pay for multiple days which was available in zone 2 but we were in zone 1. Rebe came back frustrated and sent me to handle it, this time another local was near by and played translator between me and the newsstand lady. She was really nice about the whole thing too.

Dinner was at Kantun Paulina known for the Croatian fast food of cevapi. Grabbed a Pipi. Food was damn good, filling and went will with another of the local Croatian beers I had previously bought.

Cevapi and Pipi

Croatian Porter I found :)

Friday May 31st

Finally, finally a day without rain...well almost as it rained for about 3 minutes during dinner. All day Thursday Rebe and I were discussing what we should do on Friday as the weather man was predicting nice weather. Should we venture over to see some of the coastal islands that Croatia has or should we lounge in the city and take in the fresh air, or maybe do something adventurous like extreme canyoning? Canyoning, what's that you ask? Well it is a hiking, swimming, jumping, repelling adventure through a canyon. And of course that's what we did for the day.

We woke up at 8, and marched over to the parking meter to pay the parking people so they didn't ticket our car cause I'm sure Hertz Croatia will mail you a bill for the ticket... maybe not but we're not trying to find out and plus we support the REAL parking people. Put down money for the all day pass and headed back to get dressed for the day which meant swimsuits under our normal clothes. Then it was off into town to grab a bite for breakfast, which of course meant a stop at one of the awesome bakeries that we had visited all week, and then over to meet up with our tour group at the Sea Gate in the old town (a 5 minute walk). We arrived at the meeting spot and there were other tour groups there but not ours, and then an Irish couple walks up and is intercepted by a lady gathering people and it was our group! 4 people with 2 more people joining, which is awesome as small groups are always the best. After waiting 10 minutes for the last 2, the tour guide assumed they were not coming and sent us on our way.

After a 45 minute drive, where most of the van napped lightly, we arrived at the base camp for the canyoning company. They sized us up for 6mm thick wetsuits (this was an immediate sign that the water was going to be cold, when we scuba dive we wear no wetsuit or 1-3mm if it's "cold") and then it was off to the river. The driver parked the van and off we went hiking down into the canyon of the Cetina river, and this was not like a easy walking trail where you just walk down a path to the river. We had to hop, skip, slide and crawl over rocks to get down to the river. And once in the river the true adventure began. The water in the river was a cool 13C or 55F for you Americans, oh did I mention that the warning we had to read before doing the tour said there were hypothermia chances on this tour... 55F doesn't sound that bad, but normal cold tap water at your house in the summer hovers around 75F (24C) and ocean temps in Florida are pushing 80-82F. Once we got over the water the fun set in, we were basically hiking down the river, hopping from boulder to boulder and swimming to the next section of river that we had to pass.

Canyoning Gear

More Gear

We then reached a section of river where our guide led us out of the river and into a cave, this cave was a remnant of early hydroelectric dam work that was built along the river. The reason for walking through the cave was to avoid a 55m (180 feet) waterfall that we obviously could not hike over and slide over, well I guess we could but the tour would definitely be over at that point. So instead of cave going down to the bottom of the falls it just put us out at the same level just on the other side of the falls, and from there the entire group (minus the guide) repelled down the side of the canyon into the water below. Yep, you read that right we strapped on a harness grabbed a rope and walked backwards down into the canyon and the last 15m was us just hanging from the rope with the guide lowering us down into the water below. Of course yours truly was the first one to go down and I got to watch Rebe make her erratic descent, and apparently she made a few blood curdling screams when she made a few missteps but I was unable to hear them due to the waterfall but I could definitely SEE when she might have had a few choice words for the guide.

Once we made it to the bottom we had another section of river to traverse and then to another section of canyon that we could repel down, this section wasn't necessary but meh why not do it for the sake of the adventure. This time the repel led down to a ledge where you could either stop and jump from 7m (22ft) or keep repelling down into the water. Most everyone decided to jump from the ledge, especially Rebe as she wasn't very keen on the repelling. Not gonna lie, from the top the ledge appeared a lot closer to the water and once I had disconnected the rope it was a bit too late to keep repelling so I jump anyways...yep it hurt.

The Canyoning Crew

After the jump we were at the end of the canyon, had to swim a good ways to the end point so we could walk back to the car. All that jumping, climbing and hiking took a good bit out of us and I took a nap on the way back.

We got back in to Split and immediately grabbed some gelato. We had left Split at 9am and it was now 4pm and we hadn't had a chance to eat lunch so an ice cream snack was reasonable no? Lunch/dinner was next and we decided on a smallish spot called Korta, where I had a interesting dish of gnocchi and seafood and for an appetizer we split some baked cheese which was also amazing.

Pano of Split old town and marina

The rest of the day was for relaxing, we walked over to a memorial park west of the city to see the sunset and to catch a few differing views of the city. Stopped at a store to get more snacks for our long ride to Dubrovnik tomorrow and called it a night.

Saturday June 1st

Split to Dubrovnik

Guess what the weather forecast was for today! You guessed it, RAIN. With rain on the forecast we really decided to lay low in the morning and really slept it in because who wants to tour things in the rain more than you have to. I had gotten up early to pay our parking fees to ensure we didn't get a ticket while spending our last few hours in Split. Finally checked out around 11, grabbed the usual bakery breakfast and hit the road. The plan was to potentially stop by Sveti Jure, a big mountain peak up a really windy road. As we got closer to the mountain peak on the highway, we couldn't see the top of it and figured if we were to travel up it all we would see would be clouds so it might well be left for another trip to Croatia.

More of the Croatian coast, just south of B&H

We traveled on through Croatia, crossed into Bosnia and Herzegovina for 5 miles, only to cross back in to Croatia on our way to Dubrovnik. On the way there was a local arboretum where a few scenes from Game of Thrones (GoT) were filmed in a town called Trsteno. Most of the scenes filmed here were depicted as the gardens of Kings Landing, for you fans check it out: https://www.kingslandingdubrovnik.com/filming-locations/trsteno-arboretum. Now I will admit the gardens are a beautiful place but man you really need to prepare yourself for how much CGI (computer generated imagery) the GoT team really put lot into their shows.

Main path down to the gardens

Dock below the gardens

Look familiar?  Sansa and Olenna maybe...  

Fountain in the garden

As Rebe and I made the drive we had a discussion on whether we needed to keep the car when we arrived in Dubrovnik. We had read that parking was 5 Euros an hour, which that in itself is ridiculous but even more so since we would not be using the car for two days. Might as well just drop the car off at the airport and uber back to Dubrovnik to save a few bucks and hassle with the car.

Dubrovnik from above

We finally make it in to town and as our uber driver dropped us off at the bottom of a hill, granted it wasn't the bottom of the town but we still had a small hike to make up to our apartment. We turned the corner and there was our host waiting for us in the street (but no cars are allowed in the area). He opened the gate to the apartment yard and THERE WERE MORE STAIRS AND A LOT OF THEM 😧. But the place was amazing, a cute little one bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchen and the guy was so nice. After he settled us in, he asked what we wanted for a welcome drink and then went and got me a beer and brought Rebe some lemonade, which turned out to be lemon lime gatorade but I mean the guy was really being a great host.

Stairs down to the street and Hilton in the top left

After unpacking, we headed back down the stairs and down the hill to do some exploring. I told Rebe that I wanted to explore "the fort" cause it looked HUGE and we probably could get lost in there. We get to the bottom of the hill and I point at the big "fort" looking structure and was like "let's go in the fort" and Rebe gives me the:

My view of the "fort"

She was like, "Matt, that's the old town...it's behind the walls." My head proceeded to:

"You mean there's a CITY IN THERE!?!?!?!" Now granted, take a look at this thing, it looks like a got dang fort or castle in of itself. How as I supposed to know there was a city in there. We get inside and the place is crawling with people, people in the streets, people buying candy, people on tours, people walking the walls. Restaurants, shops, you name it that got it in this giant 'fort.' Not my brightest moment, and if I had been thinking or even paying a tad more attention to the pictures I had taken earlier I should have known what I was looking at, but of course looking the bigger picture doesn't always translate when seeing it up close. That's my my excuse and I sticking with it.

City crawling with people

Walked around town, posted up on the bar by the beach, found a dinner spot for Sunday night and made reservations (Azur) and then went over to a Michelin star recommended joint called Zuzori where we had Sea Bass, polenta, mushroom soup and "dirty spaghetti."

A side street

2 of the churches in the city

Shame

Red Keep

Sunday

Pile Gate and the walls

One full day in Dubrovnik and with so many attractions, you really have to do the basic ones or big ones to take the city in. We gathered only so much about the city in our little walk around the city but of course you can't see history or learn history just by walking around. For the day we had decided to do the wall tour, which would lead us all around the outer walls of the city giving us unparalleled views of the city from slightly above.

We were up at 830 to get dressed, and get checked in to our flight the next morning which took a bit longer than expected. Then we rushed down the hill to grab a bite to eat before the tour, we still needed to actually buy the tickets for the tour that was a guide led audio tour in which the guide would be speaking to us through a radio. We had left our headphones in the apartment so Rebe and I split up with the intention of meeting at a known place to regroup (I actually didn't have cell service so it was like 1995 all over again, me waiting in the blind). Apparently the meeting spot was not the spot where I was standing but Rebe was smart enough to check in with the tour group before hand and then come find me and then the tour group would eventually come to us. Which gave us a second to get some breakfast. You know the usual sort of bakery fare we had been eating all week.

The tour was from a local that was one of the 1500 locals that actually live within the old city walls, as one can imagine tourism has boomed in Dubrovnik in the last 15 years and owning a place in the old town is easily more lucrative to rent it out to out of town visitors than to work and live in the the city. Our guide gave us the full history of Dubrovnik from it's 9th century origins, many fights or negotiations with the Venetians and Ottoman Turks to it's dark days during WW2 and finally its independence in 1991. Here are a few pics from the wall:

Red Keep, this is actually Lovrijenac the actual fortress

Marina and old port

City from above

Where are my dragons?

Us overlooking the city

After the wall tour where we didn't get all the city history we expected but more of the city defensive history, we opted to book another tour with the same company but this time of the city itself. It was cool, obviously not as visual as the wall tour but still cool.

Rector's Palace, where the city mayor would stay (with 1 month terms)

Sponza Palace and the Clocktower

Church of Saint Blaise, patron saint of the city

Another scene from Game of Thrones

Crazy candy stores like this all over the city (this wasn't a part of the tour)

After the city tour went back to the house for a snack and then hoofed it over to get a closer look at the actual fort, Fort Lovrijenac. And then inside to take in the city from another angle.

The "Red Keep" aka Fort Lovrijenac

A hall in the fort

A center 'square' in the fort

View of Dubrovnik from the fort

 After the fort we headed into the city for dinner and then packed for our long ride home on Monday.