Today is the last day of our holiday and we’re just having a quiet day. We’ve had a great time, we’ve done all the things we wanted to do, seen some great sights, had some great meals and met some neat people.
We’re sitting in the square having a coffee under an umbrella in the shade of a church that chimes every 15 minutes. We are beside one of the noisiest conversations I’ve ever heard, watching babies being smacked in front of policemen, old ladies laughing at young girls having an argument, drinking our café latte’s, having chocolate croissants and relaxing.
We drop the car back at 9:00am tomorrow, so that we can check in by 10:00 and leave for Singapore at midday. We get to Singapore at 6:00am on whatever day, where we spend the day in the city (or in the hotel room we’ve got for the day depending on how we feel), before catching a flight back to Christchurch which will see us back in Wellington by early afternoon on Sunday.
Th..th…that’s all folks…..End of Blog.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Wednesday – 5th Week: Rome
Like Florence, we’ve been to Rome before and have done all the tourist sites, so felt no need to stand in a queue for hours to go into St. Peters Basilica, the Vatican or the Sistine chapel – beautiful as they all are.
We caught the train in from Frascati at 9:30. It’s an express train with only 3 stops and takes about half an hour. It starts at Frascati, so we were able to get a seat on the train – great.
We started off with the open topped bus just to get our bearings. From the railway station we went to Piazza Della Republica, then to the forum, then the Coloseum, Circus Maximus, St Peter’s Square and finally at the trevi fountain, we decided to get off the bus and do some walking. The fountain was packed with people, as usual. There weren’t many coins in the fountain, so maybe they’ve banned that now. From there we went to the Spanish steps, which weren’t as impressive as they could be, as the church at the top of them was covered in scaffolding for renovation. From there we walked down to the Tiber, where we crossed at Ponte Cavour and walked down to beside the Tiber past the impressive Palazzo di Giustizia and the ship shaped Castel San Angelo to get a great view of the Castle with St Peter’s Square and Basilica in the background. We then crossed the Tiber at Ponte San Angelo and walked to Piazza Navonna where we found a restaurant for lunch and watched all the street sellers with their knock-off sunglasses, handbags and belts and the artists selling their paintings. After a delicious lunch with a bottle of Frascati wine, we walked to the Pantheon, then down to the Piazza Venezia, down past the forum (I’ve never got the forum – it just seems like rubble to me) to the Coloseum, then back to the railway station – quite a walk.
We had dinner at a restaurant near the hotel with a couple of bottles of Frascati wine, which we’re still feeling slightly today.
We caught the train in from Frascati at 9:30. It’s an express train with only 3 stops and takes about half an hour. It starts at Frascati, so we were able to get a seat on the train – great.
We started off with the open topped bus just to get our bearings. From the railway station we went to Piazza Della Republica, then to the forum, then the Coloseum, Circus Maximus, St Peter’s Square and finally at the trevi fountain, we decided to get off the bus and do some walking. The fountain was packed with people, as usual. There weren’t many coins in the fountain, so maybe they’ve banned that now. From there we went to the Spanish steps, which weren’t as impressive as they could be, as the church at the top of them was covered in scaffolding for renovation. From there we walked down to the Tiber, where we crossed at Ponte Cavour and walked down to beside the Tiber past the impressive Palazzo di Giustizia and the ship shaped Castel San Angelo to get a great view of the Castle with St Peter’s Square and Basilica in the background. We then crossed the Tiber at Ponte San Angelo and walked to Piazza Navonna where we found a restaurant for lunch and watched all the street sellers with their knock-off sunglasses, handbags and belts and the artists selling their paintings. After a delicious lunch with a bottle of Frascati wine, we walked to the Pantheon, then down to the Piazza Venezia, down past the forum (I’ve never got the forum – it just seems like rubble to me) to the Coloseum, then back to the railway station – quite a walk.
We had dinner at a restaurant near the hotel with a couple of bottles of Frascati wine, which we’re still feeling slightly today.
Tuesday – 5th Week: Drive to Rome
After the previous days excitement, we had a late start today to drive to Rome. (we’ve just watched a misbehaving child being smacked – right in front of a policeman – you gotta love this place). We drove down the back roads to Orvietto past lots of vineyards, olive trees and flowering sunflowers. Orvietto looked like a really neat town – on the top of a hill as usual – with lots of nice shops. We had lunch there before hitting the A1 for the trip down to Rome. When we got to Rome, we got onto the western ring road round the outside of the city and found our way to Frascati, where we are staying for the final few days of our holiday. We are staying in the Hotel Colonna which is beside the town square (where I’m writing this blog from) a fantastic location.
Monday – 5th Week: Siena Palio
Up at 6am to get on the road by 7am to get to Siena to see The Palio. I’d seen a documentary on The Palio a couple of years ago and had always wanted to see it, if the chance ever came up. The Palio is a bare back horse race, run round the Piazza Del Campo (main town square) in Siena. The race, has been run since before the 14th century and is contested by 10 of the 17 Contrades (districts in Siena) each year. The seven that don’t compete one year are automatic starters the following year and the other 3 are drawn by ballot. The Contrades draw which horse they will get to race four days before the race and then there is practice races round the square in the days leading up to the Palio.
To be honest, we didn’t know much about the format for the day, but assumed that Siena would be very busy for that day, so we were there and parked by 8am to get to experience some of the pageantry of the day. We arrived at the Piazza just before 9am in time to see the final practice, before the race gets run at 7:30 at night.
The Piazza del Campo is usually surrounded by restaurants, but for The Palio, very steep grandstands are erected against the buildings surrounding the Piazza, with a wooden fence to separate the horses from the spectators (see the photos). The track is only about 20-30 feet wide, with soil packed down for the horses to run on. Wooden fences on the other side of the track are used to separate the horses with the spectators who crowd the centre of the Piazza to watch the event.
If you’ve ever been to the Piazza del Campo in Siena, you will know that it is not flat, but dips in the centre to create a rather uneven bowl shape. This and its unusual shape (a misshaped semi circle) all add to the complexity of the race for the horses and riders – bare back remember.
The practice is to get the riders used to the horses and the horses used to the track, but doesn’t involve the start, which is where the race is really won or lost.
To add more interest, the jockeys are all dodgy characters who are subject to bribery and the Contrades all participate in bribing opposing jockeys to throw the race, block opposing horses etc – it’s all real dirty stuff, but what fun.
Finally, the horses start the race between two ropes which they enter according to the order that they have drawn. The race starts when the last horse enters the starting block, but the last horse can chose when he enters. The last horse holds all the cards, and the jockeys are all negotiating and doing deals right up to the time that the race starts – you can see them talking to each other as they parade at the start of the race.
Anyway, enough of the history and explanation. We arrived in time to see the practice from the outside edge of the Piazza. Once that was finished, the gates were opened and we were able to walk onto the track to see the horses and riders paraded around the square by their various Contrades.
There were people already camped out in positions beside the wooden fences for the race that wasn’t going to be held for another 10 hours. We then went to the tourist information centre to find out what the agenda for the day was. The 9am practice was the last one before the race. The square gets closed off at 4:30 and there are no toilets, drink or food facilities within the square. We decided that as we’d have to be in the square well before 4:30 (say 2:00) and wouldn’t get out until at least 8:30, that we’d soak up the atmosphere in the town, see the parade from the Duomo to the Piazza which started at 4:45 and then try and catch the race itself on TV.
Having checked out the Piazza, we headed off around the town to check out the different Contrades, which are divided along street lines. The Contrades haven’t changed since the 18 century and all the streets are done out in flags and some of the more energetic Contrades even have beautifully decorated light stands, so it makes the whole thing look really splendid (see photos). In some streets, there are the flags of one Contrade on one side and the flags of another Contrade on the other if that is a boundary line.
Siena without the Piazza restaurants is a town with a bit of a lack of outdoor restaurants, so for one of the few times on holiday we ate lunch in an indoor restaurant. After lunch, we went and did some shopping where Anne went nuts in a leather shop. Just as she was finishing off her purchases, drums started beating out on the street and one of the Contrades marched past with their drummer, flag wavers (2), flag bearer, knight and page boys (6). After them was a procession of all the ‘regular’ members of the Contrade – normally dressed people wearing the Contrade’s scarf.
We started to follow the Contrade up the street, when another one came by, so we stopped in a little alleyway to watch them. Because we’d walked a distance up the street, we were now outside one of the civic buildings and the Contrade stopped and did its flag waving act outside the building. The flags are enormous on big poles, and the flag wavers wave them around in time to their drummer. The flag waving comes to a climax as the flag get swirled faster and faster while the flag wavers gradually wrap the flags around the pole. When there all wound up, they throw them high in the air, where the flag unfurls. The flags are thrown so that they cross in mid air and are caught by the other flag waver. This is all done in a very narrow street. With one of the Contrades, I was standing right behind them and you get feel the draft from the flag and pole as they were swirled round in front of my face. Despite this, we got to watch all the Contrades do their act and not one flag was dropped and nobody in the crowd get hurt.
After that we went up to the Duomo, and watched the procession – which is kind of the same thing we’d just seen on the street, except there are trumpets and a brass section as well as all the other characters.
The procession finished at the Duomo at about 5:30, and as there weren’t any big screens around to watch the race (they weren’t really doing it for the tourists, I must say), so we headed back to Citta Della Pieve to watch it from our hotel room. By that stage, we’d been on our feet for a long time, so were glad to get our shoes off after a long day.
The race itself - now as I mentioned earlier, the last horse holds the cards as to when the race starts. We caught the build up from 7:00, with more flag waving etc. Then at 7:30 the horses get called into the starting box. The first horses all went in a stood there, but by the time 6 of the 10 were in, they were all barging each other and trying to block their opponents. After about a minute 9 of the 10 horses were in the starting box, and then the 10th one just stood there, outside the box, the jockey swinging his leg nonchalantly obviously waiting for when whatever jockey he’d done a deal with got in the correct position. This went on for 10 minutes all the while, the 9 other horses and jockeys were barging and shoving each other. Finally it got really messy and they all filed out of the start box. So, do it all again – 9 horses in, 10th leg swinging nonchalantly, then they broke the starting rope. Do it all again – barge shove for 10 minutes – all march out of the starting box again.
Finally at about 8:20, number 10 for no apparent reason enters the start box and as soon as the first hoof is in, they're all off. One horse made a brilliant start and was 20 metres ahead of the field with another horse in hot pursuit (no. 10 by the way never got higher than 9th, so he must have got rich reward from one of the Contrades). They charged around the Piazza 3 times, one horse fell at the first corner and the riderless horse nearly caused an upset on the very last corner of the race by running the wrong way around the track and nearly hitting the lead horse on the blind corner. Anyway, the horse in pursuit didn’t quite get up to take the race, so the bolter was the winner, second place is called “the loser” and nobody else counts – brilliant. After a whole day of pageantry and 45 minutes of build up, the race itself is over in around 2 minutes.
There was some confusion at the end, as the pursuing horse’s Contrade felt that they had won, but the TV replay showed they hadn’t so a major fight was averted. The winning Contrade gets the Palio, which is a banner created by a sienese artist – there’s a new one for each Palio, so the Contrade gets to keep their Palio for ever. The oldest Palio in existence dates back to about the 18th century.
To be honest, we didn’t know much about the format for the day, but assumed that Siena would be very busy for that day, so we were there and parked by 8am to get to experience some of the pageantry of the day. We arrived at the Piazza just before 9am in time to see the final practice, before the race gets run at 7:30 at night.
The Piazza del Campo is usually surrounded by restaurants, but for The Palio, very steep grandstands are erected against the buildings surrounding the Piazza, with a wooden fence to separate the horses from the spectators (see the photos). The track is only about 20-30 feet wide, with soil packed down for the horses to run on. Wooden fences on the other side of the track are used to separate the horses with the spectators who crowd the centre of the Piazza to watch the event.
If you’ve ever been to the Piazza del Campo in Siena, you will know that it is not flat, but dips in the centre to create a rather uneven bowl shape. This and its unusual shape (a misshaped semi circle) all add to the complexity of the race for the horses and riders – bare back remember.
The practice is to get the riders used to the horses and the horses used to the track, but doesn’t involve the start, which is where the race is really won or lost.
To add more interest, the jockeys are all dodgy characters who are subject to bribery and the Contrades all participate in bribing opposing jockeys to throw the race, block opposing horses etc – it’s all real dirty stuff, but what fun.
Finally, the horses start the race between two ropes which they enter according to the order that they have drawn. The race starts when the last horse enters the starting block, but the last horse can chose when he enters. The last horse holds all the cards, and the jockeys are all negotiating and doing deals right up to the time that the race starts – you can see them talking to each other as they parade at the start of the race.
Anyway, enough of the history and explanation. We arrived in time to see the practice from the outside edge of the Piazza. Once that was finished, the gates were opened and we were able to walk onto the track to see the horses and riders paraded around the square by their various Contrades.
There were people already camped out in positions beside the wooden fences for the race that wasn’t going to be held for another 10 hours. We then went to the tourist information centre to find out what the agenda for the day was. The 9am practice was the last one before the race. The square gets closed off at 4:30 and there are no toilets, drink or food facilities within the square. We decided that as we’d have to be in the square well before 4:30 (say 2:00) and wouldn’t get out until at least 8:30, that we’d soak up the atmosphere in the town, see the parade from the Duomo to the Piazza which started at 4:45 and then try and catch the race itself on TV.
Having checked out the Piazza, we headed off around the town to check out the different Contrades, which are divided along street lines. The Contrades haven’t changed since the 18 century and all the streets are done out in flags and some of the more energetic Contrades even have beautifully decorated light stands, so it makes the whole thing look really splendid (see photos). In some streets, there are the flags of one Contrade on one side and the flags of another Contrade on the other if that is a boundary line.
Siena without the Piazza restaurants is a town with a bit of a lack of outdoor restaurants, so for one of the few times on holiday we ate lunch in an indoor restaurant. After lunch, we went and did some shopping where Anne went nuts in a leather shop. Just as she was finishing off her purchases, drums started beating out on the street and one of the Contrades marched past with their drummer, flag wavers (2), flag bearer, knight and page boys (6). After them was a procession of all the ‘regular’ members of the Contrade – normally dressed people wearing the Contrade’s scarf.
We started to follow the Contrade up the street, when another one came by, so we stopped in a little alleyway to watch them. Because we’d walked a distance up the street, we were now outside one of the civic buildings and the Contrade stopped and did its flag waving act outside the building. The flags are enormous on big poles, and the flag wavers wave them around in time to their drummer. The flag waving comes to a climax as the flag get swirled faster and faster while the flag wavers gradually wrap the flags around the pole. When there all wound up, they throw them high in the air, where the flag unfurls. The flags are thrown so that they cross in mid air and are caught by the other flag waver. This is all done in a very narrow street. With one of the Contrades, I was standing right behind them and you get feel the draft from the flag and pole as they were swirled round in front of my face. Despite this, we got to watch all the Contrades do their act and not one flag was dropped and nobody in the crowd get hurt.
After that we went up to the Duomo, and watched the procession – which is kind of the same thing we’d just seen on the street, except there are trumpets and a brass section as well as all the other characters.
The procession finished at the Duomo at about 5:30, and as there weren’t any big screens around to watch the race (they weren’t really doing it for the tourists, I must say), so we headed back to Citta Della Pieve to watch it from our hotel room. By that stage, we’d been on our feet for a long time, so were glad to get our shoes off after a long day.
The race itself - now as I mentioned earlier, the last horse holds the cards as to when the race starts. We caught the build up from 7:00, with more flag waving etc. Then at 7:30 the horses get called into the starting box. The first horses all went in a stood there, but by the time 6 of the 10 were in, they were all barging each other and trying to block their opponents. After about a minute 9 of the 10 horses were in the starting box, and then the 10th one just stood there, outside the box, the jockey swinging his leg nonchalantly obviously waiting for when whatever jockey he’d done a deal with got in the correct position. This went on for 10 minutes all the while, the 9 other horses and jockeys were barging and shoving each other. Finally it got really messy and they all filed out of the start box. So, do it all again – 9 horses in, 10th leg swinging nonchalantly, then they broke the starting rope. Do it all again – barge shove for 10 minutes – all march out of the starting box again.
Finally at about 8:20, number 10 for no apparent reason enters the start box and as soon as the first hoof is in, they're all off. One horse made a brilliant start and was 20 metres ahead of the field with another horse in hot pursuit (no. 10 by the way never got higher than 9th, so he must have got rich reward from one of the Contrades). They charged around the Piazza 3 times, one horse fell at the first corner and the riderless horse nearly caused an upset on the very last corner of the race by running the wrong way around the track and nearly hitting the lead horse on the blind corner. Anyway, the horse in pursuit didn’t quite get up to take the race, so the bolter was the winner, second place is called “the loser” and nobody else counts – brilliant. After a whole day of pageantry and 45 minutes of build up, the race itself is over in around 2 minutes.
There was some confusion at the end, as the pursuing horse’s Contrade felt that they had won, but the TV replay showed they hadn’t so a major fight was averted. The winning Contrade gets the Palio, which is a banner created by a sienese artist – there’s a new one for each Palio, so the Contrade gets to keep their Palio for ever. The oldest Palio in existence dates back to about the 18th century.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Sunday: Final Week – back in Italy
One of the tragic things that we’ve taken to doing on holiday is telling each other what song we’re singing to ourselves. The objective is either to relate the song to whatever it was that made you start singing it (to yourself – with my musical ability, silence is golden). For example, when the sun goes behind a cloud, “the sun has got its hat on” usually springs to mind. Often the songs are the worst songs ever created and today for a reason that I will never understand, I got the theme song to The Brady Bunch in my head. Four days later, and it is still proving hard to shift.
Anyway, we got away from Ancona fairly early to drive back to Tuscany to Citta Della Pieve, where we are staying for two nights. It was great being back on Italian roads, with Italian drivers – everything just happens without any great drama, they pass in sensible places, always move out of the outside lane and generally just make life easy on the roads.
The drive itself was really good. Having spent 10 days in Croatia, where Rovinj was fantastic, and the Makarska Riviera was beautiful, but the bits in between weren’t quite up to spec, the Italian country side with all the colours of its olives trees, grape vines, sun flowers, hay bales, hill top towns and church spires really is a site to behold. Most of the drive was on small back country roads, so we were able to just cruise along at a nice pace with the roof down and the wind in our hair.
For lunch, we went back to Montepulciano, as we had really liked that on our first visit. The walk up to the top of the town past all the shops develops a good appetite in the 30 something degree heat of the day. After lunch and some shopping, we headed to Citta Della Pieve, where we had booked in for two nights before heading to Rome – the final destination in our holiday.
When we booked the hotel, we thought that it was in Perugia (because we looked up Perugia to find it), but once we’d booked it, we found out that it was in the region of Perugia, not the city of Perugia, so was in fact only about 20 minutes away from the villa we’d stayed in Tuscany 4 weeks earlier. This turned out to be a most fortuitous mistake because Perugia was a fairly large city, whereas Citta Della Pieve turned out to be a charming little town – very Italian (they don’t speak much English in the shops or cafes, which was really nice). We arrived in the late afternoon and after checking into the Hotel Vanussi, where we are booked for two nights, we went for a walk around the town. Being Sunday evening, lots of people were out in the square enjoying a wine or a gelato, so we sat down for a beer and wine ourselves. It was great seeing all the families out walking together in the evening. It reminded us very much of Carmona, a small town we stayed in just out of Seville in Spain.
The hotel has two restaurants – a pizza restaurant and a formal restaurant. The pizza restaurant was doing a great trade with the locals, so we had dinner there, with a bottle of the Vino Nobile de Montepulciano (the noble wine of Montepulciano).
Anyway, we got away from Ancona fairly early to drive back to Tuscany to Citta Della Pieve, where we are staying for two nights. It was great being back on Italian roads, with Italian drivers – everything just happens without any great drama, they pass in sensible places, always move out of the outside lane and generally just make life easy on the roads.
The drive itself was really good. Having spent 10 days in Croatia, where Rovinj was fantastic, and the Makarska Riviera was beautiful, but the bits in between weren’t quite up to spec, the Italian country side with all the colours of its olives trees, grape vines, sun flowers, hay bales, hill top towns and church spires really is a site to behold. Most of the drive was on small back country roads, so we were able to just cruise along at a nice pace with the roof down and the wind in our hair.
For lunch, we went back to Montepulciano, as we had really liked that on our first visit. The walk up to the top of the town past all the shops develops a good appetite in the 30 something degree heat of the day. After lunch and some shopping, we headed to Citta Della Pieve, where we had booked in for two nights before heading to Rome – the final destination in our holiday.
When we booked the hotel, we thought that it was in Perugia (because we looked up Perugia to find it), but once we’d booked it, we found out that it was in the region of Perugia, not the city of Perugia, so was in fact only about 20 minutes away from the villa we’d stayed in Tuscany 4 weeks earlier. This turned out to be a most fortuitous mistake because Perugia was a fairly large city, whereas Citta Della Pieve turned out to be a charming little town – very Italian (they don’t speak much English in the shops or cafes, which was really nice). We arrived in the late afternoon and after checking into the Hotel Vanussi, where we are booked for two nights, we went for a walk around the town. Being Sunday evening, lots of people were out in the square enjoying a wine or a gelato, so we sat down for a beer and wine ourselves. It was great seeing all the families out walking together in the evening. It reminded us very much of Carmona, a small town we stayed in just out of Seville in Spain.
The hotel has two restaurants – a pizza restaurant and a formal restaurant. The pizza restaurant was doing a great trade with the locals, so we had dinner there, with a bottle of the Vino Nobile de Montepulciano (the noble wine of Montepulciano).
Saturday – end of week 4
A nice change today – it’s a Saturday and we only have a short drive to Split to catch the catamaran to Ancona in Italy. We left Zigovošće at about 9:30, having said our goodbye’s to Goya and Jagoda and thanking them for a fantastic stay and for all their advice about the places we should visit – particularly Korčula and Mljet.
The drive to Split was back along the same coast road that we had driven on the week earlier. There is an inland road, but the terrain in Croatia is a bit barren and the traffic was light at that time of the morning – in our direction anyway. Arriving in Split, we found the ferry terminal, checked ourselves in for the ferry and then went off to explore Split.
As usual, the weather was mid-30’s and radiating nicely off the white marble sidewalk and the buildings. Split as a city was a bit lost on us. It didn’t have any of the beauty of Dubrovnik, the harbour was a busy tourist boat and ferry port and the town itself didn’t have any real charm or character – in fact it was the first time we’d come across your normal range of shops in the historical part of the city. We’re more used to a range of wine and food shops, restaurants and tourist shops, so to have the big chain stores (and even a McDonalds) was something of a surprise. Even lunch seemed to violently disagree with us as we both felt and looked decidedly off colour as soon as we’d eaten it. We both had really bright red faces, but after some time in the shade to cool down, and a couple of brief stops and, we managed to put the whole thing behind us.
Split is tourist central for all the small wooden tourist boats that do weekly trips around the islands and coast between Split and Dubrovnik. Because their week runs Saturday to Saturday, they were all docked in the port when we arrived in Split and by the time we got back from lunch at 2pm, they were all packed up and back out on their various journeys. They looked like quite a fun way to travel and the ones that we saw loading up with people looked as if they were quite well segregated between age ranges, so that all the 20 somethings were together on a boat, as were all the 60 somethings.
There was an amazing electrical storm (yet another one) while we were waiting for the ferry and one of the lightning bolts appeared to hit the earth a couple of hundred metres from where we were sitting in the car. Needless to say, we weren’t sitting in the car for long after that. The upside of the extremely heavy rain is that our car, which has been filthy for weeks (Europe is a really dusty place) is now completely clean.
Loading the ferry, when it started, was a fairly quick affair, but then we seemed to take a long time to get going and then went at a snails pace for a long time, so the upshot was that the crossing that was supposed to arrive at 9:30pm arrived at 10:30pm. Getting off the boat was a truly Italian affair, as we had to follow instructions we couldn’t understand in order to clear customs. Despite about a 5 minute set of instructions in Italian, followed by 2 minutes in English, what transpired was that we all formed one disorderly queue. The EU passport holders just had to show their passports, the Croatians and us had to go to the next man who would stamp our passports (for no apparent reason) without looking at the photo, then we had to wait for the whole boat to be processed before we could drive off the boat.
Our hotel for the night was one minute from the ferry terminal and we had a really good nights sleep. We appeared to be the only people staying in this massive hotel, going by the number of keys that were still hanging on the wall in reception and the receptionist was a little peculiar (he didn’t appear to appreciate me dinging his bell at 11pm at night – although I’m not sure what I was supposed to do, as he wasn’t at his desk, but the bell was) and I immediately named the Hotel – The Bates Motel.
The drive to Split was back along the same coast road that we had driven on the week earlier. There is an inland road, but the terrain in Croatia is a bit barren and the traffic was light at that time of the morning – in our direction anyway. Arriving in Split, we found the ferry terminal, checked ourselves in for the ferry and then went off to explore Split.
As usual, the weather was mid-30’s and radiating nicely off the white marble sidewalk and the buildings. Split as a city was a bit lost on us. It didn’t have any of the beauty of Dubrovnik, the harbour was a busy tourist boat and ferry port and the town itself didn’t have any real charm or character – in fact it was the first time we’d come across your normal range of shops in the historical part of the city. We’re more used to a range of wine and food shops, restaurants and tourist shops, so to have the big chain stores (and even a McDonalds) was something of a surprise. Even lunch seemed to violently disagree with us as we both felt and looked decidedly off colour as soon as we’d eaten it. We both had really bright red faces, but after some time in the shade to cool down, and a couple of brief stops and, we managed to put the whole thing behind us.
Split is tourist central for all the small wooden tourist boats that do weekly trips around the islands and coast between Split and Dubrovnik. Because their week runs Saturday to Saturday, they were all docked in the port when we arrived in Split and by the time we got back from lunch at 2pm, they were all packed up and back out on their various journeys. They looked like quite a fun way to travel and the ones that we saw loading up with people looked as if they were quite well segregated between age ranges, so that all the 20 somethings were together on a boat, as were all the 60 somethings.
There was an amazing electrical storm (yet another one) while we were waiting for the ferry and one of the lightning bolts appeared to hit the earth a couple of hundred metres from where we were sitting in the car. Needless to say, we weren’t sitting in the car for long after that. The upside of the extremely heavy rain is that our car, which has been filthy for weeks (Europe is a really dusty place) is now completely clean.
Loading the ferry, when it started, was a fairly quick affair, but then we seemed to take a long time to get going and then went at a snails pace for a long time, so the upshot was that the crossing that was supposed to arrive at 9:30pm arrived at 10:30pm. Getting off the boat was a truly Italian affair, as we had to follow instructions we couldn’t understand in order to clear customs. Despite about a 5 minute set of instructions in Italian, followed by 2 minutes in English, what transpired was that we all formed one disorderly queue. The EU passport holders just had to show their passports, the Croatians and us had to go to the next man who would stamp our passports (for no apparent reason) without looking at the photo, then we had to wait for the whole boat to be processed before we could drive off the boat.
Our hotel for the night was one minute from the ferry terminal and we had a really good nights sleep. We appeared to be the only people staying in this massive hotel, going by the number of keys that were still hanging on the wall in reception and the receptionist was a little peculiar (he didn’t appear to appreciate me dinging his bell at 11pm at night – although I’m not sure what I was supposed to do, as he wasn’t at his desk, but the bell was) and I immediately named the Hotel – The Bates Motel.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Friday – 4th Week: Zigovošće and Makarska
Our last full day in Croatia, we’re having a quiet start to the day after two 6am starts in a row. We skipped dinner last night, so we’re off to Makarska for a nice lunch and then our final dinner in Croatia (this time anyway). The day is the stillest and calmest we’ve had so far and the Adriatic is like a mill pond – you can see small fish swimming in the sea from our balcony which is about 100m from the sea. It’s hot (very hot), but not humid, so we’ll go for our usual swim about 5pm when we get back from lunch and then dinner down at our local restaurant.
Tomorrow we check out and will spend the day in Split before we have to get to the ferry terminal at 3:30pm to catch the 5:30pm catamaran to Ancona in Italy – four hours away (it’s nine by slow boat)
Tomorrow we check out and will spend the day in Split before we have to get to the ferry terminal at 3:30pm to catch the 5:30pm catamaran to Ancona in Italy – four hours away (it’s nine by slow boat)
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