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| xdriller | profile | all galleries >> Galleries >> Europe Journal | tree view | thumbnails | slideshow |
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We left our apartment at noon and arrived at the ferry port of Ancona at 3:30 pm driving across the Italian peninsula to the east coast. The ferry was to depart at 9:00 pm but we had to be in line by 7:00 pm. We changed our vouchers into tickets at the ticket office after waiting for the ol’ siesta hours to end (4:00 pm) and killed three hours in Ancona. We were back in line before 7:00 pm as we were told.
Loading was a true Italian affair. Huge trucks needed to be loaded first before the cars. After a truck was loaded there was a delay of up to 15 minutes before another one moved on the ship. Each truck loaded required untold minutes of conversation as to where it was to go and whether it was to be driven on frontward or backward. Then there was break time for the dock men to smoke a cigarette or two when everything came to a total halt.
When all the trucks were loaded there appeared to be no room for all of the cars. Amazingly all trucks and all cars fit with no breathing room between (front, rear, left or right) and what seemed like a pipe dream fifteen minutes earlier– sailing on time – occurred only 10 minutes late. I think of the ferries in Seattle and in Canada and how fast they are loaded without any discussion or delay for any truck. But that is North America not Italy. We waited in line for two hours for this once-a-day ferry and we were loaded 2 minutes before departure time.
Our cabin, certainly as Ann says not a stateroom, is functional. That is the nicest compliment I can give it. The ship is the Split 1700. I think the 1700 refers to the year it was built.
We had dinner on the ship and asked another couple to join us since the restaurant was full and we were at a table for four. The couple were Italians from Torino, yes the Olympics town and no, they did not go to any events. He owns two bearing and ring factories which supply aircraft, train, car and spacecraft parts to engine manufacturers. They had recently bought a hotel on the Island of Vis in Croatia. There they are supplementing the grapevines on the property to compliment the vines already present so they can produce and sell their wine with first bottling for sale expected in 2007.
Off we went to sleep in the bunk beds of our “stateroom”.
After a relative fitful night on the top of the bunk beds, I awoke with the aforementioned rap on the door and exactly one hour to get our car off the ferry in Split, Croatia. After a quick shower in a compartment not fit for a shower and a towel also not fit for the purpose, we dressed and went out to get coffee. There was not time for coffee but Ann needing the drug made time for herself. We were off the ferry at 7:15 after a docking at 7:00 – impressive. Then we began our five hour trip of 120 miles.
There were three reasons that a trip so short took so long. First the average speed was around 40 mph. The road clung on the edge of the Adriatic with mountains rising up as much as 3500 feet out of the water and drops of up to 400 feet straight down into the water from the road. There were not the usual guard rails everywhere and I was driving on the sea side of the road directly into the sun. Second we required stops for coffee, diesel and money from an ATM for the new currency, the Kuna (none of which we were able to do in just one stop). Third, the Dalmatian Coast is so incredibly beautiful, wild and picturesque several mandatory stops for photo ops were necessary.
We arrived in Dubrovnik at noon and set out to find Ljiljana’s house. We were so confused we had to ask the postman on the road where the house was. Fortunately he had a letter for her that he was to deliver so he told me exact directions to her house – in beautiful Croatian. I had no idea what he was saying. We followed his hand directions and found the house.
Sometimes when you book an apartment online, you must take what is described with a grain of salt. The pictures of the old town and harbor from our apartment were exactly a shown on her webpage. Our apartment is fantastic with a view to die for. We are sitting looking down several hundred feet to the old walled town, and fortress jutting out into the Adriatic as it has for ten centuries. We have a two bedroom apartment: a sitting room, a huge foyer and a terrace that provides the same view as the two large windows. Ljiljana is as delightful in person as she was in her emails. I was looking forward to meeting her and she did not disappoint. I was so excited being here I could hardly control myself.
Attempting to park the car on the single lane two way paved “cart path” in front of the apartment, I cracked the front right edge of the bumper. You had to be there to appreciate the impossibility of the situation. Fortunately there is full coverage on the leased car with a $0 deductible. Ah, Friday the 13th!!!
For lunch we went down to the old town. After paying for lunch with a credit card I realized that I had left my ATM card in the ATM machine in the town of Dugi Rat (I swear that is its name) early this morning. After using all of our meager intelligence (I mean MY meager intelligence and Ann’s huge intelligence) we could get no help from the same bank in Dubrovnik and waited until 6 pm to call Banner Bank as they opened to have them cancel the card. Judy answered the phone – it is nice to really have a “personal banker” by banking at a tiny Redmond bank. No charges had been made on the debit card and charges on cards come through instantaneously throughout the world. So we are now down to the credit card to get money which incurs an additional fee for each cash advance. Ah, Friday the 13th. Things are turning my way because at $1.98 a minute to make the call to Banner Bank, the call lasted 1:56. By four seconds I saved $1.98. I am now on a roll again!
After a nice dinner in one of the squares of the old town – outside, of course, in the warm evening temperatures, we wandered into the memorial to the Croatian freedom fighters of the Serbian conflict. We saw pictures of the results of the siege of Dubrovnik with artillery fire in 1991 and the pictures of all who had died. What a job returning this once beautiful town to its former beauty and glory. Dubrovnik is as vibrant a town as we have seen on our trip.
Two gigantimongous cruise ships were parked in the water outside the harbor and were disgorging passengers at an alarming rate with seven shuttle boats running continuously. Since each of these ships holds the inhabitants of a small city we were about to be out touristed by the tourists. Yep, when we got to the town it was packed like a sardine can since the walled part of Dubrovnik is so tiny. To add to this insanity Saturday is market day in Dubrovnik. Since there is no reason for a tourist to go outside the walls, EVERYONE was within the walls of the old town.
We walked through the entire old town and at lunchtime bought two sandwiches, two Coke Lights and a small bag of chips to go. We realized that the view from our terrace beats any restaurant so why not eat at the apartment. We ate on our terrace and had a fantastic lunch.
We played hooky from tourist-ing in the afternoon. At 5:00 pm we could see that the shuttles to the cruise ships stopped. The Huge ships departed past the old city one at a time and off toward the north to Venice, most likely. By traveling at night they will miss the true beauty of the Dalmatian Coast: the islands, the sheer escarpment of the mountains rising straight up into the sky and, I might add, the winding coast road! The ships left by 6:00 pm and were only a memory beyond the horizon by 6:45 when we left to go back down to the town.
The old town was almost deserted by contrast when we arrived. We walked through town looking at each restaurant menu until I believe we had seen every one and decided on the first restaurant we had seen (of course). The meal was quite good under an umbrella outside complete with “entertainment”. This entertainment was in the form of a chamber group and choir giving a concert on the main walking street in front of us on the steps of the church. Eating al fresco in Dubrovnik at a delightful restaurant and listening to the music amid century’s old (but restored) buildings, palm trees and cobbled streets made me realize that the advertising slogan for Croatia was not mere huckstering but true: “The Mediterranean as it once was”.
With a gelato for desert on the street we came home and felt another fine day had been put to bed.
This is our most adventuresome day of our trip. Today we head south in the car into the country of Montenegro. Ann was wary when I suggested we go to Slovenia and Croatia but assuaged her fears by reading about the countries online in personal blogs and travel diaries. Going to Bosnia was not her first choice of places to visit but we had to go through the former war-torn country for a little ways to get to Dubrovnik.
Ann never did come to grips with Montenegro. First it was not in our line of travel and second she read nothing favorable about it. Such minor details were of no consequence to me, the pictures of Kotor and it’s fjord like bay were too much to pass up being so close (within 30 miles).
After a morning visit to the outstanding little town of Cavtat, Croatia for two coffees and a magnificent bay so picturesque you thought Kodak assembled it piece by piece, we headed to Montenegro. We have literally flown through all border crossings to the extent that the Canadian crossing at Blaine now seems punitive. Well, not anymore. The crossing from Croatia to Montenegro consisted of a line of fifteen cars. It took over 45 minutes to get through. And were we ever scrutinized. Car documents checked against passports, etc.
We got through the checkpoint and drove toward Kotor. The best I can relate Montenegro to is communist East Germany in 1971 when we drove through getting from Denmark to Czechoslovakia. Crossing the border was as great a change as crossing from south of San Diego to Tijuana. Montenegro was so depressing even driving along the bay I could feel the car rusting like all cars we passed. I suggested to Ann that maybe we turn around and return to Cavtat. No dissension from her. Fortunately this time there were no cars in line at the border and the same guard I had spoken to 35 minutes ago waved us on saying Hrallight, hrallight, in guttural CroatioEnglish.
In Cavtat we lunched, walked around the town and then around a peninsula of scenic splendor back to our car. All in all Cavtat is a winner. Ann would live there in a second if it were not directly on the glide path of the Dubrovnik Airport some two miles away.
This evening we ate dinner early, 7:30, because for some reason both of us were exhausted. At dinner we realized it was a loss of adrenalin since our vacation ended this evening. Tomorrow we begin our mad dash across Europe to Geneva then home. We will use car, ship, car, plane and car and be home in three days.
Tonight Ljiljana Jorgensen dropped by (our landlady). We asked about her house during the bombardment on Dubrovnik by the Serbians in 1991. This was her parent’s house built by them in 1964. She returned from Denmark in 1995 to reclaim the house after the war and found it a bombed out shell with five refugee families living here. She had to pay them to leave. With no assistance from the government she has rebuilt the house and three apartments that she rents. The renovation is not complete yet (there are still bullet holes in our apartment). That may be why this huge two bedroom apartment cost us only $75 a night. The view from our window is better than any hotel in town. She has recently been offered over $2,500,000 for the property. I dare not think what the rental cost will be when she is finished with the renovation. I just know I probably could not afford to stay here then.
Since the day was again beautiful with blue skies and warm temperatures, the drive north along the coast was picturesque. Ann drove so I could take in the scenery this time. We traveled north from Dubrovnik to Split the opposite of three days ago. We arrived in Split at the port, around noon, parked the car at the ferry terminal and went to Diocletian’s Palace. Built in the 300s (No, not the 1300s), by the Roman Emperor, Diocletian, much still remains of the 8 square block residence in the center of town facing the main harbor. It is the heart of the old town now as a city was built within the walls after the palace became derelict in the 700s. Emigrants from the Turk wars during that time built a city upon the foundations of the old abandoned palace.
Interesting.
We boarded the ferry at 8 pm. Now let me back track and recap the ferry adventure both ways. We found out there is an Italian way to do things and a Croatian way. It may come as a surprise there is no contest in efficiency. Italy loses hands down. Getting on the ferry (boarding) and getting off (disembarking) on Italian soil took over three hours. The same procedures on Croatian soil took 30 minutes. Most mysteriously it was the same crew all four times on this round trip. I just don’t get it.
We ate dinner at a sidewalk restaurant in front of the palace overlooking the harbor rather than eating dinner on the ferry. I like Croatia. They don’t look funny at you if you need to eat at 6 pm rather than the normal Italian 8 pm as we did before boarding. The meal was excellent. We had a shared starter of spaghetti with fresh shrimp; I then had veal Cordon Bleu and a beet salad. Ann had Filet Mignon with mushrooms with cold red pepper garnish puree. Now FRESH shrimp are magnificent. Not the flash frozen Thai shrimp but “pull out of the water and eat the next day” shrimp. They have such a different sweet flavor and texture here.
Off to bed on the upper bunk again somewhat worried about Ann since the winds have kicked up greatly this evening and this does not bode well for the crossing.
This is the one bad day of the trip and we knew it before we left the US. As we continued our march across middle Europe today we drove from 8:30 until 4:00 mostly on the autostrada (costing $30 total but going 85 mph except when we were stopped for construction). We also made a side trip to the country of San Marino. We drove all the way up to the city on top of the mountain but just drove back down again saying we made it to San Marino. We had been hill town-ed to death so no stopping.
After all those hours of driving, the most difficult part was the last 10 km to the Alla Mirandola B&B in Brunate, a town sitting on top of the mountain 2500 feet straight up over Lake Como on the Italian-Swiss border. Ann was driving since I had the direction maps on the computer. She drove up a mountain road after leaving Como (single track) with over 15 complete extremely tight hairpin turns. Hairpin turns are fun on a two lane road. Hairpin turns are treacherous and scary with only one lane when on each completely blind turn you could be facing another car or worse yet, bus IN THE ONE LANE. It was a harrowing experience for her but she made it to the village of Brunate.
Our accommodation is another five hairpin turns above the village and the roads were, believe it or not, narrower. We layed down on our bed after arriving and tried to get that harrowing experience out of our minds. After five minutes we laughed – until we realized we have to get down off this mountain tomorrow morning. Oh, and dinner tonight.
Tonight I had a surprise for Ann. Instead of driving down to the town of Como with its 127 hairpin turns I took her to the funicular in the village of Brunate (population: 26, I think). In eight minutes it descends at 55% for 2100 feet to the level of the lake, right to the lake. Besides the wonderful panorama of the lake and environs, it allowed us to have some wine for dinner, and did we need it. We ate inside the restaurant since the October cool had hit the foothills of the Alps. The restaurant was in an old great hotel on the lake. The 1930s style waiters were straight out of a Cary Grant movie but very nice. Back after a dinner on the lake, we rode the funicular up watching the lights of the city become tiny as we scaled the mountain.
I like Como and I like where we are staying. We are the only guests tonight in Paula’s three guest rooms. Breakfast is included. Tomorrow we are off to Geneva and we give up the car. Into bed by ten. The dinner was more expensive than our room.
I consider myself an avid map reader. When we are on vacation anywhere I know exactly where I am in the big picture. As we arrived at the Mont Blanc tunnel (A seven mile trip under the mountain) I was stunned to realize that on the other side of the tunnel was France. I did not even realize we were going to France. How embarrassing. I made the itinerary!
In France we ate lunch at a little chalet/restaurant/hotel in the ski area of Mont Blanc with truly nothing around but the magnificent Alps. Since the summer was over and skiing hadn’t started the place was deserted. We had fondue with the usual cubed bread but also a platter of smoked ham, salami and potatoes accompanied it - different. Only problem turned out to be money. We had used nearly all of our money in euros to pay the room last night figuring we didn’t need euros any longer. Switzerland uses Swiss Francs. Oops, the restaurant is in France and only uses euros and does not take credit cards. There were no banks or ATMs anywhere nearby for a credit card money transfer. Fortunately the hotel part takes visa so we could pay.
Our other issues today centered around money also. We paid $35 to go through the Mont Blanc tunnel (outrageous) and another $30 to drive on the Swiss highway (autobahn) for 4 miles after the border crossing to the airport (outrageous). It is impossible to cross into Switzerland on this highway without purchasing their vignette or road tax decal that is put on the window unless you turn around re-enter France and then re-enter Switzerland a second time on a surface road – wherever that is. We coughed up the money. I think we were held up by legal Swiss highwaymen (without masks).
Getting to the hotel we dropped off the luggage and cleaned out the car. From there we took the car to the Geneva Airport to drop it off. Now airports can be interesting to understand the first time there but Geneva’s Cointrin Airport adds another special fun thing. It is located in two countries, France and Switzerland. There is a Swiss side and a French side – and never the twain shall meet. Why two countries, you ask? I have no idea. But it is there and must be dealt with. We were in our Swiss hotel at present and had to drop the car off on the French side of the airport. We found where we were to be after going through passport control again. Getting to the airport shuttle to the hotel required traversing the border again on foot with passport control. Today we were in Italy, France, Switzerland, France and Switzerland but if we had not paid for the vignette we would have been in Italy, France, Switzerland, France, Switzerland, France and Switzerland! Our passports got a workout and so did we.
The hotel is located at the airport. Unfortunately there is no dinner restaurant there. We walked to the fancy Movenpick Hotel a couple of blocks away for food. The cheapest thing on the menu was a club sandwich for $22 each. SO, we instead had a pizza in our room interestingly from a place down the street we called on the hotel’s house phone at the front desk. There were several restaurants from which to choose and a button on the phone for each. Fortunately they took a credit card after much debating which Ann won, thank goodness.
Well actually it is never that easy coming back from Europe. We free shuttled to the airport and checked in for our flight to Copenhagen. First matter of business: Weight of the luggage. We passed. Ann asked for an upgrade and we got it. On SAS European flights your seating level determined what the cabin crew serves you. Economy gets nada. Without paying for it, we were upgraded to Economy Extra meaning we received a free cold lunch and drinks, alcohol included. Not bad for merely asking. See, Ann is great, isn’t she?
In Copenhagen the flight was delayed 90 minutes but for a nine hour nonstop flight there is no real desire to get into the plane.
With the arrival of our plane in Seattle the adventure ended: A magnificent 45 day experience.
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