Trekkin

Day 24 – May 9 Monday

I woke at 4am to bright lights shining into the cabin, we had docked in Athens & our cruise was over.   I pulled the blinds closed & slept until our alarm at 5.30 before breakfast at 6am.  Back to the cabin before 7am then off to the lounge to wait our disembarkation call.  We said goodbye to all the new friends we made on our trip before disembarking (as it was such a small group & every one so very nice we did become rather close), picking our bags up & getting the cab out to Athens airport, about 45 minutes away.   Our ship was no Queen Mary & luckily no Titanic but where it lacked in grandeur it made up by the friendly staff, if we wouldn’t have been so busy doing all the exciting tour trips I could have picked up some valuable skills such as fruit/vegetable carving, special towel folding, Greek dancing & cooking but alas the cruise was too short & I will just serve my vegies/fruit just thrown on a plate, we will be lucky if the towels will just hang on the towel rack after all this pampering & if Ron will do the cooking I will dance the waltz, Hungarian csardas,  Greek zorba or even the tarantella.  We arrived about two hours before our flight gate was opened so found some free internet & caught up on Facebook, email, paying bills, our blog & even had a brief chat on Skype with Monica & Jackson before our free internet hour finished, (the use of internet is exorbitant at most of the hotels) coinciding with the Alitalia gate opening.  Our flight was uneventful, we both had a snooze on the plane before a bumpy landing in Rome.  Our prearranged car driver was waiting for us & took us directly to our Rome hotel, the Ciccerone right in the heart of the city.  After settling in & looking at the maps we went on a walk around Rome, first to the Spanish Steps, then the Trevi Fountain, (we could just see them through the hordes of tourists, it is so crowded with people) before heading back past the Italian Parliament, then walking along the Via del Corso, past all the big name brand shops to the Piazza del Popolo.  Both the Spanish steps & the Piazza del Popolo have Egyptian obelisks as highlights, plundered by the Romans when they ruled the known world.  We had a lovely pizza for dinner at a small Italian restaurant, sharing a table with a young French & Argentinian couple, working as waiters in Rome.  We managed to find our way back to the hotel easily enough, however, we were constantly being distracted by amazing buildings & churches, everywhere we looked there was something eye-catching & famous.  We were so happy that it’s not too difficult to find our way around.  What a day!!!

Day 23 – May 8 Sunday

A sleep-in this morning, even though the ship was docked at Heraklios on the island of Crete, we couldn’t disembark before 8.00am as the Palace of Knossos didn’t open until 8.30.  The drive to the Palace of Knossos took about 25 minutes & our local guide Fulia filled us in on some of the history of the Minoan civilization, the people that built & lived in the palace.  This site is the oldest we have seen so far, built around 2,000BC (that’s 4,000 years ago).  The excavation of this palace was commenced in the 1800s by a Greek, then in the early 1900s a British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans spent 30 years of his life at the site.  Then French, Italian & Greek teams excavated the three other smaller palaces on different parts of Crete.  The Palace of Knossos was where King Minos of the Minoan civilization lived,  it had around 1,500 rooms & was three stories high.  Parts of the palace have been partly reconstructed to give an idea of how it may have looked all those years ago before being destroyed by a large earthquake.  The reconstruction also includes copies of some of the frescoes found in remarkably good condition on some of the walls.  The original stone throne of King Minos is intact & still in it’s original position.  This palace also has the first known flushing toilet, this civilization was that advanced.  Fulia took us over all parts of the palace, explaining in great detail the different parts, functions & relevance to history.  We ended the tour of the Palace of Knossos at the theatre, capable of holding 3,000 people & is the oldest known theatre.  The road off to the palace of the High Priest is still in great condition & its hard to believe it was laid 4,000 years ago.  Back to the bus, port & ship, it was up anchor & off to Santorini.

We lunched onboard on the way to Santorini & I had a brief sleep before we ventured out on the top deck to watch Santorini come into view.  We quickly raced downstairs again to get our coats as it was very cool outside.  Santorini suffered a massive volcanic eruption around 1450 BC that destroyed the existing towns & left the island completely changed (there is a belief that Atlantis was the sunken city as records describe a very similar region).  The ship motored into the massive flooded caldera of the volcano & stopped without anchoring, at 400 metres it is too deep to drop anchor, then the tender boats came out to take us ashore.  The imposing steep cliff sides of the volcano dominate the harbour, with a sprinkling of white houses dusting the rim of the caldera.  One of the islands in the middle of the harbour is the cone of the still active volcano, still steaming & smoking, rising from the sea 500 years ago.   We disembarked at the tiny port of Athinios at the base of the massive cliff & then the bus zigzagged slowly up the long climb to the rim.  It is so high up, the photos don’t give a real perspective on how high it really is.

It took 25 minutes for the bus to reach the tiny township of Oia on the northern tip of the caldera, passing through Fira, the main town, on the way.  The houses on Santorini are typically small, dazzling white with blue windows & doors, lots of windows, vaulted roofs & built seemingly randomly joined & on top of each other, stretching down the slopes of the volcano rim.  The many churches have stark blue domes contrasting vividly with the whitewashed walls.  Oia has to be the prettiest town we have seen, no wonder it is on all the promotional photos of Greece, it is stunning.  In Oia we walked through the narrow cobblestone streets to the very end, a medieval battlement perched on the cliff top with a commanding view over the tiny fishing port below, the village of Oia & the caldera.  We walked & explored the tiny streets of the village, taking lots of photos & dodging lots of other tourists before boarding the bus back to Fira.  We walked the main shopping streets of Fira, again being awed by the views of the village & the harbour far below before boarding the cable car for the 2 minute trip to the tiny port of Skala far below.  Back to the ship via the tender, dinner & bed.  Santorini is the prettiest place we have seen all trip, it really is stunningly beautiful.

Day 22 – May 7 Saturday

Alarm set for 5.30am, dressed & on the open top deck by ourselves watching the ship come into berth at Kusadasi, Turkey, just as the sun was starting to rise over the mountains behind the town.  Looking back from where we had come from, a further three cruise ships where heading our way.  Near the dock is the small Bird Island (the meaning of Kusadasi in Turkish) with the remains of a 13^th century Byzantine castle.  Into breakfast as the doors opened at 5.55am & then ready for disembarkation briefing at 7am.  We docked right in town & boarded our bus for the 25 minute trip to the ancient Roman city of Ephusus.

The excavation at Ephusus only began about a century ago & some of the restoration is stunning, in particular the library building facade, an enormously tall structure. (They had a tunnel from the library to the brothel across the road as the old saying goes “I will be at the library honey”).  The archaeological digs have only uncovered around 20% of the area of Ephusus.  We started our tour at the top section of the ruins & walked slowly down, with our local guide Fulia providing a great explanation of buildings & pathways at the site.  The community latrine was interesting, a place where 43 men could sit cheek to cheek & discuss business.  In winter the slaves were sent ahead to warm the marble seats.  Another place that was exceptional was the theatre with a capacity of 24,000 people, simply amazing for something so old.  Then there is the formal entrance to the city where Marc Antony & Cleopatra arrived in the city.  At its peak around 250,000 people lived in this city made from marble.  The city was a seaport, but over the centuries the river has silted up the harbour & now the site is over 4km from the ocean.  As we left in the bus we could see the extent of the site, with ruins evident everywhere, it is a huge area.

The bus dropped us off in the Soke (bazaar) at Kusadasi & we spent a bit more of the kid’s inheritance before boarding the ship at 11.30am.  The tiny port was overwhelmed by four massive cruise ships together in harbour, they certainly dominated everything.  We then set sail for the island of Patmos under cloudless skies & light winds, with cocktails in the lounge.

We watched the Turkish coast slide away from the top deck & were also entertained by some of the ship’s crew carving fruit & making imaginative sculptures.  The wind gradually built & by the time we reached Patmos it was reasonably strong.  Disembarkation at Patmos was by tender & it was a slow & patient process as all the passengers lined up & took turns to go ashore.  Patmos is another tiny island community with whitewashed houses & blue doors & windows, with the main part of town at the harbour, right on the beach.

The tour bus took us up the hill to the grotto of St John the Apostle, the site where the Book of Revelations was written & is one of the holiest sites in the Christian world.  It was awe inspiring to be in the same cave that St John lived in & wrote the book, where he slept & where he lived his life in exile 2,000 odd years ago.  The church of St Ann is built around the grotto & protects the cave from the elements.  We were one of the first tour buses there for the day, so the site was not too crowded, but still very busy.  Our guide Anne gave us extremely good explanations of the site & why it was so important, plus an excellent history of the area.  She really is very knowledgeable.  Next we headed up to the medieval settlement on top of the hill, under the protective walls of the monastery, built to provide defence from the many pirates that roamed the Aegean Sea. These houses are now in the hands of the rich & famous & command a fabulous view back over the harbour of Patmos & the surrounding islands, including the island of Kythera.  It really is a magical place.  Back to the harbour where we were served some Greek biscuits & drinks, a short wander around the shops, it was very cold by now, before back to the ship in the tender & time for dinner as it was 8pm.  Another full & fantastic day.

Day 21 – May 6 Friday

A very late start today, 9.15am departure for the Athens port of Piraeus.  We boarded the ship, the Louis Majesty, around 10am & found our little two bed (instead of the big party beds, king size beds we had in the hotels) cabin on deck 4.  We explored the ship until casting off at 10.30, then lifeboat drill, a briefing by Anne, our tour director for the cruise, then lunch at 1.15pm.  The voyage to Mykonos was very windy, the ship was ploughing up & down through the waves & the strength of the wind had the ship sailing with a noticeable lean.  We sat on the back sundeck, out of the wind as much as possible, warming ourselves in the occasional sun shine & watched the islands pass by.  For most of the time we had the entire sundeck to ourselves, it was that windy (we were rugged up in our wind jackets, we looked like we were going to Antarctica, not cruising around the beautiful sunny Greek Islands).  We arrived at Mykonos a shade after 5pm & disembarked for the short bus trip into Mykonos & a walk around town.  All of the houses are whitewashed & most have blue window & door paint, there are a few rebels making a statement with a red, yellow or green window colour here & there.

Mykonos is a lovely little town right on the seashore, with some old fishing boats tied up in the same harbour as multi-million super-yachts.  We explored the town, there are so many little churches, every fourth building seems to be a church.  We walked to little Venice & had a look at the houses dating from around 900 years ago, the sea actually washing right up to them, then walked up the hill to look at the old windmills overlooking the town.  It was very, very windy up here & very cold, we were so glad we had our wind jackets on, including hood – I had always thought the Greek islands were supposed to be sunny & warm.  We wandered back down through the very narrow twisty alleys, along whitewashed cobblestones & past tiny nooks of all sorts of shops.  We got back down to the main beach & headed back to the bus & the ship, we had seen enough in the cold.  We would have stayed a lot longer if it was more pleasant weather.

Back to the ship by 8pm, straight to dinner in the a-la-carte dining room where we met two couples & had a lovely chat & a great meal. The waiters were so friendly, polite & aimed to please.  Bed by 10.30pm.

Day 20 – May 5 Thursday

An easy day today, 6.30am breakfast & depart at 8am for the Acropolis.  The Athens traffic was busy, but not too bad.  It only took us about 15 minutes from the Hotel to the Acropolis, then another 15 minutes to walk to the top & see the Parthenon up close & personal.  What a magnificent sight, it is so big, the photos prepare you for it, but the reality is something else again.  To think the Parthenon is 1,400 years old & parts of it still standing, amazing.  Our local guide explained all of the different parts on the acropolis, the Parthenon being the most significant, but others, such as the first theatre ever, Dionysis, seating 5,000 people are also very good.  On the Acroplis the views over the city of Athens is fantastic.  We finished on the Acropolis & as we headed down, hordes of tourists were coming up, I’m so glad we got there early.

The bus took us on a guided tour of the city, in & out & around about, seeing different parts & points of interest.  At the end of the tour we were dropped off in the city to spend time at leisure.  Well, it was no leisure, off we went, firstly to the Ancient Agora, with the Stoa of Attalus, recently re-constructed in the 1950s with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.  Also on the same site was the Thesseion, the oldest surviving building from ancient Greece, dating back from around 500BC (2.500 years ago).  It was built on the foundations of an even older building.  In the Agora there are lots of building remains, the ruins are everywhere.  Maps & explanations help to decipher the piles of rocks & columns.

Next we headed back over the base of the Acropolis to have a better look at the Theatre of Dionysis.  As we arrived a huge storm came over, complete with thunder & torrents of rain & we took shelter under one of the arches of the theatre.  How many people have stood in the same spot over the centuries?  We shared our umbrella with a couple of French tourists & had a chat with one of them during the rain (once we said we were Australian).  After the rain it was off to Hadrian’s Arch, then the Temple of Olympian Zeus.  The Temple of Zeus is an imposing structure & must have been overwhelming 2,500 years ago when it commenced construction.  Only a few pillars remain, one having fallen in the late 1800s during a severe storm.  On the way back to the city we passed an excavation & display of Roman baths that had been discovered when excavating a ventilation shaft for the underground railway.  The site is under cover & the footpath is built around it.  Simply fascinating.

We walked back to the city & the Greek Parliament, we only had to wait around 10 minutes to see the changing of the guard, fascinating marching & guard changing ceremony, they lift their legs so slow & high, it’s amazing they stay on their feet, it’s a great display.  Back into the city & a bit of window shopping where we found the cathedral (under renovation) then stumble across Hadrian’s Library, another ancient ruin in the middle of the city, right next to the Roman Agora, another ancient ruin.   We wandered back into the Parliament square & caught the Metropolitan Hotel shuttle bus back.

Dinner at 7pm in the Plaka at a Greek restaraunt.  Great food , great Greek music & great Greek dancing.  We had an excellent day & a really good evening before catching the bus back to the hotel.

Tomorrow we are starting our 3 day boat cruise,  our tour leader warned us that the use of the internet is terribly expensive on the ship, it most probably will be awhile before our next blog.  On arrival  of the ship back to Athens we will get a transfer to the Airport & fly to Rome where we will spend 4 days on our own before joining another Insight Tour for 10 days to see the “best of Italy”

Day 19 – May 4 Wednesday

6.30am breakfast again & 7.30am start, with a rain shower or two as we headed south.  As we left Ioannina, we started climbing mountains & had a great view back over the lake & the city.  The first part of our journey was slow & laborious as the road was twisting & turning & climbing, however, the view was worth it.  The nearby really steep & rugged mountains had snow on them, with cloud lifting & fog clearing the scenery was very pretty.  We then turned onto a new motorway for around 50km & took advantage of the many long tunnels through the mountains that made our journey a little easier.  This is really isolated & a remote part of Greece, there was a sign near a tunnel warning of bears.  All too soon we turned off onto the tight & twisty local mountain roads again on the way to Kalambaka.  There were a large number of memorials on the sides of these steep mountain roads to motorists that lost their lives, it’s not surprising seeing the very steep drops without guard rails, it must be a nightmare in winter with snow & ice thrown in as well.

Kalambaka is a town of around 10,000 people that is mostly very new, it has grown in the last few years to cater for the tourists visiting Meteora, the cluster of monastery’s on mountain spires that dominate the town.  These are huge bare rocks that seem to rise straight out of the ground, with the only vegetation a tiny cluster of green on top.  We took the steep drive up the twisty road to visit a couple of the monastery’s.  They are amazing pieces of construction, a stone building clinging to the top of a rock spire.  It’s amazing how anyone ever got on top, let alone build a stone monastery there, these buildings are clinging to the rock that is a vertical spire many hundreds of metres tall.  There are about a dozen left from a total of 24 that were built.  We visited two of them, (where the nuns reside as the monks will not let women in, even here men must wear long or below the knee shorts & women must wear skirts) the first monastery had a very interesting church with beautiful religious paintings adorning every inside wall & ceiling space.  The most treasured icon was the hands of a saint in silver boxes inside a larger silver box.  We had a look at the wine cellar, a 12,000 litre oak barrel (yes, twelve thousand) that was simply enormous, I guess it had to last them all year.  The other interesting item was the windlass used to lift up & down everything, including the monks.  This was a solid looking wooden windlass, however, you would need to trust your fellow monks.  Today there is an electric winch for lifting heavy items, people now come in over the bridge & then up several flights of stairs.

The second was Saint Stephen’s Holy Monastery, however, is full of nuns as the monks all died out or left.  Again the church is covered inside with religious paintings, however, the primary religious icon here is the skull of Saint Stephen who was beheaded by Roman soldiers apparently (at the ripe old age of 113).  This monastery was well looked after by about 18 nuns, the day before we arrived they buried the Mother Superior.  As in most churches, no photos are allowed inside.  The museums of both monastery’s we visited had very interesting religious relics, one was a page from a religious book dated 605 (1,406 years ago).

Back down the scary mountain drive to Kalambaka with lunch at Mama’s kitchen (Restaurant Meteora), with us all trooping through the kitchen with a plate in hand & Mama serving us out of giant pots on the stove.  The traditional Greek food was simply delicious.  With full bellies we continued on our way towards Athens.  The road from Kalambaka was flat & straight for a long time, stretching along river flat farmlands growing mainly wheat (most of us on the bus fell asleep at this stage).  Then up another mountain range, then down the other side, these are really steep & a little bit scary.  The road kept improving, turning into motorway for the final stretch into Athens.  As we drove into the city we had a glimpse of the Acropolis before arriving at the Metropolitan Hotel situated down near the port.  It was a long drive but worth every minute to have seen the monastery’s perched up on those tall barren rocks.  Another very nice hotel.

Day 18 – May 3 Tuesday

The mosque called us to prayer at 4.50am this morning.  Our room at the Tirana International Hotel was on the 8^th floor & about level with the speakers on the mosque about 300 metres away.  It was that loud, it woke us both up & droned on for a few minutes.  So, needless to say we where well & truly ready for breakfast at 7am for an 8am start.  Today we left Tirana, the capital of Albania to drive to Ioannina in northern Greece.  The road from Tirana down to Durres on the coast was OK, apart from the crazy Albanian drivers, then we turned south to Fier before turning off towards Gjirokaster near the Greek border.  It’s amazing the number of unfinished houses in Albania to avoid paying tax, they are everywhere, mostly three story & brightly painted.  There are also a lot of new retail outlets & light industry places being built, the number of petrol stations & car washing places is amazing, I don’t see how Albania can support them all.  Another interesting thing is that every second car is a Mercedes, of all vintages.  One story being espoused is that every Mercedes stolen in Europe ends up in Albania.  For such a poor population & the sheer quantity of Mercedes, it does seem plausible.  Drug trafficking, Mafia, bribery & corruption seems a way of life in Albania

As we progressed higher into the Albanian mountains towards the border the road got worse, down to a one lane badly potholed & washed out country back road.  It was very slow going, then throw in some impatient crazy Albanian drivers & it made for an interesting drive in the rain.  While in Albania we had a security car trailing us & a woman constantly accompanying us & telling us the history of the place – very sad.  One interesting thing that while they were under the communist regime they were brain washed that they had a wonderful life so they weren’t allowed to leave & to keep the enemy/rest of the world out they made 600,000 (yes six hundred thousand) bunkers all over Albania –they have fields of them in some places.  The hotel, the food & the few people we had a little contact with were good.  The countryside looks beautiful, the fields & farms look great, the mountains & rivers are beautiful, except for the rubbish.

And I should mention the rubbish strewn haphazardly all over the country, Albania looks like one big rubbish tip, it is everywhere & in large quantities.  They seem to gather their rubbish & leave it in large piles on the side of the road, or better yet, over a creek or river bank, so that it can be distributed all the way downstream.  There are plastic bags & lots of other rubbish caught in trees & laying along the full length of the rivers.  Then there are the abandoned oil wells from the communist days, a terrible smell of oil & the lake shores are black & there is oil scum on the water.  This is pollution taken to a new extreme.  It was good to leave all those hodge- podge unfinished buildings & chaotic traffic & rubbish when we crossed the border to Greece.  We appreciate the good life we have at home.

We arrived in Ioannina around 4 pm but it was 5pm local time.  Hotel Du Lac is another very good hotel, our room has a veranda overlooking the lake. The weather was pleasant so we went for about a 3 km walk on the shore of the lake watching the waterbirds with their young ones.  There is a city wall around here too, cafes & stalls but we had to hurry back for dinner.  Mousaka & Greek salad (very yummy) for first course (at home that would have been our dinner), main course was chicken souvlaki & vegetables, for desert baklava, glapo bureko & ice cream.

It is amazing how tired we get from doing nothing I decided to have a bath as I am coughing & splattering while Ron checked Email etc.  A special treat, I talked on Skype to my cousin Klarika in Serbia, she & another cousin will pick us up from Belgrade Airport when we get there. It is getting late, Ron is fast asleep & tomorrow another early start.

Day 17 – May 2 Monday

It was breakfast at 6.30am.  As we were having breakfast from the dining room we could see a cruise ship appeared & turned into the new port of Dubrovnik for its day trip.   In the bus by 7.10am for the drive out back past the Dubrovnik old town & heading south again.  We stopped for a photo shoot on the cliffs looking back over Dubrovnik, it was sunny today & looked a treat.  A very large private yacht had moored overnight outside the old town.  We liked beautiful Dubrovnik very much, no wonder it is a favourite destination for holidays.  The trip south followed the cliffs around & the views were spectacular, though a little scary at times with the very long drop.  We stopped for another photo shoot overlooking an island (can’t remember it’s name) that had been turned into a resort for the rich & famous, (what a shame) it looked like a prison.

Our next stop was at the Croatian & Montenegro border for passport control, before continuing on to the Montenegro town of Kotor, another medieval walled city that has quite spectacular battlements rising up the steep mountain ranges behind the town.  This town is different than other walled cities in that the moat is still full of water, a fast flowing spring from the mountains on two sides, the bay at the front & the walled mountains behind (we didn’t attempt to climb it this time, the walls go up a very steep mountain & we only had a couple of hours).  Again, limestone is the material used in the construction of the walls, buildings & pavement.  The buildings look very similar to the Diocletion Palace in Split & the old town in Dubrovnik.  Kotor has smaller & less churches but it seems just as many tourists.  It is a lovely place to holiday at.  The majority of the buildings seem to have a shop catering for tourists.  The other significant thing we noticed was the number of lawyer’s shingles displayed – there must be a healthy amount of litigation in Kotor.  We wandered around most of Kotor, taking photos of the interesting bits & marvelling at the history, before stopping for lunch at one of the outdoor restaurants for a Montenegro pizza & coffee – delicious.  Back on the bus at 11.40 & south again through a very long tunnel, then the landscape changed to spectacular mountains, with a cloaking of cloud on top, treed valleys & poor farmland.  As we kept on through Montenegro the houses got worse, mostly a state of disrepair & the road was markedly worse, down to a one lane country potholed road mostly.

The border into Albania was a long wait in the bus, before we were allowed to move through to a cafe/souvenir shop just over the border so that we could have a welcome toilet break, buy a coffee, have something to eat & buy some Albanian souvenirs.  It was a long queue for the toilets & also the souvenir shop, it had some good stuff in it & they sold quite a lot to our tour group, plus the other bus we were with.  After we had spent enough money our passports were returned & we were on our way. The border guards must get a good commission or own the cafe & gift store. The Albanian road into the capital Tirana was a marked improvement on the Montenegro road, the level of prosperity in Albania seemed greater as the houses were in a better state of repair & the farms were tended a lot better.  The big downside was the amount of rubbish laying around & the amount of rubbish laying in creeks & rivers & caught in tree branches – disgusting.  The driving is also a lot crazier in Albania than anywhere else on this trip, they seem to overtake everywhere, once again we appreciated the skill of our driver.  There are a real lot of roadside memorials to people that have died in accidents.  At one stage we counted more than ten in a 2km stretch of straight road.  The traffic in Tirana was heavy & hectic, but we were pleasantly surprised by the number & quality of modern buildings, plus a lot of colourful high rise apartments.  There is major park restoration work in the city centre, right where our Tirana International Hotel is.  However, the mosque is very close & we have heard the call to prayer a few times already. We won’t need the wakeup call tomorrow morning I am sure.  The hotel was a pleasant surprise a high rise modern building, we are on the 8^th floor, the room is very pleasant with a computer nook & free internet, it’s a corner room so we have 2 windows with a view of the centre of town.  None of us felt like going out, we have been spoiled by the beautiful old historical towns, poor Tirana has the communist regime history from which they want to claw their way out of, they desperately want to get into the European Union.  We had dinner in a very pleasant dining room – risotto for starters, crumbed veal with a sauce & chips ( chips 1^st time since we are on the trip)  & a really lovely light something like tiramusu desert.  They served soft drinks, local beer & wine (alcohol for these Infidels).

Day 16 – May 1 Sunday

A long sleep-in as it’s a late 9am start on May Day, a public holiday here.  It’s raining in Dubrovnik so it’s on with the raincoats & out with the brollies for our walk around the old walled city.  Our local guide today, Rosa, is a remarkable likeness to our good friend Magdalene, she could pass easily as a twin sister.  The old city of Dubrovnik is extraordinary, a massive thick wall surrounds the old city & looks impressive.   Nearby on another headland is a smaller fortress that held a garrison of 400 men.  We entered the old city through the main gate, over the drawbridge & through the double wall.  On the seaward side the walls are 12m thick (metre not feet).  The paving & building blocks are again all limestone, with the old city full of medieval, Venetian & later buildings.  There is evidence of buildings on the site from around 700 AD.  We walked the full length of the main street & out the sea gate to view the port, all the time listening to the interesting commentary from Rosa.  There is a very interesting clock on the large bell tower, it also shows phases of the moon using a sphere embedded in the tower.

After Rosa finished her tour we headed to the walls & walked the 2km length of the wall around the city, up & down all 650 wet & slippery limestone steps.  The view over the rooftops of the old & new city is excellent & you get a great perspective of the layout.  Amongst all the buildings there is a few ruined buildings & some gardens that you really only see from above, from street level it is all hidden.  It took us about an hour plus to walk the walls, taking photos in the rain, at least it wasn’t hot.  Back to the bus for a 1pm trip to the hotel.

A change into dry clothes & we caught up on some email, our blog & had a nice long chat on Skype to James. Unfortunately we missed out on catching up with Monica & family, the 8 hour difference in time & our busy schedule makes it hard. We were so looking forward to the sunset dinner cruise but unfortunately it was cancelled due to the rain.  We went on a nice long walk along the waterfront then along the promenade towards town, it was a lovely walk & on the way back we stopped at a seaside seafood restaurant for lunch/dinner overlooking the bay.  We were joined at our table by Danica, one from our tour group who was born in Dubrovnik & we had a lovely chat about her life, her time at the convent school in Dubrovnik & how things had changed so much over the years.   We had a very good day despite the weather. Back to the hotel, a long hot bath & bed.

Day 15 – April 30 Saturday

A late start of 8.30 as our local guide Dmir took us on a tour of the ancient Roman ruins in Split.  Our first stop was Salona, the original settlement mentioned in Roman letters from 119 BC, that in 295 AD had 60,000 people living inside the walls of Salona.  These ruins are over 2,000 years old – its hard to fathom.  There has only been low key excavation of the ruins, with most of the site untouched & preserved in recent times, however, over the centuries the stone from the old buildings has been taken & used to build other buildings.  A priest was primarily responsible for the recent preservation of the complete site within the Salona city walls, where he conducted some excavations in the temple area & uncovered a lot of the ancient temple site & remains of large stone sarcophagus used to inter the wealthy.  Some of these are amazingly ornate & extremely well preserved, the carvings in marble are stunning.  The priest also built himself a house/chapel out of the bits & pieces he found & it is amazing the old elaborate carved stonework he has used in & around the house.

Next stop is Diocletian’s Palace, building commenced in 298AD & was completed in 308AD by the Roman Emperor Diocleses.  This palace is 1,700 years old & parts of it are still in use, there are more than 3,000 people living inside the old walls of the Palace, plus a mass of upmarket shops & cafes.  We drove past the ancient Roman aqueduct, built at the same time as the palace & still in use today to bring fresh water 15km from the spring in the mountains into Split.  Now that’s a return on investment.

Parts of the palace are built from columns stolen from Egyptian ruins in Aswan by the Romans & apparently took 8 months to transport them from Aswan to Split.  There is even an Egyptian sphinx outside Diocletian’s Mausoleum.  Over the centuries as different civilizations came & went, the palace was modified, added to & changed to suit the current rulers, so there is Venetian & medieval architecture, a church built in 5^th/6^th century, a magnificent clock from the 14^th century, still working, then some fairly recent buildings from the 16^th & 17^th century.  It is an amazing place, the streets are all paved with limestone blocks & the buildings are all large limestone blocks.  We were both very taken by Split & then there is the Riva, if you want to see some big expensive boats up close, this is the place. We had a wander through the markets to see what sort of fresh food they sold & that was very interesting as well.

Back in the bus & off on the scenic drive south along the coast towards Dubrovnik.  The landscape is different again, giant limestone mountains directly on the coast with a village squeezed between the ocean & the sea now & again wherever they can get a foothold. This part of the coast is very scenic & there is cultivation wherever people can find a piece of dirt that hasn’t got too many stones in it.  Grape vines & olives seem to predominate with vegetable plots around the river deltas.  We passed into Bosnia & stopped at the border post before stopping in a Bosnian town on the coast very briefly for a pit stop.  On again & out of Bosnia back into Croatia & Dubrovnik.  Our hotel is again very nice & right on the coast, our room has good ocean views & the buffet dinner was very good, a great selection of Croatian food.