We still haven't posted about our last two  destinations!

The Return of Calamity Popkin!

Traveling with an ear infection is never fun so rather than taking the 5 hour bus ride down the windy coastal road we opted for a private transfer car and 3 hours on the motorway. Cost about the same as flying but took us right to the gates of the old town (and no painful air pressure!)

We arrived in the late afternoon and after the apartment manager finally turned up and gave us the keys we went out for dinner and had a walk around the old town.

Dubrovnik is a bizarre place, most  of the buildings date from the 16th century (after a large earthquake...) but the city walls were originally built in the 13th century. If it wasn't for the hoards of slack jawed tourists pouring off the cruise liners (7500 a day!) you might mistakenly think you'd slipped back in time.

With me feeling miserable we got an early night.

We slept in late, first visiting a gallery of photos taken by an Auckland photographer Wade Goddard at Mostar during the Bosnian civil war. it was sombre and eye opening. later we climbed up to the nearby Lovrijenac Fortress (St Lawrence in English) which had a great view of the city walls and was also a location used in the filming of many scenes in the Game Of Thrones TV show! We waited till the drones shuffled back to their cruise liners by visiting the city archives and the remembrance room for the citizens who died defending the city during the disintegration of Yugoslavia (and subsequent Serbian invasion). Once the city cleared out we climbed the city walls, it took us a good couple hours but the views were worth it :)

The following day we got up early planning to head out to the island of Lokrum bus we missed the boat so visited the aquarium while we waited. Sea turtle was cool, Cee was scared of the big fish... We caught the boat and started to explore the island, got a bit lost and nearly ended up on the nudie beach! But we found a salt lake called 'dead sea' and went for a dip, Cee (henceforth referred to as Calamity Popkin) accidentally trod on a sea urchin and got quite a few spines imbedded in her foot :( (kind of like brittle splinters) she took it in her stride and we visited monastery ruins and grabbed some lunch, visited the Botanical gardens and saw some biggish lizards, climbed a steep hill to get some photos from Fort Royal at the top and then climbed back down for a swim in the bay (urchins avoided this time!)

The last day we rode up the steepest cable car in the world to another castle 'Fort Imperial'(?) Cee was worried she'd panic but she loved (almost) every minute ;) the fort holds the 'Museum of the Croatian War of Independance' which had lots of photos from '92 - '95 but wasn't so well translated but it was still interesting to see as I remember seeing it on the TV as a child.

We then dragged our bags out of the old town in the 36 degree heat and took a taxi to the airport headed for Vienna

Split boat trip

Our second day in split saw us visit the city museum in the morning and then the days highlight; the boat tour! It kicked off at 1pm. We boarded a catamaran with about 20 other passengers and 3 or 4 crew and sailed into the Adriatic! There was even unlimited drinks! We anchored down around an hour in and got to have a swim! It was quite Scary at first as it was at least 30m deep! No one could dive to the bottom and we could see the chain of the anchor disappear! I loved it though! It wasn't too cold after a whole and we made friends with a couple (one from England and one from Canada) who live in London. We also met two other London girls and a guy from Boston. We had lunch on the boat with these guys after the swim; chicken ceaser salad. We then sailed back in the sun and docked at 5pm. Unfortunately once we were back Daniels ears were playing up from diving off the boat and we both had mild sunstroke we reckon! We felt very ill so skipped tea and went to sleep after a long day. The following day Daniel was still feeling sick and was dizzy from some sort of inner ear problem. We decided to skip our 5hr bus ride to Dubrovnik and got a driver instead. This cost about the same as a quick flight but was faster as we didn't have to wait around at the airport! It took 3 hrs and we arrived at Dubrovnik at 6pm. 

Splitactular!

Celia here! We arrived in split, a coastal town in Croatia via an overnight ferry at 8am. We found our hostel without too much trouble and decided to start our day by browsing the shops at diocletians palace - a 4th century AD stone palace that is still used as an underground shopping area today. It's amazing. And cool. Which was good as it was around 30C. We ended up not doing any shopping down there but instead toured around the other parts of the basement which are the same floor plan as the place above would've been (not much of the palace exists above ground but most of the basement is well preserved). We then saw the remaining parts of the above ground palace before visiting the ethnographic museum which features lots of interesting traditional Croatian clothing, jewellery, crafts and furniture. 

Next up we visited a cathedral that diocletian built as his tomb. This was taken over by Christians who he ironically hated. We also saw the crypt, which was very lame (pretty much just a well) and jupiters temple; a place used for baptisms. We then went to visit the statue Gregory of Nin, a croatian bishop. It is said if you rub his toe you'll be brought good luck. His toe is very shiny as a result. Just before dinner we decided to climb up the city's old bell tower. I made it up about 1/3 of the way on stone spiral staircases, but the following 5 stories of rickety, see through iron stairs put a stop to me. Daniel ventured up, but even he admitted it was unnerving. He thinks climbing up the Eiffel Tower stairs was easier! (He did that last trip!)

We got dinner at a restaurant recommended to us by the receptionist at the hostel. I had amazing gnocchi with bacon and Daniel ordered chicken in a Gorgonzola sauce with fried potatoes! Yum! We also spontaneously booked a half day boat tour for the following day. 

After dinner we decided to work off the calories by climbing up a hill that over looks the city. It was soooo many steps but we made it! And had a cocktail at a cafe up there as the lights went on in the township. 

Venice - streets flooded, please advise!

We arrived in Venice from Florence by train at 11:30am yesterday. Our b&b is a quick 6 min walk away (thanks google maps) so after dropping our stuff off and meeting the family who run it we went out to explore the islands!

It's very surreal here. Everything is by boat including busses, taxis, ambulances and rubbish trucks! There are a lot of shops selling fancy masks, murano glass and fashion. Oh, and leather! Our first stop was the realto bridge. The biggest bridge with shops on top of it running over the grand canal. It's not unlike ponte vecchio in florence in that sense I suppose. Next we hit up San Marco square but I'd forgotten to pack my scarf and had on a sleeveless dress (duh it was 30C!) so we couldn't go into the church. Instead we just admired the buildings and then got a drink nearby (Daniel a beer and myself a Bellini which is popular here). We then walked back to the b&b and had dinner at the family restaurant as 6 or so hours had passed!! After dinner we decided to go for an evening stroll to see some parts of the city lit up and to get some supplies from the supermarket for breakfast (pictured below - yay summer berries again!). We got home late, about 10:30 so hit the hay immediately. Unfortunately I randomly woke up at 2am with food poisoning again!!! Definitely the same one as I was only sick once. My body is struggling to shake it because its tired I think. Luckily I slept through the rest of the night and have only been nauseous after food today, not being sick.

Today we slept in and then went back to San Marco to go into St. Marks church! It's pretty cool in there. The floor and ceilings are all completely mosiaced. Some in gold. We then went to the dukes palace which is now a museum but still has the elaborate rooms. It featured political areas such as meeting rooms for councils and the senate. It also has a cool prison underneath which was a little hard for me to walk around but also my favourite bit. It'd be great to play laser tag in haha, very winding and enclosed bridges over canals. By buying entrance to the dukes palace we also got 3 other free museums which were all in a huge building together so we quickfired all 3; archaeological, renaissance art and some plush rooms from the 17/18th century for an empress. It then started to rain heavily so we got a relatively early dinner at 6 of gnocchi and an awesome semi frozen chocolate mousse concoction. It's now 8pm and we're just going to spend the night inside as its very wet outside. We have a bottle of limoncello from the supermarket to keep us company.

Cee x

We slept in the following day, and after lunch at the nice cafe we'd found the day before headed over to the Peggy Guggenheim museum which houses a lot if modern art (more Picasso's per square inch than any other museum I've been to!). She was a New York socialite who loved art and bought a giant mansion (with a garden!) on the grand canal. So great art and great views! Afterwards we tried to retrace my steps during my last visit and find the best gelato I've ever had.... we found the shop but the gelato was half ice cream and awful :( lost to ravages of time I guess (and recession!) we then walked around the outside of the southern suburb of Dorsoduro and spotted a giant as cruise ship moseying through the canal between Guiedecca and Dorsoduro. Looked out of place as it was twice as tall as the buildings!

We made our way back through San Marco to the suburb of Castello where a lot of locals live and few tourists go. It had a nice quiet feel (till they started singing Kareoke..) oddly the Italian restaurant was run by Chinese but hey - it was cheap! We walked along the canal side till it got dark then took a boat cruise back to our B&B, well... Ok we took the Vaporetto water bus ;) but it was nice!

Cee enjoyed the bus ride so much we took a ride up and down the canal the following day! We had a bit of travel ahead of us so we quickly grabbed some lunch and jumped on the train, first to Bologna, then on to Ancona to catch our cruise liner (low cost ferry ;) ) to Croatia!

It was poorly signposted and poorly explained by the ferry company (well, 'Low Cost!' is their motto...) so it took us an hour dragging our bags around in the 33 degree heat to get checked in and boarded but we got there in the end!

On to Split in Croatia!

Dan

 

'Just call it Florence so we can go!'

After a miserable first day we opted to get up earlyish and set out for breakfast. Cee was determined to have something other than the classic Italian breakfast of pastry and espresso but after visiting 3 cafes she gave up (she did rebel and have iced tea...)
We walked across the city to Galeria de Academia and queued for two and a half hours to get in. After the wait one of the sculptures we were there to see (Giambologna's 'The Rape of the Sabine Women') was away for restoration! Michaelangelo's 'David' still made it worth the visit. The level of detail and realism he achieved is fantastic, the only thing I've seen that comes close was Gian Lorenzo Bernini's ' The Rape of Proserpina'  we got to see at the Villa Borghese a few days earlier (hmmm a lots of raping classical antiquity....). The museum houses a other works, mostly 15th - 16th century religious Florentine renaissance art which I'm not very enamoured with, there was also an exhibit of Russian orthodox renaissance art which looked primitive compared to is Florentine contemporaries.
We were starting to feel queasy so we found a nearby restaurant, the food turned out to be reheated (even the pasta!) So it didn't help much. The Orto Bortanico was nearby (officially the Orto Botanico of the Natural History Museum of the University of Florence - or colloquially the Garden of Simples....?) So we stopped in for a look. Apparently its arguably the third oldest in the world, though if they spent less time arguing its age and more time tending the garden it might look a little better.
We made our way back into the centre of the city to the Duomo, a hulking green and white marble cathedral that still towers above the city (it was consecrated in 1436!) Its quite beautiful it inside the cavernous interior, with a beautiful fresco in the dome. You can go down to the crypt but I saw a sign that said €15 and I was like nah whatevs.... Cee was sitting outside as she was starting to feel sick again so we went back to the B&B for a nap that turned into twelve hours of sleep.

Late this morning, Cee gave in (and actually enjoyed!) The Italian 'breakfast' and we went vintage shopping. It turned out it was all vintage designer and we couldn't afford anything so will visited the Ponte Vecchio (this time actually open) but it was all expensive jewellery and we couldn't afford anything.... So we went to Plazza Della Signoria and took pictures of the replicas of the renaissance sculptures (including the Rape of the Sabine Women) and visited the Galileo Museum which has a collection of scientific instruments, maps and planetariums from the 15th century onwards the including several of Galileo's, such as the first telescope!

After a brief thunderstorm passed, we are now going out for dinner.

Here's hoping no food poisoning.....

Man. I write far too much when things are fresh in my memory!

Room ceiling in Florence.

A photo of our room's ceiling in Florence. We are not sure when it was painted, the owners don't speak very good English but we may ask them. Colours are more vivid than the photo suggests.