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Zagreb your costs with Zagreb Card

On our first night in Croatia, we went searching for a restaurant in Mlini. While we were down by the sea in the bay, we heard the sound of car horns beeping, and lots of them – like suburban crickets had somehow taken over the roads and were ready to take on the human race. Actually, if the suburban crickets had taken control of the roads, they’d be in a pretty good possession to take on the human race. I sincerely hope that none of the readers of this blog are of that persuasion.

Anyway, we had thought it was due to the football against Andora, but we’ve since discovered this is a wedding related tradition. The entire wedding party drive through the streets and sound the horn generally makiing as much noise as they pass. In the case of Split, we saw someone leaning out the window with a video camera, capturing all this excitement and people waving back into the cars, which seemed like a nice touch.

Speaking of weddings, we have arrived and will shortly be leaving Zagreb. We took the train from Split overnight, and slept the entire journey, before waking up wide-eyed and bushy tailed in Zagreb. Except for the sleeping part. The train journey is probably the only set of train tracks in the entire world that is based on a Grand Prix track. My understanding, is that when the railways are built, if something gets in the way, you get it out of the way so that the tracks are as straight as humanly possible. According to GCSE History, this is exactly what happened what happened in the UK. If you happened to be a farmer who owned land in the way …. you had to sell. Something went wrong in Croatia though, and every 5 minutes we were woken up as the train hurtled around another chicane. It was definitely an experience though, and I highly recommend it, if just for the wash pack and 7-day croissant (Pete hates those things!). So called because the croissants will last for 7 days and not taste any different to the first day. Take what you will from that 🙂

The first thing we noticed about Zagreb upon leaving the train at 6am, is that that Zagreb is cold. Really cold. “Oh that’s not good”, I said between shivering, “What isn’t?” mumbled Pete as he walked/slept at the same time. “I can see my breath”. Cold. The second thing we noticed as we left the station, is that it was even colder outside the station.

The capital is actually very different from the towns we’d been to so far. And not just because it was cold and much bigger. Previously, there was a very precise formula of “sea, followed by cafes and shops, and mountains”. There’s no sea here, but they have kept fairly close to the mould by keeping everything in the same order, from the river. More excitingly, everything is really really easy to find, and you don’t go and find the sea to find it. Instead, Zagreb has one of those city square things. Everything is really easy to walk to from Trg bana Jelacica, and all of the tram lines seem to pass through here. It’s a bit of a shame to arrive on Sunday when almost everything is closed, but there is still plenty to see, if not do.

We got the tram from the railway station towards the Hotel Ilica, where we stayed yesterday, and have a second night tonight. This is without a doubt a really brilliant hotel. I really can’t do it justice by description alone, but the woman at reception greeted us while holding a small dog that Paris Hilton would be proud of. As we walked closer to the room, we were already very impressed by the hotel furnishings, but stopped at the doorway. Double bed. Back down the stairs we go, hoping to change the room for a twin. Back up the stairs, concierge leading the way. “Yes, two beds” she said as she showed us the almost second room just around the corner. We have no less than; 1 single, 1 double bed, shower with head that stays up on its own (has rarely happened on this trip), a small oven / grill, balcony with 3 seats and table, 28″ widescreen LCD TV, DVD player, writing desk, fridge/freezer, and loads more. The room just looks great, and I can’t wait to put the pictures up – but check out their web site at www.hotel-ilica.hr to get some sort of idea.

If their was room in my bag, I would pack Hotel Ilica right up and stuff it in alongside the mini goth club to bring home.

It’s quite likely that Pete will murder me for this entry, but I have to write it anyway. I sent a text message back to the UK last night … “We’re in an Indian restaurant and my mate (Pete) has actually asked the waiter if the food should really be this hot.” We went out to an Indian restaurant for Pete’s birthday, as food of choice. It was all going well until Pete’s Spinach and Potato dish was laced with liquid fire. He tells me that it shouldn’t be hotted than the burning fires of hell, but I’m not sure – it’s an Indian restaurant after all, and the food is generally quite spicy. Anyway, Pete was very close to walking out without paying the bill, unless … unless the waiter tried his food, to make sure that it was SUPPOSED to be that hot. “It’s a vegetarian dish” said the waiter, “they’re always hotter”. Needless to say, the waiter didn’t try it, and I apparently wasn’t giving the support Pete was after, by laughing lots and apologising to the waiter. Well, mine was very nice after all 🙂

Pete rubbed his eyes, thus filling his eye sockets with that liquid fire and ensuring that “a place Pete doesn’t hurt himself” couldn’t be ticked off on holiday bingo 🙂

That’s all from Zagreb for now. More tomorrow probably, as we take a car rental back towards Split someway to the Plitvice Lakes National Park, before heading back to Zagreb on the 18th, and taking the train into Slovenia.

Split Internet, or lack of

There used to be a lovely little Internet café down by the bus station in Split. They had a large array of english books on hand, and whenever you bought a book the nice man who worked there would let you use the Internet for 30 minutes free of charge.

What a great idea. As we headed into the Internet café next door, that nice man popped his head out. “No no, here, here, fast ADSL connection”. I’ve been wanting to dump all the data from the trackstick, and generally see how close I am to filling the memory card, so I asked “well, we have this, can we install some software?” Eager to get another customer or two, he agreed and walked us around. All of the machines are linux. No good for what I needed. When I told him this, he sat us down at the router, and said we could use his one and only Windows machine. “No virus, right?” “No, no virus, just drivers”, I laughed.

You may think you know where this story is going. You may think that you’ve worked out all the twists and turns already. Perhaps you’re already skipping way down to the end, bored with whatever useless commentary I’ve added along the way. You may be right.

Five minutes later, two bottles of beer have been brought to our machine and the trackstick is plugged in. One of the girls two computers along perks up “Excuse me, my Internet isn’t working”. Firefox has an error, the computer restarts, the room full of computers are useless…

Tomorrow, news of how two British travellers managed to interrupt the Croatian power grid, plunging the entireity of Eastern Europe intro darkness.

In our second full day in Split we managed to destroy an Internet café. The guy was very nice about it. He said it was his fault, that he shouldn’t have let us use his router machine (he didn’t even charge us for the time we had used). He may be right – but I’m still very sorry Mr Internet Man.

So, if you find yourself in Split, please stop off at the yellow Internet café near the bus station. He doesn’t have an Internet connection any more, but do buy a book or three – he needs it! 🙂

The rest of the day had a lot more of aimless wandering to it, including a massive hike around the Marjan peninsula that finished Pete off, and made him go and sit down by the sea instead. I continued, determined to find the local zoo, natural history museum and hopefully a Mongoose. I found one of them…

And the zoo had a tiger! And a fox! And a Wolf! And bears! And a guinea pig… Actually, lots of guinea pigs. It doesn’t matter where you go, but zoos will always have guinea pigs or rabbits. I’m not exactly sure why… Who goes to a zoo to see a rabbit? Seriously, do children run around their parents spiralling out of control as they dance a dance of joy and longing for “oh, can we see the rabbits, please please please please!?” No. They want lions, tigers, zebras, rhinos, elephants, giraffes and llamas. Maybe not llamas. This zoo had a llama . It was right there by the entrance. I found a group of people and spiralled around them dancing a dance Michael Flatley would be proud of “We’re gonna see a llama, a llama, a llama!”. At least I would have if anyone else had been there.

All in all, it was a quite a modest zoo. It had a llama which cheered me up no end, as well as a really funny monkey that looked not totally unlike one of those old soft toys that would fold inside out and turn into a ball or a bear. Poggles? Something like that.

A trip around the rest of the peninsula gave me the opportunity to completely tire myself out and remind my legs that if they didn’t shape up soon … I was going to like, die. It was incredibly peaceful, and filled with really nice woodlands overlooking the whole of Split and the various ports that surround it. I thoroughly recommend it as a really nice addition to the lively city just down below.

Tomorrow we’re going to leaving our private (cheap) room behind, and take the overnight train to the capital – Zagreb (about 800 kunas [80 quid] for the ticket and cabin for the both of us). There, we have two nights booked in Hotel Ilica. The 1-star hotel of choice for Pete’s birthday on Sunday. Lonely Planet Guides describe it as the “Best deal in town”. It does look interesting 🙂

Splitting Hairs in Split, and other clever play-on-words

On the way to Split, we travelled through the second country on our trip. Dubrovnik and southern Dalmatia is cut off from the rest of the mainland by a small 9km corridor that was awarded to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1945. This is the country’s only access to the sea, even though Bosnia’s trade in this way still goes through Ploce. Maybe they’ll get round to building a port their soon. I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy, but the idea of stopping in Bosnia is met with a kind of “eh, that could be okay, I suppose”. Not exactly for the reasons of any in depth tours, because I’d rather save that for another time, but – I have been to Bosnia now, and if anyone asks – I can tell them the charming little tale I’m telling you now. So, that’s a plus. We stopped in a little settlement called Neum. Cigarettes and food is reportedly cheaper here, so all the inter-city busses passing through the area do the same. Makes sense. A few pictures, “Kev in Bosnia”, “a road”, “some green” and we were on our way out the other side to the second passport checkpoint. No stamps in the passport though 🙁 Yet more reason to visit Bosnia properly.

Not much else to note, but on the way in to Split, the coach had the radio on. And I heard the familiar jingle, “Ba de ba de baaaaah. something something something”. The Something’s were “I’m lovin’ it”. I assume. 10 points to anyone who can tell me what “I’m lovin’ it” is in Croatian (save up 100 for a free soft toy). If not, I will do my very best to go to McDonald’s tomorrow and find out. So, that was cool, because I was beginning to worry there were no McDonald’s in all of Croatia.

For this part of the trip, we have a private room in Split (10 pounds a night, each!!). Bargain. Anyway, a few nights here before heading up the coast. If we go missing, please send the Air Force to 21 Duplancica Dvori. It’s a lovely little room really. Not as many flies as the Hotel Odisej, and slap-bang in the middle of a real residential part of town.. Great for hearing the cheers last night as we lost at the football 🙂

Split has a rather cool little tourist card, called the Split card. Genius. Wait for it, it gets better. The Split card has this little slogan “Split your costs with Splitcard”. See what they did there? With the word ‘split’? Come on, get on the phone and hire those marketing pros for your own company. Right now. I wonder if it works in other languages. It might work even better in Croatian. Or perhaps Split means “double” in Croatian, the slogan has to be extended to be literally translated as “Double a quarter of the normal price and make loads of savings with your Split (Double) card”. Maybe I think too much, or at least voice those thoughts too much. To cut a long story short, it costs about 3 quid, and gets us into museums and places for free. Or cheaper. Or full price. Depending where you are of course 🙂

Split has been a very different experience to the rest of the holiday so far. It is a city that feels very much alive. Full of bustling tourists, and Croatians all very animated and lively, the Riva on the seafront is jam packed full of people enjoying coffee early in the morning, and we did have trouble finding a seat. A far cry from the out of season empty cafe’s we experienced in Mljet and even in Dubrovnik (to a point). For people-watching, Split seems like the place to be.

It is also home to a …. wait for it… Old Town. There seems to be a recurring theme in Croatia, that “Old Town” is where it’s at. Maybe I don’t have many big cities to base this off, and if we make it as far as Zagreb I can be a bit more learn’ed on this fact. But everything you would want to see is in Dubrovnik’s Old Town. That’s within the old medieval city walls. I’m not just talking about cathedrals, churches and museums. Even all of the shops are inside the old town. The same is true of Split. Big walls, and in there you have all of the shops, Internet Cafe’s a cinema, the palace, city museum, cathedral, the list goes on… Not that I’m complaining. It’s nice having it all right there 🙂 So we had a look around the Cathedral of St Domnius, paid 5 kunas to go and climb the bell tower. Which was probably the best 5 kunas spent so far. I also paid another 5 kunas to go and visit the crypt, which was probably the worst 5 kunas I’ve spent so far. No dead people or anything. A nice altar and candle though.

The cathedral entrance is flanked by two black granite Egyptian sphinxes, which were pretty cool – just because they date back to around 15BC, originally a part of Diocletian’s mausoleum. “Who is Diocletian?” I hear you all scream. Well, I’ll tell you. Diocletian was a Roman Emperor in 284, at the age of 39. He was born the son of slaves, but more importantly to this story – grew up in Salona, very close to Split. Diocletian split the role of Emperor into four (The Tetrarchy) which seems like a bit of a brave thing to do, to me. Okay, so historians argue that this might have led to disintegration and civil war, but you can’t blame a guy for trying. He was also responsible for martyring a fair few Christians in his time. Including the patron saints of Split, Anastasius, and Domnius.

Leaving the cathedral, we explored the streets of Split. Pete, overwhelmed by the undeniably terrible smell of fish market (again, wasps all around here. Try taking a wasps nest to a fish market if you still don’t believe me). I fell in love with the narrow streets of the old town instantly. Tall buildings, narrow winding streets. That’s the perfect formula for a good city as far as I’m concerned. There are so many small alleyways and passageways that I have no idea if we have explored them all, but have spent hours walking around in circles with the wonderment of “oh, we’re back here”. Well, I had wonderment, Pete had annoyance. You take what you can get though 🙂

On this journey, just around the back of the cathedral is the best little café/bar I have ever been in.
Kavana Duje has really loud heavy rock / gothic music. It’s full of 16-23 year olds (at a guess) with equally rock-goth attire, and I think it’s just great. You go to these sorts of places in London, and you shake your head as you walk out thinking “What on earth are you doing”. I do, anyway. Here though, it just seems right. The music was just right, and didn’t seem nearly as pretentious as most areas seem to be. Oh yes, I did look around the room as I sipped on my beer, staring at the wide eyed hopeful looking faces thinking “shouldn’t these kids be in school?” But I loved every minute of it. Iron maiden t-shirts, dyed black hair, spikes on the wristbands. It’s amazing how much you can respect and warm to people when you don’t understand the language they’re speaking. If I had, I may well have thought “oh my god, please, just shut up”, but I don’t – so I didn’t. All in all, the perfect pub – and I wish I could wrap it up, pack it into my suitcase, and bring it back with me. Saving that, we’re here for a few more days – I’ll go back 🙂

Tomorrow, we’re going to check out the zoo and see if maybe they have a mongoose or two (anyone noticing similiarities to Mouflons in Cyprus, you would not be mistaken). We’ll also see what the Natural History Museum of Split is like, again, maybe they will have a stuffed Mongoose, and lastly check out the forest called Marjan, just outside of the Split centre. Hey, they might have Mongoose too!

So, sorry for the multiple blog posts, if you’ve read them all, then very well done 🙂 It’s just the first day I’ve discovered the iPAQ can be used without having to charge it (charger ain’t working, see) – so all these posts that have been stored up can finally be posted 🙂

Mljet – The Background

I’m a bit behind on this, I know. But it’s nice to add a little bit of culture to the blog, so it’s not just the hum drum “and then we did this, then this, and I went for food, and the food was like good and stuff” background noise that fills so many blogs out there. Oh yes, this blog is different to the normal. I’m all about educating people, we’re a serious travel analysis web site. People look to my blog to decide where to go on holiday… Oh who am I kidding?

Mljet is 37km long, and no wider than 3km at any point. 54 sq. km are set aside at the north western end of the island (where we stayed) as a national park. A bargain 90 kunas to enter. This is also the site of the islands only hotel. Hotel Odisej, which is a fantastic hotel with extremely helpful and friendly staff. They even provided a small picnic bag of breakfast, since we were checking out before breakfast was served in the restaurant 🙂

It is where Odysseus stayed for a while with the nymph Calypso, apparently. The length of his stay was a rather impressive 7 years. Which rather says something about the place. Or the nymph. The Ancient Greeks called the island Melita, or ‘honey’, because of all the bees in the forests. I didn’t see a single bee, but there were certainly plenty of wasps to have me flailing my arms around like a mad man, instead of eating my sea food spaghetti. The thing you have to understand about wasps is this; they really like fish. Try it, go and throw a fish near a wasps nest and see what happens. Or Google it, your choice.

Rumour has it, Greek sailors came to Mljet to shelter from storms at sea, and to gather freshwater from the springs. St Paul has been bitten by a viper there, (before the mongoose were all shipped in, of course). The Romans used the island as a place of exile back in 35 BC, before it was expanded by building a palace and baths around Polace. In the 6th century, was under control of the Byzantine Empire, and then the invasion of the Slavs and Avars on the mainland caused inhabitants of neighbouring regions onto the island back in the 7th century.

The monastery we visited (Veliki Jezero) was built in the 13th century, by the Benedictine order, on St Mary’s Island, shortly before Dubrovnik annexed the island tying their good fortunes with the city.

Mljet, ladies and gentlemen. There’s not a massive amount there. But for walking, nature and relaxing down by the sea with a cup of coffee, beer, whatever you want. This is certainly the place to be. I hasten to use the word vibrant, but Pomena is the more lively of the towns because of the hotel. My favourite has to be Polace, with its winding street, ruins, and the nicest people we met on the whole island. Polace has a small bay and port and is almost completely surrounded by mountains (okay, most places are). It is so unbelievably peaceful out there though, and well worth the boat ride.

Surviving Death in Croatia

Last time we made an entry from here in Croatia, we had just arrived on Mljet. Well we have now left Mljet surviving all of the barriers to life that we’ve encountered on the way. This includes no less than “driving a small green sawn in half tin can around and around the island”, “Pete wearing flip flops to walk across sharp stones around two moderately sized lakes and breaking his foot”, “trying to ride a bike”, “trying to ride a bike back a 40 minute journey, in only 15”, “dying at the hands of crazed Croatia footy supporters”, and “waking up at 5.45 in the morning to catch one of two ferries back to the mainland”. All in all, it’s been a good couple of days 🙂

We also expanded the massive list of exciting animals seen so far on Mljet. Oh yes, not only is the island home to butterflies, and grasshoppers – we have also seen a donkey….and….goats! Just there on the side of the road. No mongoose though.

I kinda wanna give some history to Mljet. But….to be honest, now isn’t the time. The keyboards in Croatia are still freaking me out ever so slightly, whereas my portable keyboard has the y and z in the correct places.

I will say that there is a fantasic Monastery in a little islet off Mljet. An islet as you all know, being a smaller sub-island that is not connected to the sea. After walking around the island twice, and not finding an entrance into any more of the interesting parts of the monestary, “Is that it? a cafe and a toilet?”. Well, we were stuck on the island for an hour at least, when the boat returned so I took a walk up to the top, while Pete limped along back to the port with his broken foot (hahhahaha). It was well worth the trip to the top of the island though, as I did manage to find the most elaborate dog house ever built for two dogs. Two dogs who wanted to kill me.

Unbelieveably, the islet also had a great mobile phone signal. The same mobile phone signal I was experiencing near the hotel. We’re talking a single street here. The sea, the street and the mountain. That’s the general formula for Mljet towns. So if someone can explain to me why T-Mobile has better coverage here, (5 bars, as opposed to 0-1) than in Liphook. I’d be very happy to hear about it.

We’ve been hearing all about how Mljet is best explored by bike. We’ve seen a fair few signs for bike rental. So, what the hell – I haven’t ridden a bike since I almost killed myself thinking it was a good idea to get around Joplin, Missouri in the midday sun. As I wobbled off down the road, with the rental guy waving farewell thinking how he was never going to see his bike in one piece again – Pete sped off into the distance throwing pebbles, dust and sand into my face. After about 15 minutes of cycling, and working out what these funny gear things did, I trundled along to where Pete had stopped nearby the monastery we had left behind by boat some 60 minutes ago. Obviously this gave me a massive adrenaline rush, knowing that I, superhuman, could cycle the distance of a thousand boats. I had no trouble making my way to the very end of the island, and meeting some really impressive views when we got there!

This 45 minute journey in a single direction didn’t bode well for the journey back. We had only hired the bikes for an hour, after all. But unperturbed, we cycled like the wind. Our legs were on fire, as earth was thrown into the air behind us. We also sweated buckets, and buckets of water (Earth, wind, water and fire – see what I did there? Dante eat your heart out), as we cycled past the group of youthful looking travellers sitting by the road-side. “Hello”, I gasped. Before we promptly died, just around the corner. Superhuman. That’s me.

So, that’s Mljet in a nutshell. As I say, later on I might give a little more background on the place, when it’s dark in the hotel room and there’s nothing better to do. And you’ve got stories of Split to look forward to. Including the great little Rock/Goth cafe round the back of the church, called Kavana Duje. Farewell for now 🙂

Holiday Bingo

We’re in Split at the moment, and have survived the England-Croatia football. But more about that later. For the moment, I’m going to tell you all about Holiday Bingo (since the Internet Cafe is available, and the iPAQ batteries are being charged right now 😉

So, things we are now looking out for on this holiday.

  1. Transport without people selling rooms
  2. Drink Croatian Wine
  3. An American that doesn’t annoy us
  4. Kiwi Bloke
  5. Mongoose
  6. Fat Ginger Lady
  7. One legged person selling something
  8. VW Buggy (on the mainland)
  9. McDonald’s
  10. Beggar
  11. Starbucks
  12. Place where Pete doesn’t hurt himself
  13. Snake
  14. Mini Goth Bar
  15. England Supporter (with shirt)
  16. Kiwi Ice cream
  17. Man with an eye patch
  18. Female dressed ONLY in pink
  19. Subway
  20. Snickers Ice Cream (not bar form)
  21. Restaurant built into the side of a hill
  22. A room with no flies
  23. Bus stop without a newsagents
  24. A game of elevenses.
  25. Rikeja

So there we have it. If you feel we should be looking for anything else (Ali, “Something nice for me” doesn’t count as something suitable). Or there’s something in particular you would like to find in Croatia, please let us know via the comments and we will do our best to provide you with GPS co-ordinates on where you can find it!

Oh, lastly, you can also help us out by someone PLEASE leaving a comment on how on earth you play billiards. Sergio, I’m looking at you here.

Mongoose in disguise

As I was saying in the last post, the island of Mljet is one of the many National Parks dotted around Croatia (seriously, read the last post – I really did say that).. We arrived on the Island after about an hour on a Catamaran style boat from Dubrovnik’s Gruz Port. We stared blankly at everyone getting off the boat into their pre-arranged transport which seemed to lead to the only sane place on the island, over in Pomena. We watched as they all drove off, leaving us to stand by the roadside wondering how we were going to get to the same place. We stared blankly as the bus driver told us to get off the bus, and that he wasn’t going to Pomena, despite having “Sobra to Pomena” clearly written across the front of his bus. We stood wide-mouthed as his bus headed off into Pomena. So, we grabbed a shot of coffee over at the local café and used all of my charm, good-looks and wit to ask the bar-maid when the next bus to Pomena would be dropping by. “WHAT!?” she abruptly replied. “No bus here, car hire down the road”. Bugger.

And that’s when we started to fear for our lives…

Car hire doesn’t mean the same as it does in the UK. Car hire in the UK means getting a car. A complete one. It often has handling, safety records, and brakes. Mini BRUM (the leaflet implies you can check them out at www.mljet.hr) doesn’t necessarily regard that as too high on their list. They do have cars to rent that are furry. Oh yes, Innocent vans, eat your heart out. Our Fiat 126 convertible Roadstar Bugy is in fact very similar to the Fiat 126 Classic also on offer. The difference is that the roof has been sawn off with a very blunt blade.

It is green though.

So, using this monster of a car, we have spent the day speeding through the mountains along coastal roads, and past lakes to arrive safely in one piece at Pomena. I fell in love with Pomena instantly. It wasn’t just that I wanted to leap out of the car, kiss the ground, hug the nearest person and scream to the heavens how glad I was to still be alive. Our hotel is great, they have a room for us, this one even has things like introduction packs that explain how the mini-bar works, or reminding us that there’s a phone in the room. I know that should be sort of standard, but there was no such luxury at 1* Hotel Zupa. Locks that feel like they won’t come away in your hand, air conditioning that has a “low fan” setting that doesn’t sound like the inside of a 747, a shower that looks like it might stay up on its own with no need for bluetack, and a view, oh my god, what a view. Looking out across the bay to the island of Pomestak – our window has a great position in the hotel and onto the street below. You might be mistaken for thinking being above the kitchen isn’t great but leaning out looking at the sea with the smell of fresh cooked sea food on the barbeque is very rewarding.

This is a National Park right? We were promised mongoose, because they were all bought here to kill all of the poisonous snakes. Well, the mongoose must have been hunted as well – by eagles perhaps. Old woman also swallowed an eagle-eating animal like a rhino to catch the eagle, because we haven’t seen any of them either. Nor Rhinos. It’s either that, or the mongoose have become rather smart and hired a bunch of cat costumes from the local dress-n-go (throws off the eagles, see). Since we’ve been here. I’ve counted 9 cats, hundreds of butterflies, and one big grasshopper. No mongoose.

Maybe tomorrow once we have hired some bikes, we can cover more ground and find the areas with the eagles, giraffes, rhinos and mongoose. For now, we’ve been sitting between two big lakes Veliko Jezero, and Malo Jezero. I won’t tell you what that means, but I will give you a hint – one of them is large. And the other is quite small…

Dubrovnik, and Mlini Ghost Town

First things first, as always – the end. We have now left behind our hotel at Mlini, and headed out towards the island of Mljet. Before doing that though, we spent our first full and last day of the Dalmatia mainland area in Dubrovnik.

Wandering around Mlini in the middle of the night, we found that there wasn’t very much to do except watch the football (6-0, Croatia v Angola) at the local bar down by the harbour where not only do they sell beers, but also put on a healthy array of Vol-a-vont’s, sausage rolls and sandwiches. Apparently football games in Croatia are what weddings are to the English.

We did finally come across a nice little restaurant that served a mean mixed grill, and a great beef looking thing served with sauce. Not to mention the recurring theme of Fish Pate which is remarkably not dissimilar to Tuna Mayo. The highlight of Mlini, according to the guide book has escaped us on this trip, but given that it’s only centuries’ old plane tree – I’m not too concerned, even if it is Tolkien-esque.

Mlini does have a nice bus stop though, helpfully situated right next to the newsagents that lovingly supplies pornographic crossword and word search puzzle books to the locals.

Don’t let the fact that the entrance to Dubrovniks old town smells of raw sewage put you off. Once up on top of the medieval walls the air is fresh and the views are fantastic. We were greeted by a huge sea of terracotta roof tiles, the original of which were all made by moulding them around a mans thigh. I’m guessing not the same man. A large number of these have since been replaced of course, not helped by the massive siege of the city in 1991-92 where shelling continued until as late as 1995. A room in the far corner marks this tragic event, and the heroes that served to keep the city alive when it was cut off from electricty, water and the rest of the world during the break up of Yugoslavia. The reason for the attack, even more tragic, was because Belgrade thought it was be an easy target that would damage the morale of the rest of Croatia. The city never fell, and instead was rejoined with the rest of the country when Croatian forces travelled from the North, resulting in one of the first big morale boosts of the war. See, there’s some recent history that I was until now completely and totally ignorant of. One of the many reasons that I was guilt-tripped into visiting the country 🙂

Dubrovnik houses many other gems for the sightseer, such as an Internet café in which we managed to put in a reservation for the only Hotel on the island of Mljet. A harbour still under reconstruction; the amazing bearded lady, or “man wearing a dress” (quite possibly the latter); a ferry timetable that you will most certainly needed several degrees in the Croatian language, as well mathematics and geography to understand. It wouldn’t hurt if you were the captain of the ferry either, I’m sure.

But nonetheless, the timetable was decipherable – and as I say, we have arrived on the island of Mljet (one of the many National Parks scattered throughout Croatia… And all that for the next entry 🙂

Most beautiful tourist area in all of Croatia

First thing’s first, we have arrived in sunny Croatia. It’s sunny alright. A nice 22 degrees as we stepped off of the plane. I write this because it’s the easiest way of letting everyone know both Pete and I have arrived safely and have made it so far as our first hotel. Not really as any thrilling revelation or news about Croatia and all that we’ve found so far.

This morning, I discovered, was early. A 6am start with a really fast trip into Gatwick (can you believe, with the cost of train fares nowadays, it’s cost me £3.50 to get to the airport from Watford. Shocking! Nonetheless, a morning still filled with comic quotes from people all around, and the holiday hadn’t even started yet. One discussion on the new security measures … “You can take pens on board, but not ink-based ones”. Right.

Speaking of heightened security. Check-in was the expected nightmare. We put the ticket into the machine, answer “NO” to the on-screen “has anyone tampered with your bags”, and “are you a mass-murdering psychopath . terrorist” questions. Walk up to the drop-off desk (huge queue of three people), before joining another queue of 10 people at the security checkpoint. Now, I could have been very lucky, but the whole process seemed a hell of a lot smoother and nicer than usual. There was a small amount of evidence in the form of evian bottles on the side, by security – but certainly no jekyll and hide-esque mothers, sampling all manner of concoctions designed to werewolf an entire 747 crew and bring the world to its knees. Oh yes, it’s one of THOSE entries.

I got a 3-1 ass kicking at table football, and also picked up the currency from the Travelex nearby. Mostly impressed by the 340.5601 Slovenian Tolar to the Pound exchange rate. After watching the poor guy count out 68,500.00 of the things, it was all I could do to not throw my credit card over the desk screaming “Make me a millionaire – quick – I may not get another chance”.

So, fairly uneventful flight. Learnt a few card games, read the history of Croatia (y’know, they’ve done pretty good avoiding wars in the past by setting their neighbours against eachother instead – hit Bosnia in the shins, look around and whistle. “oh that, must’ve been that guy, he looks a bit shifty”.

And then we started flying over Croatia, and see gorgeous mountain/island views, before landing way down in the south at Dubrovnik airport.

After staring at the bus outside the airport for all of 2 seconds, we decided to get the taxi to the hotel. Costing a huge 170 kuna (10.4 to the Pound – so about 15 quid) for the 10km trip, we did at least get a running commentry on the journey. Not only that, Pete has also found out to say Hello in Croatian. Just say “Hello” says the taxi driver. Just watch, we’ll be teaching at local schools before the week is out. Guaranteed.

So, Hotel Zupa is located really near the small fishing town of Mlini, and about 10km from Dubrovnik. It also hosts a balcony, which is just great since they make perfect blogging spots, as well as somewhere for my GPS to find its way before setting out. The view from the balcony….well, we can see the sea, a very calm looking Adriatic off to the left, mountains off to the right, and a massive derelict run down hotel-looking / apartment block slap bang in the middle. Gorgeous 🙂 Apparently the Serbs occupied this area in 1991 / 92, and most of the hotels were looted. We’re very fortunate, I think, to have one of those hotels directly in front of us. Especially so as it’s one of the ones that hasn’t been rebuilt 🙂

Anyway, off to Mlini now, to see what the taxi driver describes as one of the most beautiful tourist areas in all of Croatia. Hotel Zupa is also apparently one of the most beautiful hotels. And Dubrovnik, most beautiful place … except for Mlini. It might just be even better here, he says.

Geo-tagging the universe, one step at a time…

I’ve recently brought myself a Track Stick, after Ben pointed them out on thinkgeek.com. Believe it or not, the purpose of this purchase was not to attach it to the underside of a family members car, nor will I be attempting to covertly attach it to employees feet to verify that they’re are just going across the river for some lunch and not in actual fact going for an interview somewhere else.

In fact, it’s far less sinister than all of that, to track my holidays, places I’ve been, and more importantly – the photos I take whilst I’m there. Geotagging, or geocoding has received quite a lot of press lately, since Flickr have introduced it into their service.

I took the Track Stick into London at the weekend, for a trial run before Croatia later this month. The concept is quite simple. The GPS device records your co-ordinates alongside the time and date. The camera records the time and date when you took the photo. Once you’re back home on your PC, you can use these two pieces of information to automatically add co-ordinates into each of your photos’ EXIF headers (metadata). From there, it gets really fun 🙂

  • View your photos on a map like Google Earth.
  • Search for your photos based on location.
  • Find other photos that were taken in a similar area.
  • Automatically create descriptions of your photos based on how other people describe theirs of the same place.
  • Use all of those photos to construct 3D models of your holiday.

Okay, the technology isn’t all there, yet. But the important thing is to start gathering this data and to certainly make what use of it you can. So, that’s what I’ve done 🙂

How to tag your photos

  1. You’re going to need a GPX track file, like the one here. The bare minimum you need is the latitude, longitude and date/time. Sadly, my Track Stick won’t output this by default. So I had to create a small script to make one from the CSV format it does supply. If you’re in a similar position, you can download my quick hacked together perl script to create your own. I may improve on this in the future, but for now it works.
  2. Secondly, I used a small application called WMMX Location Stamper.
  3. Click on Photos -> Add Photos, and select all the photos you want to tag.
  4. Click on Tracks -> Add Tracks…, and load the file you’ve created as above (or obtained elsewhere if you’re not using a Track Stick).
  5. Click the Apply Tracks button on the bottom, and you’re done – geotagged photos.

Viewing your photos in Google Earth

Using Picasa2, you can save your photos in a Google Earth file and share your entire journey with your friends and family.

  1. Just load your photos into Picasa2 (File -> Add folder to Picasa)
  2. Select the photos you have just added
  3. Click Tools -> GeoTag -> Export to Google Earth
  4. Select a location, where you want to save your file.

Gallery2 / Blakepics

Finally, all of these photos can tie into Gallery2 (which is what I’ll be doing) using the existing Google Maps Module, or watch this space on Tadek’s blog, for a really promising looking module to view locations on single images.

Useful Resources

I came across a number of other useful little applications out there, which while weren’t directly useful to me – might be very helpful to you, so here they are 🙂

  • WMMX Location Stamper – Stamp your photos with GPS information. Totally Free.
  • Google Earth – The best way to view your photos afterwards 😉
  • Grazer – Another GPS stamping application
  • GPS Visualizer – A great online tool to sort our your GPX files, and much more.
  • Photo Studio – John Hawkins’ explanation of geotagging with Photo Studio.
  • GPS Babel – Converts your GPS track files between loads of different formats (though wouldn’t play nicely with the track stick – let me know if you have more luck!)
  • Robo Geo – nice tagging tool, but it’s a pay-for software and doesn’t really do the job any better than the rest of them.