Spring Break—The Dalmatian Coast and Mostar

We arrived in Dubrovnik around 20:00 and picked up our “Last Minute Rent-a-Car” from the very nice Marco. Then we drove into Dubrovnik and easily found our apartment due to the great directions from our host, Ana. The apartment was lovely and Ana even had an Easter treat for the kids. Things were already looking up. If you’re ever in Dubrovnik, we highly recommend staying in Ana’s apartment.

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/546253

The view from Ana's apartment.

Stairs from the apartment down to the Old Town
(totally worth the climb for the view).

We were up Friday morning ready to explore Dubrovnik. We now had limited time, but unexpected beautiful weather. We chose to spend our time walking the Old City Walls and wandering about inside them. The walls alone make this a place worth visiting. We enjoyed the views as we walked along them, but the real fun was watching the kids run and climb and explore. At one point the sea comes directly up to the wall and you are stunned by the blue Adriatic on one side and the orange tiled roofs on the other. Dubrovnik was heavily bombed during the 1990s war, so nearly all of the tiles are new. It is amazing to see how this city has rebuilt itself in just 20 years. The walls were built in the 15^th century for defense and did their job so well that they were never needed until 1991, when the citizens of Dubrovnik retreated inside its walls for the 8-month siege by the Yugoslavian army.

Orange Rile Roofs and Blue Sea 

The Minceta Tower-the highest point in the walls.
Eliot is waving from the little window up top.

On top of the Minceta tower.

An unrepaired home that lost it's roof in the siege.

Sophie playing jail in a lookout atop one of the bastions.

The Old Port harbor.

In Luza Square in the Old Town. Really neat clock tower
in the background.

The main street in the Old Town called the Stradun

We left Dubrovnik just after lunch. Our original plans had us leaving in the morning and heading to Mostar, so we had considered skipping Mostar and heading up the coast to Split to get back on track with our itinerary (I know that my type A personality is showing, but remember that I’m married to a type A as well). Instead we decided to keep a visit to Mostar in our day and I’m so glad we did!

When you head into Bosnia Herzegovina you can immediately tell you are in a different country. This place hasn’t recovered from its own war with Yugoslavia and the genocide it experienced as quickly as Croatia has. I was heavily reminded of our trip to Israel years ago, and although I know our kids can’t really understand all of what they saw here, I’m glad to have given them the experience. There are many buildings that are still bombed out shells sandwiched between those that have been rebuilt.

This was the first time our kids have visited a town sprinkled with mosques. We were telling them about the call to prayer when we were fortunate enough to hear it! What a treat to be standing below a minaret when the call to prayer is being chanted.

Many of you know we are big fans of Rick Steves. One reason is that he does a great job of providing enough history in his books to give you a backdrop to understand what you are seeing without totally overwhelming you. What we read about the Bosnian war was pretty humbling. There is so much history that I should already know, but am learning because of the amazing places we get to visit. So as we walked through the old town we read about the historic Old Bridge, and how it survived for 400 years, including the Nazi tanks that rolled over it to occupy Mostar during WWII, only to be destroyed by Croat forces in 1993. The current Old Bridge was rebuilt and finished 10 years ago.

Walking the New Muslim Cemetery was another humbling experience. I am a huge lover of cemeteries, but walking through one containing the casualties of a recent war was sobering. This cemetery doesn’t celebrate the lives of people who lived many happy years, but honors the heroism of young men who died defending their country and religion. Everyone buried here died between 1991-1993.

We left the town of Mostar and headed back into Croatia and into the city of Split. Once there we parked and made our way into the old city on foot. I love how many European cities keep their old town centers traffic free. Our apartment was inside a remodeled Baroque palace dating from the 1600s. Pretty cool! We had a fabulous fish dinner and turned in for the night exhausted but happy.

Fish for dinner--and no pasta!

Our new apartment in an old Baroque Palace.

This morning we woke up and headed out to grab a pastry breakfast and stroll the Riva. Because of the Easter holiday and the rain we were nearly the only people out to enjoy the palm tree lined harbor. Next we went to explore Split’s main attraction, Diocletian’s Palace. The Roman Emperor was originally from this area and built the enormous structure as his retirement home. It seems everywhere we go we see Rome, which makes it that much cooler to go “home” to Rome. Now the shell of the palace houses all kinds of apartments, shops, and other businesses. There is even a modern glass façade bank inside. If you look through the windows you see the original Roman brickwork of the palace mixed in with the bank’s stucco walls. Diocletian’s mausoleum is now a cathedral dedicated to the Bishop he had killed. It seems fitting, since Diocletian had thousands of local Christians tortured and killed. We stood outside the Cathedral and enjoyed the loud ringing of the church bells as local people filed in for Easter mass.

The Riva

In the ruins of Diocletian's Palace

The kids playing at being sphinx.

Bishop Gregory of Nin. The kids didn't
believe me when I said it was Dumbledore.

Rubbing his toe for good luck.

Then it was time to continue our drive north. Our next stop was Plitvice Lakes National Park. You know how we love our parks, so we couldn’t pass up stopping at one of Europe’s best. The park has 16 terraced lakes connected by numerous waterfalls. We had big plans for hiking, but it’s been a rainy day—even snow mix in the park, so we had to adjust. The water level has been high everywhere, and many of the boardwalks down along the lakes are currently flooded, so some trails were closed. But the rain lightened up to a drizzle and we were able to hike down to a lake and cross it to get near one of the huge waterfalls before reaching the part of the boardwalk that was flooded. This was a prime example of knowing we weren’t in the states. The switchback trail down to the lake had no railing, and the boardwalk was open even though water was rapidly rushing under it with only an inch or two of space to spare. The threat of being sued doesn’t seem to factor into things in this part of the world. I guess here people realize if you aren’t careful it’s your own fault.

There was actually quite a bit of snow on the ground and the kids enjoyed that. They commented that they had the missed the snow and Sophie wanted to know if I did as well. I answered her honestly, “No, not really.” We were a little chilled after our walk so we warmed up with some hot chocolate and cappuccino and we headed on to Zagreb for the night.

It’s been a memorable Easter. We are looking forward to a few more days in the northern part of Croatia, and then Slovenia and Venice. Buona Pasqua a tutti!

Spring Break False Start

I had planned to blog about our trip this spring break and write more about living in Italy after we are back home, but the beginning of our trip affords me the opportunity to do both. We (well really Aaron) had planned out a wonderful road trip through Croatia with dips into Bosnia Herzegovina and Slovenia and a couple nights in Venice before returning home. We had checked airfare directly into Croatia, but found that too expensive for our tastes and instead had the brilliant idea to rent a car here in Rome and take the ferry across the Adriatic, drive north through Croatia, and swing back around through Venice on our way home. We knew border crossings could be an issue, so Aaron thoroughly checked into what was required before deciding on this plan.

Italy loves paperwork. They seem to have multiple official documents for everything, with every document coming from a different office and requiring a different stamp. We experienced this thoroughly when we went through the immigration process (I’ll save that for another post). So when Aaron read that the ferry company required the original registration for car transport, he made sure to talk with the rental car agency about it. Avis assured us it wouldn’t be a problem to use the certified copy of the receipt with a letter explaining that the company keeps original registrations on file at a central office. So we happily went about making further plans for a wonderful trip.

Fast forward to last Thursday.  Aaron picked up the car; we loaded up and headed out. We decided on a slightly longer route that would allow us to drive down the east coast of Italy to the port town of Bari, where the ferry would take us overnight to Croatia. The kids were super excited at the idea of sleeping on a boat. A little over five hours later we arrived in Bari with a couple of hours to kill before checking in at the dock. We strolled the coast, wandered the lanes of the old town, and popped into the cathedral.

In Bari on the Adriatic Sea.

Boys never tire of playing on rocks.

 Next we headed over to the dock. We parked in the line of cars and Aaron went off to check us in while the kids and I waited.  Over an hour later he came back to let me know that they were not going to let us on the ferry. Apparently the lady at the counter didn’t like our car documents and just shoved the passports back at him with a “is not possible.” We had always known that this was a possibility in Italy because often when it comes to official documents everything depends on the level of knowledge and the disposition of the person you’re working with. Aaron said the wait in line itself was crazy. The company was really disorganized. He waited for an hour behind 5 other people who were checking in loads of people (probably tour groups) even though the signs clearly stated that each person must present his/her own passport—apparently this rule isn’t one of the hard and fast ones. At one point a big guy in the back tired of waiting and decided to physically push his way to the front. Aaron almost took an elbow to the face as the guy tried to get to the window. When the man in front of Aaron stopped him a fight nearly broke out. At that point Aaron said he wasn’t sure he even wanted to put our family on the ferry run by this company. We weren’t really sure what to do at that point, but figured our best option was to turn around and get home as soon as possible so we could look for a way to save our trip.

The kids were pretty upset and scared. We told them it would be fine, and that they would get to sleep in their own beds one more night. Five hours later we made it home at 1:30. I woke Sophie up to hear her say groggily, “but we didn’t go anywhere.” Aaron and I spent the next 2 hours finding a way to piece our trip together with a one-way flight, rental car, and train travel. At 3:30 am we finally went to bed.

Aaron was up early to return the car to Avis. When he explained the situation the nice lady replied, “That’s too bad. We’ve had lots of people take the ferry from Bari in our cars. You must have gotten a picky ferry employee.” Of course we did! We felt lucky at this point to get tickets for an evening flight to Dubrovnik—the same flight we’d passed on months before. Aaron found a car in Dubrovnik through a site called “Last Minute Rent-a-Car” (I know!) and we left for the airport determined to enjoy our spring break. More on that to come...

Better late than never?

So here I am--finally--trying to get started with this blogging thing. It's a little strange, as there was so much new to us 6 months ago that I wanted to talk about, but now living in Italy seems "normal." So I will try to take myself back 6 months to share what may seem interesting to you. I expect most of our blog will be travel posts/photos, but I'll try to include a little about living and teaching in Rome. We're getting ready to head out on a 10 day trip to Croatia and Slovenia this week and I suspect that will be a great way to practice blogging. Stay tuned...