Salamanca: Searching for a Bench

I've heard a number of people, including locals, tell me that Salamanca is the greatest city in Spain. I don't know if that's true or not, but I did have an enjoyable time during my short stay there. When I arrived at my hostel in the evening I found that I was the only person in the room (which had six beds). Being late October, the high season for tourism was over and there didn't seem to be too many other people in the hostel at the time. I also didn't see as many other tourists as I expected walking around town the rest of the time I was there. Salamanca is a university town that doesn't draw as much tourism as other places in Spain, so it sort of made sense that I wasn't seeing as many tour groups while I was there. On my first night nothing major happened but I did stay up late, as that's the sort of thing you do when you're in Spain.

The next morning I slept in until around 10:00am and left the hostel around 11:30am. Before doing any sightseeing I took care of business at the train station by validating my rail pass for Spain and reserving the 12:30pm train back to Madrid for the next day. When I was ready to start checking out the city in more detail, I went over to the tourism information office and purchased a Salamanca Card. The Salamanca Card works like other city cards you can find across Europe in that it gets you into various sights and if you use it a lot you are effectively getting discounted entry fees. It saved me a few euros, though not as many as some of the other city cards I've used elsewhere. The first place I visited was the Clerica Towers, which had a decent view of the city. Next I went into the old university. Salamanca's university was once (back in Renaissance times) the best in Europe and is still a well known school. On the outside at one of the entrances is an facade that is famous because it has a small frog on it that people try to find for good luck. After a minute of searching I was able to locate myself. Inside, I got to see the old lecture halls and meeting rooms. The old library was also interesting. It still has it's original books and there's a sign from a long time ago warning students that if they remove anything from the library without permission they will get excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Right by the university are the old and new cathedrals. Normally when a town's cathedral is to be replaced, the city usually demolished the old one and then built the new one on the site of the old one. In Salamanca's case, the city left the old cathedral and built the new cathedral directly adjacent to the old one. Connecting the two together, the old cathedral serves like an extension of the building, even though it is the older structure. I spent about an hour inside the old and new cathedrals and there was an audioguide that came with admission and gave more details on the cathedrals. Moving on, I paid a visit to the Art Nouveau Museum. As I'm not an art historian, my knowledge and understanding of Art Nouveau is limited, but there are elements of it that I'm able to enjoy even in my ignorance. From the Art Nouveau Museum, I went over to the San Estaban Church. Inside I found a giant, 100ft tall golden altar. I assume it's a wooden altar that is gold plated and not solid gold, but still it was impressive. The last museum I visited was the Automotive Museum. Most of the cars in there were European, but they did have a special exhibit on American cars from the 1950s through the 1970s. That night I just walked around town and got some photos of the city at night, including Salamanca's main square. Some sort of book fair was being set up in the square, so I could get the photo I wanted of the whole place, but I just had to make the most of it. A second person was in the hostel room for that night, and she spoke some English so I was able to talk with her a little. Apparently she was in town for a single day as part of her college studies and was returning to Bilbao the next day.

The following morning the other person had to leave early and was already gone when I got up. Before leaving the hostel I uploaded photos to social media. I still had almost two hours before my train when I checked out, so I first went over to the main square and took a look at the book fair that was going on. I had no plans on buying anything, though I did come across a book by Karl Marx. Clearly this is what I should have been reading in high school Spanish class instead of that bourgeoisie propaganda. It then occurred to me that I still hadn't found a certain bench that I was looking for. Back in 2012, prior to my first trip to Europe, a friend of mine had recounted to me about being in Salamanca and at one point sitting down on a bench and taking in the beautiful light of the city. I had hoped to find this particular bench and get a photo of myself on it, however my friend hadn't responded to an message I sent him on Facebook, asking where the bench was. After some searching, I realized that I wasn't going to find his particular bench, so I just picked a bench and pretended that I was sitting on the same one that he had sat on. Then it was time to leave, so I got up, and walked to the train station. I was going back to Madrid, for a second visit.

Avila: Endurance Training

After the transit issues in getting to Segovia, I made an extra effort to make sure nothing went wrong with my stop in Avila. In the morning I made sure to get to Segovia's bus station and when the bus finally showed up (running fifteen minutes late) I double checked to make sure it was the right one. It only takes about 45 minutes to reach Avila from Segovia and rather than read, I spent the time looking out the window and keeping careful track of the bus' progress. Central Spain is fairly flat except for a few scattered hills and mountains puncturing the landscape. When I got to Avila I bought a ticket for the 5:00pm bus to Salamanca to give me the rest of the morning and the afternoon to explore the town. There was supposed to be some sort of luggage storage in the bus station but I couldn't find it. Consequently I would have to haul around my full backpack the entire time, resulting in a day of unplanned endurance training. Exiting the bus station, I knew I needed to move west but I didn't know exactly which road to be on. I had loaded part of a map of Avila onto the Google Maps on my phone while I had wifi in Segovia, but I hadn't loaded far enough east to see where I was. Thankfully, heading directly east from the bus station brought me onto the map and after ten minutes of walking I reached the medieval walls of Avila. The walls are the main draw of the town because of how preserved they are, though there are a few other things worth seeing besides them. Before going into the old city I went around to the south side of the walls to get a photo of the surrounding countryside and then entered through one of the south gates, making my way up to Plaza Mercado Chico and then on to the small indoor market. From there I went on to the town cathedral. Avila's cathedral was the first Gothic cathedral in Spain, but more notable (for me) is that parts of the church are built with a type of rock called "blood stone." The type of stone has reddish patches on it, like it has been stained with blood, and I don't remember any other churches in Europe that used this unique looking stone. It may be that blood stone is only found around Avila, or maybe nobody else liked the look of it. In any case, it makes an otherwise average cathedral stand out a bit more. Having skipped breakfast, I was starting to feel hungry when I left the cathedral. I remembered there was a Burger King just outside the city walls on Plaza de Sta Theresa, and my mind made a quick rationalization for doing more "research." In the plaza I passed by what appeared to be a student group leading a small protest. I couldn't full read all their signs, but I believe they were demanding some sort of educational reform. After eating, I returned to the old city and went up the city walls, starting at the middle gate on the east side, and slowly going along the east, north, and west sides until I got to the west gate, where I had to come down. I climbed a lot of stairs and went up nearly every turret that was open along the walls. With the added weight of my backpack my legs got a significant workout and my quads would end up feeling strained for a day or so after it was all done. I got lots of photos up on the walls and when I came down on the west side I walked through town back to the east side. There I went up one more small section of the walls and then came back down. At this point in the day it was getting close to when I needed to start making my way back to the bus station. I returned to Plaza de Sta Teresa and bought a box of yemas, which are soft boiled egg yolks that have been sugared/candied. I know that might sound disgusting but they're actually quite tasty. With the box of yemas stowed in my backpack I started walking towards the bus station, and then I had a scare. I looked at my watch and it was now just after 5:30pm. A panic came over me. How did this happen? How did I allow another screw up? I'm not supposed to make these kinds of mistakes! But then, I realized that I actually wasn't in trouble. My watch was showing the current time in Istanbul, Turkey, which is (strangely only) one hour ahead of Spain. The truth was that I was exactly on time to get to the bus station and catch the bus. Relieved, I continued on to the bus station and when the bus came, I got on. It was Thursday, and I remember the bus to Salamanca only being half full, perhaps because it was the off-season for tourism. Whatever the case, I left Avila behind and continued my journey.

Segovia: Unfortunate Victim

I nearly missed my stop in Segovia because for some reason I thought there were two Segovia stops and I wanted the second one. Realizing my mistake at the last moment, I grabbed my backpack and got off the train just before it departed. A bus took me from the station to nearby Segovia's old Roman aqueduct, where my hostel was located. The staff were kind enough to give me suggestions on how to best spend the remainder of the day in Segovia and where to find the bus station that I would need to be at in the morning to get to Avila, the next town in line. To avoid potential problems the next day, I walked over to the bus station before checking out anything else in Segovia, just to make sure I knew the route. With the few hours I had in the afternoon I walked around Segovia's small old city and checked out the aqueduct, cathedral, castle and a few other places. I unfortunately got to the castle too late in the day to go inside. Had I not screwed up earlier in the day back in Madrid, I would have had another two hours in Segovia. On the way back towards the hostel, in the late afternoon, I took a detour and walked along a path by a stream that one of the hostel staff had suggested. A serene stroll through a quiet park with autumn foliage was probably just what I needed, after a morning of self-inflicted travel stress. I got back to the aqueduct as the sun was setting, coloring the stones in a light shades of red and purple. Cool winds from the Atlantic were blowing in. I felt kind of bad that Segovia had gotten shortchanged by my circumstances. Granted, from my time walking around Segovia I knew that I could only get at most a single full day out of it, but another few hours would have made for a much fuller experience.

The next day I got up and made sure to get to the bus station early. Of course, the bus was running late that day, and with the construction going on at the bus station I was starting to wonder if I was standing around in the wrong place, but it came, and I got on. The next city was Avila, which I wasn't even staying the night at, but merely spending a few hours at on my way to another city.

Madrid: Primary

A 4.5 hour flight from one end of the Mediterranean to the other was sort of fitting for the transition to the last major leg of my journey across Europe. I would be spending several weeks in Spain, though I would only be spending two nights in the vast majority of cities I was visiting. During my 2012 Europe trip I had seen a lot of Spain already, so some places like Seville didn't merit a longer stay, while a few other places I was going, like Ronda, were either small or only had a few things I wanted to see, so they too didn't require anything more than one or two days. My time in Spain began in Madrid, which I would end up staying in three times just because of the way my path looped around the country.

Madrid's airport is located a ways outside the city and after clearing immigration I took the metro to Puerta del Sol, which is the official center of the city. For my first visit to Madrid I would be staying in my final Air BnB accommodation; an apartment just a block off of Puerta del Sol. The lady who hosted me spoke a bit of English and with my limited knowledge of Spanish we were able to have basic conversations. It was late afternoon when I was settled in and I then walked over to the Reina Sofia Museum. The Reina Sofia carries mostly modern art, which is generally not my thing, but it does hold Pablo Picasso's famous Guernica. In 2012 I had visited the Reina Sofia late in the day when the museum has free entry but missed Guernica because I wasted too much time on a different floor. This time I was again back at the museum during free hours, but I instead made a beeline directly to Guernica to correct my previous mistake. Although modern art normally does not impress or interest me, for some reason I felt it was important for me to personally view this particular piece of art. Before the museum closed and I had to leave, I checked out the other rooms on the same floor as Guernica. Then I worked my way back to Puerta del Sol, stopping at an ATM for cash, and then continued west, on past Puerta del Sol, and went over to a cafe I had read about. There I had my first chocolate con churros of the journey. Personally, I think chocolate con churros should be the mandatory first meal of anyone who travels to Madrid, or Spain for that matter. After enjoying the meal, I got a bit of food from El Corte Ingles, a major department store in Spain, and returned to the apartment.

Knowing that I would be coming back to Madrid two more times on the trip, I was in no hurry to do sightseeing the next day. I slept in and didn't get out of the apartment until almost noon. Puerta del Sol was the starting point, with the bear statue, Kilometer Zero, and the Governor's Office all getting their respective photos. I then walked over to Plaza Mayor, which was partially under construction/renovation. As always, the guys selling stuff to tourists were out in force. Next I visited the San Miguel Market. Since my last time in Madrid, the San Miguel Market seems to have added some seating inside a few bars. There's some good looking ham and other stuff in there, but I couldn't bring myself to buy anything as I suspected I could get everything for cheaper elsewhere. On the way to Almundena Cathedral I passed by Madrid's town hall and when I got to the church I found the crypt was open. I didn't remember the crypt being open the last time I was in Madrid, so I went in. Granted, it's mostly a forest of columns (being directly under the cathedral, they are large support columns) and tombs, but it was interesting enough for a short visit. I then went into the cathedral itself and looked around and sat in the pews for awhile doing some reading. Right next to the cathedral is Madrid's royal palace, which has one of those maddening no-photo policies. The interior of the palace is arguably even better than the interior of Versailles, but Versailles is still the best palace in Europe overall. The route through the palace felt a little shorter than my previous visit in 2012, but that might have just been me misremembering it. When I finished at the palace I went up to the Egyptian Temple of Debod. The temple is not very big, but unlike a lot of other Egyptian structures you see across Europe, this one was given to Spain voluntarily by the Egyptian government. It was closed the last time I was in Madrid so I went in and checked out the hieroglyphics engraved into the walls. My plan was to finish the day over at the Prado Museum during the free hours, so I walked along Gran Via until I needed to turn to get to the Prado. Gran Via is sort of like the Broadway of Madrid. When I got to the Prado there was a line about 100 years long of other people waiting to get in. It still wasn't time yet for the free entry to start, so I continued on past the Prado to Atocha Train station to buy a train ticket to Segovia, the next town in line. When I got back to the Prado the line was much shorter and I got in after a 15 minute wait. The staff at the Prado are very serious about enforcing the no-photo policy. Even a photographer as sneaky as me would have a hard time taking photos in there. I was able to cover most of the ground floor during this first visit to the Prado. Since I was coming back to Madrid in a few days I was fine waiting and seeing the upper level another day. Back at the apartment I made eggs for dinner; the first time I had cooked eggs on the trip. Later in the night I went for a short walk and ate more churros con chocolate.

The next day was one of those days. People who know me know how thorough I am in planning and execution of travel planes, but even I suffer setbacks, and this would not be the last one on this trip. I got to Atocha Train Station on time but couldn't find my train and ended up missing it. The ticket I had was nonrefundable/transferable, meaning I would have to purchase another ticket and the next train for Segovia departed from Charmatin Train Station, at the north end of Madrid. When I got to Charmatin a train to Segovia was about to leave and I couldn't purchase a ticket in time to get on. It would be 2.5 hours until the next train, which gave me plenty of time for self pity. Still, I knew that this was a comparatively minor problem and lots of people around the world would eagerly trade their problems for mine.  I was still a bit upset with myself when the next train left but I was doing better mentally. All I could do was keep moving forward, and the path was now taking me to Segovia.

Istanbul: Metropolis

Oh boy, this is going to be a long one.

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I wasn't totally sure what to expect when I landed at the airport in Istanbul. After getting off the plane I made my way over to the immigration area and found the appropriate line. I had my tourism visa ready but when I got to the immigration officer he only checked my passport. He looked it over, scanned it, and then stamped it and let me go. Somehow this seemed anticlimactic. Then again, it's always better to have a boring immigration experience than an intense one. To get to the old part of the city, where my hostel was, I needed to take out some money from an ATM to buy a metro token. I got my cash but the bills were in too large a denomination for me to use on the machines at the tram, so I went over to the airport grocery store to break one of the bills. It was there that I had a moment of fake culture shock. One of the entrances to the store appeared to read "girls entry." While Turkey is a Muslim majority nation with strong Islamic influences throughout society, I had figured that separate entrances/facilities for men and women were relegated to places like Saudi Arabia and Iran. It would be later that I would find out that what I actually saw was merely a sign that needed to be fixed/replaced. The Turkish word for "entrance" is "giris" and on the sign the second letter "i" looked more like a lower case "l." So, the sign actually just said "giris entry" instead of "girls entry." I went down to the metro station and bought a token. When you purchase a ride on Istanbul's mass transit system, in the place of a paper ticket you get a small plastic coin, which you use to enter the station. Unlike most other places, you can't transfer for free between trains/trams, so for each leg of your journey you have to buy another token. Granted, at the time each token costed 4 lira, which was something like $1.33, so it's not like I was worried about going broke buying tokens. The ride from Ataturk International Airport to my hostel took about an hour and involved one transfer between lines. The hostel was located nearby both the Topkapi Palace and Hagia Sofia, and for most of my time in Istanbul I was able to walk to wherever I wanted to go to. For me the biggest thing adjusting to when I arrived in Istanbul was not any cultural differences, but the fact that you cannot drink the water out of the faucet. Well, you can, but you'll get sick if you drink it regularly. The chemicals put in the water to clean it are in higher concentrations than what you get in most of Europe, though it is still safe to do things like laundry and bathing in it. Everyone drinks bottled water and nearly every single store in Istanbul sells bottled water. At one time I accidentally drank some of the faucet water and didn't feel so good for about 15 minutes. After settling in at the hostel, I went out for a walk and crossed the Golden Horn, which is the water inlet that divides older and newer parts of the city. Originally I was thinking of going up the Galata Tower on the other side, but at this point in the day the sun was in a bad position for taking photos looking southwards, so I crossed back to the old city and paid a visit to the New Mosque. I don't know what's "new" about it. Alongside the mosque is the Istanbul Spice Market. A lot of the shops in there are selling the same stuff and can be hard to tell apart. It's a pretty touristy place, but if you're willing to look you can find a bargain or two. After some more walking around the area, I returned to the waterfront and then walked out to the Sarayburnu Park at the northeast tip of the old city. The sun was setting and a number of fishermen were out along the rocks, casting their lines in to the water. For dinner that night I ate the sandwiches I had bought at the Sarajevo airport. The hostel had a rooftop balcony with a decent view of the city, so I ate up there. That balcony would become my normal end of day spot.

The next morning I had a near disaster. I was cleaning the lens of my camera when I accidentally dropped it. The gears that focus the lens were knocked out of position but thankfully I was able to push them back into place and get the camera working properly again. This little misadventure delayed my departure by an hour but once I got outside I didn't stop until the end of the day. I started out at Topkapi Palace, home of the old Turkish sultans. There I purchased a three day pass but the guy at the ticket booth gave me a five day pass instead. Not sure why that happened, but I wasn't going to question the windfall. It took me about three hours to go through the whole palace grounds. One of the most notable parts of the palace was the relics rooms, which held a number of items that supposedly belonged to famous ancient people. I say "supposedly" because I'm not really sure how you could authenticate some of these things. Anyways, among other things, I saw the staff of Moses, the sword of David, and a bow and sword of Muhammad. Towards the end of the relics area was one of the guys whose only job is to memorize and sing the Koran. There was a screen with a translation of what he was singing, and I actually recognized the section being sung as the part of the Koran that draws on the Arabic infancy account of Jesus, which gives a similar story to the one found in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas. When I was leaving the palace I was thinking over the similarities between it and the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain. Both are grand palaces of sultans, but personally I think I prefer the Alhambra overall. I moved on to the nearby Archaeology Museum. The museum is split into three parts and I checked out all of them. The main section with most of the artifacts was under renovation and not everything was on display. Next to the Archaeology Museum is the overlooked Hagia Irene Church. It looks a lot like a smaller version of the nearby Hagia Sophia and was the city's lead church until Hagia Sophia was built. The interior is empty and not particularly notable. I then went into Hagia Sophia. As some of you know, Hagia Sophia was originally a church, but got converted to a Mosque when the Turks took over the city, and today it is a historical site. Part of the interior was covered in scaffolding for restoration work but the sheer size of the open space inside it is still breathtaking. You need a wide-angle lens to properly photograph the inside of Hagia Sophia, and even then photos don't really do it justice. I could have spent a long time looking around Hagia Sophia's interior, but I knew I needed to keep moving, so I eventually left. A short walk from Hagia Sophia is the Blue Mosque, but I got there too late in the day and it was now closed to visitors for the day. However, the Turkish Arts Museum across the street was still open, so I went in there. The museum chronicles various arts in Turkish and Islamic culture and was good enough for a half hour or so. Outside the museum there were a pair of obelisks, one of which looked Egyptian, which if nothing else is a status symbol for a city or nation. Your country isn't anything until it's got a stolen Egyptian obelisk. The sun had now gone down and I got groceries on the way back to the hostel.

It was Friday on the following day, so all the mosques were closed to the public for all or most of the day. After leaving the hostel I walked across the Galata Bridge to the new town and climbed the hill up to the street leading to Taksim Square. I could have taken a funicular up the hill, but having lived in Colorado as long as I have, I felt compelled to climb. Taksim Square is a large, round, open area with a monument to Ataturk in the center. I may have mentioned this already, but Ataturk is the title of the guy who founded the modern state of Turkey. There were lots of Turkey flags flying around the square. Next to Taksim Square is Gezi Park, the site of the 2013 protests which were triggered by a government plan to bulldoze the park and build more shops and apartments. I got a video walking around Taksim Square and then made my way back towards the funicular. On the way back I paid more attention to the stores lining the street and was struck by how many western food companies were there. I remember seeing McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, KFC, Arbys, Shake Shack, and a few others that I'm forgetting at the moment. This sort of thing really shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Ignoring all of those food offerings, I instead bought one of those bread rings that are sold all over Istanbul. Not sure exactly what they are, but they are sort of like a soft pretzel but made out of a different kind of dough. Continuing my walk, I stopped at an old Eastern Orthodox church and a Catholic church. When the Turks took over Istanbul, the vast majority of churches were converted into mosques, but a few were allowed to remain. When I got back to the funicular I did a short visit inside a whirling dervish school and then walked part way down the hill to the Galata Tower. The tower costed 25 lira to go up, which felt borderline overpriced, but the view was just good enough to warrant the expense. It has a 360 degree view of Istanbul, though you can't see the entire city because of how large the city is. After finishing up at the tower I walked the rest of the way down the hill and crossed the Galata Bridge back to the old town. I visited the Spice Market again and bought some dried mango slices after doing some price comparisons. Then I navigated the maze of streets southward until I reached the Grand Bazaar. I spent over an hour just walking around inside the Grand Bazaar, but truth be told, I was disappointed by the lack of variety. There was also the issue that most of the stuff in there was likely mass produced over in Asia and shipped in, rather than being made in Turkey or nearby. I saw most of the bazaar (a claim I know some would dispute, but I'm very thorough) and came out through the south entrance/exit. At one of the main roads I noticed a gelato shop, which you might not expect in Istanbul, and I gave it a try. The gelato was decently good, but couldn't compare to the gelato in Italy. I got a few more groceries nearby and then made the long walk back to the hostel. Before going to bed I uploaded some photos to social media and did some planning for the next day.

During breakfast the next morning I was talking with an Australian named John and an Englishman named Ron and we agreed to meet up for lunch. With that plan now set, I used the hours before lunch to do a few things. I walked over to and took a look at the Burned Column, near the Grand Bazaar. The column originally had a statue of Constantine on top, but that was lost, and later it got a cross on top, but that was lost too. Over the years a number of fires have swept through the area, giving the column its scorched appearance, and today it just stands around, ignored by almost everyone. Next I made my way towards the Grand Bazaar but went inside the Nuruosmaniye Mosque, which is right next to it. The marble exterior reminded me of some of the churches in western Europe, but otherwise there was nothing that stood out (in my mind) about the mosque. Inside the Grand Bazaar I went into the core of the bazaar, called the Cevahir Bedesten, and found a shop that I had passed the day before. The particular shop sold tobacco pipes made from meerschaum, a type of clay native to Turkey. The previous night I had done some online research and everything I had viewed indicated this shop sold genuine, handcrafted pipes made in Turkey. I don't smoke, but a friend of mine who was getting married does, so I bought him a pipe as a wedding gift. With my friend's gift finally in hand (I had been on the lookout for a gift since arrival in Europe) I walked out of the bazaar and moved north, passing Istanbul University and arriving at the Suleymaniye Mosque, which was the meetup point where John and Ron were going to be waiting. John was already there and I had a few minutes before Ron was supposed to show up, so I went inside the mosque. The interior was really nice, but I think I liked the Blue Mosque a little bit more. When I came outside there was still no sight of Ron, so I went to go look for him while John waited at the meetup point. Sure enough, I found Ron on the other side of the mosque, and he was looking for John and me (he had been mistakenly waiting for us on the wrong side of the mosque). I brought him back to John and then we all went over to a nearby restaurant for lunch. John had been to this place before and was able to get us back into the kitchen so we could look over what was being cooked and select our meals. I had some sort of meat dish with rice, and a blue can of Coca Cola, which tastes exactly the same as the Coca Cola that comes in red cans. We had a long lunch and talked over our respective travels. John is retired and was in Europe purely for vacation, while Ron is an author who writes historical fiction and was getting close to the end of a long trip across Europe. The next leg of his journey was going to take him north into Bulgaria, Romania and then into Ukraine. When the lunch was over I said goodbye and returned briefly to the hostel to put the pipe in my locker and wash two of my shirts. I then took the tram and light rail to Istanbul's old city walls and the Chora Church. I had some trouble finding the church but got there with some searching. The central part of the church was closed for restoration so I just looked around the hallways and the old mosaics in them. I then went over to the city walls and found that a few sections were open to the public. I climbed one section, which had the most dangerous set of stairs I've ever ascended. Each "step" was two inches deep and there were shards of glass on several of them. At the top of the stairs I was up on the walls and then I walked on the wall to a tower which gave me a better view of the area. Even way out there, I still couldn't see the end of Istanbul. When I came down from the walls, which meant going down those stairs, I walked around the neighborhood a little before heading back to the light rail station. There were no other tourists out there and I wonder if it was weird for the locals to see someone like me walking around. I took the light rail and tram all the way back to the hostel and did some miscellaneous things there. That night I walked from the hostel back up to Taksim Square. The square seemed even more crowded and chaotic than when I had visited during the previous day. I spent some time taking it all in, and then made the walk back to the hostel to end the day.

The next day not much happened in the morning. I was in the new town the whole time and I ran into some Jehovah's Witnesses in Gezi Park, but their English wasn't very good (and my knowledge of JW theology is limited) so I couldn't have much of a conversation with them. For lunch I decided to eat at the Shake Shack. Although it's an American company, there are no Shake Shacks where I live, so I had never been to one before. The milkshake was good, but the burger and fries seemed no better than others that I had eaten. I came down the hill and crossed the Galata Bridge back to the old town. There had been some indecision in my mind about what to do in the afternoon, but at the ferry dock I saw that one of the firms offering a two hour ferry cruise up the Bosporus Strait was about to leave, so I bought a ticket and got on board. I stood out on the deck as the shipped cruised north for an hour and then turned around. The boat passed under the two bridges linking the European and Asian sides of Istanbul and the whole time it never left the city limits. Istanbul has the distinction of being on two continents and it covers almost the entire length of the Bosporus Strait. It was an overcast day and I remember that around the point when the ship turned back towards the old city of Istanbul I saw flares descending from the clouds in the distance. I have no idea why. Also I saw a massive new mosque being constructed on the Asia side of the city. When the ferry got back to the old town I got off and searched for a ferry to take me to the Asia side of Istanbul. As it turned out, the ferry I had just gotten off of was reverting to its normal route, which would take it to the Asia side, so I got back on the same boat and rode it over to Asia. I spent about two hours on the Asia side, though there wasn't much going on over there. It seemed mostly residential and I'm told that a lot of people live on the Asia side of Istanbul and then commute across to the Europe side for work. However, I did technically go to Asia, so I can check a continent off the bucket list. The sun had gone down when I boarded the ferry back to the Europe side, so I got to see nighttime Istanbul from out in the water. Nothing else notable happened that day, but at that point I had seen and done everything that I wanted to.

The next day I just had a few hours in the morning before I had to leave for the airport. My backpack was packed and I left it at the hostel while I went out to go shopping for a cheap umbrella. The weather forecast called for rain in Madrid, the city I was flying to, so I figured it would be a good idea to get an umbrella in a place like Istanbul where they cost less. With some looking around, I found and bought a small umbrella. I also found shops selling the most random stuff, like a store entirely dedicated to gun holsters. Istanbul strikes me as one of those places where you can buy just about anything if you know where to look. On the way back to the hostel I stopped at the Spice Market and used my last few lira to buy some more dried mango slices as a snack. The tram and metro ride to the airport took an hour, and when it was time to board the plane there was a bus that took me and other people out to the plane. It was time to leave Istanbul, the great metropolis of 15 or so million people. I was flying to Madrid, to start of a few weeks in Spain and the final leg of the journey.

Sarajevo: Scars

As my bus approached the outskirts of Sarajevo, it passed by a building with a gaping hole in the roof. Not far off was another building riddled with bullet holes. Once the bus entered the city itself there were no more damaged buildings, but the scars of war are not something you forget quickly. The Sarajevo bus station is located a ways away from the old city center (where my hostel was located) and I chose to walk the whole way there rather than take public transit. The sun was going down when I started walking and 35 minutes later when I arrived at the hostel it had gotten dark. The only notable thing that happened the rest of that day was that I talked with a guy from New Zealand and he was telling me about archaeologists had unearthed some sort of ancient underground tunnel network a few miles outside the city. He said he visited the site himself and the workers there allowed him to take a look around. Apparently there's some sort of wall/door into the tunnel network that seems to have been built with techniques for more advanced than what should have been around back then and there's strange things going on with the ground. I can't verify if any of this is true, and honestly it sounds like something that would be on that History Channel show Ancient Aliens. Alternatively, it sounds like the premise of a movie like The Mummy. Perhaps there's an ancient evil sealed within the tunnels and we are unwittingly setting it loose on the world. Of course, it's just as likely that the hoopla surrounding this discovery is way overblown and the tunnels are something mundane. It will likely be years before anything conclusive is known. My personal favorite (highly improbable) theory, which I made up myself, is that this is the world's most ancient practical joke, and the people who created the tunnels long ago set it all up just to mess with the people who would eventually find it.

On the following day I did my best to see as much of Sarajevo as possible. Although I didn't get to everything, I saw most of the biggies. Sarajevo sort of reminds me of Zagreb, but with a more eastern spin. This makes sense, of course, because for a long time Sarajevo was controlled by the Ottoman Turks. I started the day at the Sebilj Fountain on Bascarsija Square. The square was all torn up for construction but the water was still running in the fountain. I walked around, doing my best to stay out of the way of the workers, and visited some of the nearby streets that were full of shops selling various goods made of copper. From there I roughly followed a self guided walk from the pages of one of my guidebooks. I stopped briefly into the Morica Han, a former travelers' inn, and then moved on to the Gazi Husrev Bey mosque. The mosque is named for a local administrator from Ottoman times who built up Sarajevo and then willed his fortune to the city to continue building. While inside the mosque I overheard a nearby tour guide tell his group that at this particular mosque all the calls to prayer are prerecorded and then broadcast over the loudspeakers. The reason for this is that the local imam is very old and unable to climb the mosque's minaret. After leaving the mosque I continued west along the main pedestrian road and then turned south the check out the covered bazaar. Nothing caught my eye while passing through and I moved on further south to the Latin Bridge. Right at the bridge is the street corner where Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated, setting off the chain reaction that would lead to World War I. Today there's a plaque that marks the spot where the assassin stood and a museum is on the street corner. I pondered for a few minutes these deaths which sparked a conflict wherein over 17 million people would die, but then I had to get back on schedule. I returned to the main road, and then went north to pay a visit to an old Eastern Orthodox church. After that I passed by the Sarajevo city hall and then walked up to a viewpoint on a hill. Along the way I passed through a graveyard that had been dug during the siege in the 1990s. There were a number of wild dogs in the graveyard but they weren't aggressive. In America there would probably be a public outcry if there was a pack of wild dogs wandering around town, but in Sarajevo no one seemed to care. The dogs were only in one part of town and I would hope there would be some program to get them spayed or neutered, but I really have no idea what, if anything, is being done about them. It was a cold, foggy day in Sarajevo so when I got up to the viewpoint I couldn't see the whole city. Sarajevo is in a valley between mountains with the oldest parts along the river in the middle and then as you look further out from the center the city gets more and more modern. There were a few skyscrapers in the distance that I could barely see through the fog. When I came down I walked over to Sarajevo's Catholic cathedral. There was a school group in there and a priest was telling them something. I assume it was a history lesson on the church. I looked around in there for awhile and next visited the Eastern Orthodox cathedral. The curtains to the back of the church were open, so I could see into the place where the priests perform part of the mass that is normally hidden from the public. Outside the orthodox cathedral is a city park where old men play chess with giant chess pieces. The game that was going on looked like it was most of the way over, so I joined the group of people standing around and watched. I've never been big on chess and don't claim to know much of the strategy behind it. The guy with the white pieces seemed to have his opponent on the ropes, having removed most of the black pieces from the board, but the other guy rallied and mounted a comeback before finally being outmaneuvered and forced into checkmate. With the match over and a new one about to start, I left the park and passed through a market hall and then a covered outdoor market. I didn't buy anything, but some of produce did look good. I kept going west and came to the eternal flame; one of several war monuments scattered across the city. The flame is in an outdoor alcove of a building with bullet holes that have intentionally never been repaired. Scars like these serve as a reminder of the siege, the longest in modern history, and the people who died in it. Down the street, past the Bosnian central bank, is a park with more makeshift graves from the siege and another war monument. At that point in the day I stopped my sightseeing. There were a few more things farther west in the city that would have been interesting to see, but I had gone through all the things I really wanted to do. That is, except for conducting more "research." I had passed by a McDonalds while walking around town and was really curious to give it a try. To my delight, the burger I got at the Sarajevo McDonalds was fantastic. I guess I shouldn't be surprised - Bosnian cuisine has a lot of meat in it so it would make sense that the Sarajevo McDonalds would use quality beef. After leaving McDonalds I slowly walked back to the hostel, taking in the city as I went. At the hostel I spent some time blogging and looking up potential hostels for down the line. Later that night a group of people staying at the hostel invited me to come along for dinner. Some of them were going to one restaurant in the Austrian part of the city and two of them were going to a place in the old Turkish quarter. The restaurant in the Turkish area sounded more interesting, so I went with those two people. We found the restaurant and ate a traditional Bosnian dish, which was meat wrapped in some sort of thin, flaky bread. We chatted for awhile about our respective travels, so I got to eat Bosnian food and practice being sociable. Back at the hostel I did some more work online and packed my backpack for the departure the next day.

The next morning I had to get up early for my flight to Istanbul. The hostel staff called and arranged for a taxi to pick me up and take me to the airport. If I had hailed a taxi myself of the street there's a decent chance the driver would have overcharged me, so I was appreciative of the hostel staff making sure I got a fair price for my ride. My driver spoke a little bit of English and a tried to converse as best I could using simple words and phrases. At the airport I had a few Convertible Marks left over and was hoping to spend them at the airport store, however everything there was for sale in euros. Thankfully the cafe was taking them and I bought a pair of sandwiches to eat later in the day. My last few "cents" I dropped in a charitable donation box. Soon enough, the plane to Istanbul arrived and I boarded. As I looked out the window I felt bad that I didn't have more time for Sarajevo, but then again I now have a reason to go back one day. The plane taxied around the airport onto the runway. Then it lifted off into the sky and I left Bosnia behind. Next in line was the finale of my time in the east: Istanbul.

Mostar: Cultural Bridge

I'm currently at my family's house, but I'll still update the blog when I can.

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I had passed through Bosnia while traveling between Split and Dubrovnik, and now it was time to actually stay there. From Dubrovnik my bus followed the coastal highway back towards Split but after awhile turned north and crossed into Bosnia. Since I had departed Dubrovnik in the late afternoon, it was nighttime when I arrived in Mostar. The rain was coming down and the ticket office had already closed for the day, so I would have to come back the next day to buy a ticket to Sarajevo. My hostel in Mostar was only a short walk from the bus station, but at night and in the rain it felt longer. The hostel itself was really nice and felt more like I was staying in someone's home. Despite the rainfall I ventured back out into the city and walked down to the area around the old bridge. Hardly anyone was walking around that night; understandably so. I got a few photos of the old bridge before returning to the hostel, at which point I was thoroughly soaked. A few of the other people at the hostel commended my fortitude but also said I was crazy for wandering around in the rain with no umbrella (I was wearing my shell jacket, but that was the only piece of waterproof clothing on me). Perhaps they were correct, but I was only staying a single night in Mostar, so I couldn't wait for the weather to improve.

The next day I had until the mid afternoon to see Mostar. Because I was only interested in checking out the bridge and the old town area around it, this wasn't a problem. Certainly there's more than that to see in Mostar, but it is the highlight of the city. I got some money from the ATM (in Bosnia the currency is called the Convertible Mark, and the abbreviation is BAM, which I found hilarious) and bought my bus ticket to Sarajevo. Back down at the old bridge I was able to find my way down to a better viewpoint than the night before, and while getting photos I got to see one of the town's famed bridge divers take the plunge. Mostar's bridge was originally built during Ottoman times but was destroyed in the 1990s during Bosnia's war of independence. After the war it was rebuilt using the same stonework as before and is again a symbolic bridge between eastern and western cultures. The city of Mostar itself is something of a cultural melting pot, with Catholic churches, Eastern Orthodox churches, and Muslim mosques dotting the city. When I finished at the bridge I spent some time wandering around the old town. Along the way I made a fortuitous discovery of an ice cream stand that accepted Croatian kuna, so I got to use up all but one of my leftover kuna... and eat ice cream. I also walked through part of the more modern section of Mostar, which is much like other European cities, except some of the buildings were used as sniper nests during the war. With some more walking I eventually wound up back nearby the old bridge and did some reading there, and even talked with a British couple whose photo I took for them. I looked down at my watch and saw that it was time to head over to the bus stop. When I got there I sat down in the back (all the other seats were filled) and waited for departure. Just before the bus was about to leave an elderly man came running up to the bus and got on. He moved to the back and sat down next to me, and proceeded to hurriedly tell me something. Since I don't speak Bosnian, I have no idea what he said, but I'm guessing it was a long story about what happened that caused him to nearly miss the bus. Part of me was flattered that he mistook me for someone who speaks Bosnian. Or, then again, maybe he was just being old and senile. Whatever the case, I just nodded my head and pretended that I understood. After a few minutes he calmed down stopped talking. All the while the bus was winding its way through the mountains and valleys of the Bosnian interior. Final destination: Sarajevo.

Dubrovnik & Montenegro: The Two Citadels

For my final few days in Croatia I stayed in the city of Dubrovnik. The bus ride to Dubrovnik from Split followed the scenic coastal highway. As some of you know, Croatia does not control the entire stretch of the Dalmatian coastline and the bus had to pass through the small strip of land owned by Bosnia. This awkward piece land ownership goes back hundreds of years to when Dubrovnik was an independent republic. There was a massive earthquake (I think it was in 1667) and the city was so badly damaged that the leaders of the republic were concerned that the Venetians might seize the opportunity to march in and take over. To prevent this, the republic cut a deal with the neighboring Ottoman Empire and gave them that little patch of land to form a buffer zone and discourage Venice from getting any ideas. Dubrovnik and Croatia never got the land back and today it's owned by Bosnia. Thankfully when you pass through that stretch of Bosnia there's just a token passport check, so it's not a big inconvenience. The bus station in Dubronik is next to the modern harbor, (where the bigger ships dock) so upon arrival I caught a city bus to the old city. My hostel was within the city walls, near the north end of the old city, which meant I had to go up some stairs to climb to get to it. With the few hours I had remaining that first day I walked around town and got photos of much of the old city. The weather forecast called for possible rain over the next two days so I wanted to grab some photos while to town was still dry.

I lost some sleep going into the next day because another person's phone alarm went off early in the morning and they weren't in the room to turn it off. I had hoped it would just stop on its own but after a few minutes it was clear that it was just going to keep going so I got up and took the liberty of turning it off myself. It would around 9:30am when I would leave the hostel and I was pleased to see no rain clouds overhead and the forecast had adjusted to just rain the next day. I went over to the city walls entrance near Ploce Gate and went up the walls. By this time of day the tour groups had arrived in town and I would have to deal with them. The city walls offer a great view of Dubrovnik, though it seems that the tour groups tend to do only about half the length of them. It was a fairly warm day but it felt warmer on the walls. There's almost no shade or cover up there and from what I'm told, the stone traps and reflects back heat such that during the summer it can be like an oven up on the walls. I did a full circuit of the the city walls. If you just walk and don't stop it takes about an hour to walk the whole length, but I was stopping frequently for photos, so it was just after noon when I finished up and came back down. The tour groups also slowed me down and a number of times I had to wait for them to pass so I could get some room to maneuver. I returned to Dubrovnik's main street, called Stradun, and got some ice cream. After that I visited the Serbian Orthodox Church, which was the first Eastern Orthodox Church I visited during my time in Europe. It was small, but I recognized the iconography from the brief bits of eastern church history I learned back in high school. Next I went over to the fort of St Lawrence, which is just outside the city walls. My entry ticket to Dubrovnik's city walls included entry to the fort and I spent some time in and around it. There's very little of interest inside the fort but it does have a good view of the city. As it was looking out on Dubrovnik it occurred to me that maybe I should have watched an episode of Game of Thrones before coming to Europe. I know that Dubrovnik it used for one of the cities in the show, but having never watched it, I don't know what to look for. When I was done with the fort I returned to the hostel to do some photo uploads to social media and later in the day I got on the gondola up to Mt. Srd, a tall hill overlooking the city. During the siege of 1991 Mt. Srd was the only high ground held by the Croats. There's a large stone cross up there which replaces another one that was blown up during the siege. I got photos of Dubrovnik and the surrounding area as the sun was going down and then took the gondola back down to the city. With that I had largely finished all my Dubrovnk sightseeing, and there were still 1.5 days left before departure. I could have just sat around but instead I got a ticket to be part of a tour group visiting Montenegro the next day. Normally I would organize this sort of thing myself via public transit (and if you've read the previous blog entries you've probably noted that I don't much care for tour groups) but getting to and from Montenegro by bus or train was looking problematic, so this would be a significantly easier option.

The next day the rain finally appeared. It was raining when I woke up and it didn't stop at any point during the day. The tour bus to Montenegro was scheduled to leave a hotel outside the city walls at 7:30am so I got up early and did my best to be stealthy and not wake up the other people in the room. The tour would take me and the other people in the group into Montenegro and then across the Bay of Kotor to the town of Budva, and then to the town of Kotor before driving around the Bay of Kotor and back to Dubrovnik. It was about a two hour ride to Budva and along the way the tour guide gave an abbreviated history of the region. I was intrigued to learn that Montenegro uses the euro for its currency, though it didn't get permission from the EU authorities to do this. On one hand their economy is fairly stable being tied to the euro, but on the other hand the government can't print any money. When we got to the Bay of Kotor the bus drove onto a car ferry and while crossing the water I stood outside the bus taking in the scenery. The Bay of Kotor is a lot like a fjord, though technically it's not a fjord due to the lack of glaciers. I got some photos but it would have been nice if it was a clear day. On the other side of the bay, we drove to Budva, a seaside town. Budva is an up and coming resort town with a small old town and lots of new buildings going up in the modern part of the city. With Croatia having been thoroughly discovered and developed for tourism, it seems Montenegro is the next country in line on the Adriatic Sea to get the tourism nod. I can only imagine the travel snobs lamenting how Montenegro is getting "discovered" but they can console themselves by telling everyone about they went to Montenegro before it was cool to do so. Personally I didn't find Budva very interesting. Being a rainy October day, there wasn't much of anything going on in either the old or modern parts of the town. With the summer over, many of the businesses were either shut down or operating on minimal schedules. There wasn't anything notable about my time in Budva and when the time came I returned to the bus. Thankfully Kotor was much better. Although the continual rain put a drag on the experience, I found Kotor very interesting and I hope to one day go back and spend a night or two there. Kotor is similar to Dubrovnik in that they are both fortress cities that still have their old walls. However, Kotor's walls run right up the mountain next to the city. If it hadn't been raining I would have climbed them. We got a forty minute guided tour of the old town and then afterwards we had an hour of free time before departure. Like Dubrovnik, Kotor has both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, so you can do some comparisons between the two styles. Perhaps the most notable thing in my mind was how the Eastern Orthodox churches didn't have any pews, as their masses are normally done with everyone standing. I tried to explore as much as I could, but the rain had me stopping several times to get indoors for a few minutes to dry out. Despite my best efforts, I was thoroughly drenched when I left Kotor. The bus ride along the Bay of Kotor was, like the ferry ride, scenic even with the rain. When we got back to the Croatian border we ended up stuck for an hour. As best as I could tell, the Croatian border cops were understaffed and there was a long line of cars and buses that moved very slowly. It was dark and still raining when I arrived in Dubrovnik. I went straight to the hostel and started drying off as best I could. There were no more expeditions that days; I had gone through enough rain for the day.

The next day I didn't have to be at the Dubrovnik bus station until 4:00pm. I checked out of the hostel in the late morning and left my backpack behind. With my primary sightseeing in Dubrovnik already finished, I passed the time visiting some smaller sights like the Dominican monastery. I also walked out to the port and then to the breakwater. Although it wasn't raining, the storm clouds were still passing overhead and the waves were larger than usual. I saw a few other tourists get wet from these waves, which on one hand is funny, but on the other hand that happened to me once, so I know it's not amusing for the one getting wet. As I walked around Dubrovnik I was also trying to plan out how I would use up the last of my kuna. I needed to save a few to store my backpack in the luggage compartment of the bus but I wanted to try to use up the remainder as well. A spare kuna or two would be ok as a souvenir, but more than that seemed like a waste. After some thinking I thought I had it figured out. Passing by the St Blaize Column, I saw some people dressed in traditional outfits and putting on a folk dance performance. I spent some time watching that and then returned to the hostel to make use of the internet one last time. 4:00pm eventually came and when it did I was at the bus stop. Surprisingly, the bus was charging one euro for luggage rather than the standard seven kuna, so my scheme to use the last of my kuna on the bus came to nothing. Granted, seven kuna is roughly one dollar, so it wasn't like I was wasting a lot of money, but I was feeling strangely defeated at that moment. But I also knew that there were far worse fates than wasting a dollar, so I just paid the one euro and got on the bus. I was going into Bosnia for a few days, and my first stop was the city of Mostar.

Split: Rematch

There was a large guy sitting next to me on the bus from Zagreb to Split, so I was feeling cramped for much of the ride. I arrived in Split, which is on Croatia's famous Dalmatian coast. And no, it's not full of dalmatian dogs like the ones from that Disney movie. The bus arrived in Split just before 7:00pm. I was staying at the hostel I lodged in the last time I was in Split, which is in a pink house just up the street from one of the city's beaches. Like Zagreb, Split felt very familiar and I remembered the way to the hostel, even though it was getting dark. When I got to the front door I rang the bell. The hostel manager, a woman known as Ladybird, answered the door. "I have returned" I said. "So you have" she replied. Given how many people pass through the hostel each year, I was impressed that she remembered me, but then again I was probably a more memorable visitor, as the last time I was in Split I cut my foot open and had the pleasant experience of digging sand out of my own flesh. In an interesting turn of events, I got the exact same bed as the one I had the last time, (downstairs, next to the bathroom, lower bunk) which makes it officially a legacy bed. After I got settled in and ate dinner, I joined a small group of other guests who were playing a game of Mafia. For those that don't know, Mafia is a group game that splits people into two groups: mafia and townspeople (and each person knows what they are but doesn't know what everyone else is). There are many variants and house rules that people have developed over the years, but the basic idea is that the mafia are trying to kill the townspeople and the townspeople are trying to identify and kill the mafia. Good times were had by all, even the one guy who kept getting killed at the start of each game. As the day ended I looked ahead to the next two full days I would be in Split. Like Zagreb, I was returning to Split not so much for sightseeing but for a very specific mission. In this case, it was a rematch of sorts. The last time I was in Split I went for a swim and ended up losing some blood. This time I was going to go for a swim but I didn't intend on giving this city a single drop.

The city of Split only has a few historical attractions and is something of a laid-back beach town, so there's little reason to get up early. On my first full day the weather was gloomy most of the time with gray clouds covering the sky. I passed by the beach and went over to the area around the old town, which used to be the retirement palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. After the western part of the Roman Empire collapsed, nearby peasants moved into the now-abandoned palace and converted into a small town out of which the modern city of Split would eventually arise. As I came up to the palace I checked out the outdoor market that was going on and then passed through the palace on my way over to a hill that overlooks the city. I don't remember the name of this hill, but it has a lot of stairs to get to the top. There's a few small chapels up on the hill, which appear to be abandoned but I'm not sure about that. Before I reached the top I also passed by the small zoo that's up there. At the highest point of the hill is a flat area with a flagpole. The view of the city is fairly good, however it's much better for just a view of the greater region around the city. You can take in the dry, rocky landscape that characterizes much of this part of Croatia. Rather than come back down the way I came, I decided to hike down the other side of the hill. This took me down an offroad trail and I honestly don't exactly know where I was because I was beyond the range of my map. I was never truly lost, as I knew the general direction I needed to go to get back to the main part of Split, but I didn't know what to expect as I walked around back there. Eventually I got on one of the main roads and made my way towards the harbor. By the time I got there, quite a few hours had gone by (since the start of my initial climb up the hill) and it was already the late afternoon. I stayed in the harbor area a little while and then walked back to the beach near the hostel. There were a few people there, including some guys playing the official sport of Split. I don't know the name of the sport, but the idea is that you have a team of five guys standing in the shallow part of the water and they hit a small ball back and forth to each other with their bare hands. The objective is to keep the ball from touching the water for as long as possible. Also I think there's a rule that you must wear a speedo, as all the guys were wearing them, but then again maybe that's just because it's Europe. Apparently each summer Split hosts an annual tournament for this game. When I returned to the hostel I chatted with some of the other guests before picking up some food from the grocery store and eating dinner. The rain started to come down around then, so I didn't go for a night walk around the old town.

I had expected the bad weather to continue into the next day, so I was surprised to wake up to sunshine. Realizing that it would only last for a few hours, I quickly got ready for the day and then went down to the beach. I spent ten or so minutes lying out in the sun and then it was time for my rematch. The water at this particular beach in Split stays shallow for much further than you'd expect, so you have to walk a ways out before the water level gets above your waist. The water itself was a little cold but nothing I couldn't handle. If I was in Split in July or August the water would have been warmer, but I was there in October so no warm water for me. When I got far enough out I took the plunge and started doing laps up and down the beach area. I passed by the pillars in the water that gave me trouble last time. They're covered in clams/muscles with sharp edges, which is how I slashed my foot last time, so I avoided them this time. My swimming was the most workout (upper body wise) I had gotten since the start of the trip and when I finally came out I was tired, but felt like a winner. No foot injury and no blood loss equaled successful rematch in my book. I returned to the hostel to clean up and afterwards got a meal at a seaside restaurant. In western Europe I normally avoid sit-down restaurants because of the cost, but in eastern Europe they only cost a fraction of what they do in the west. Also I normally don't like to spend time just sitting around, but on this occasion a long victory meal was in order. As I ate the clouds moved back in and it started to rain, but I didn't care since I had already gotten my beach time in. The rest of the afternoon was spent back at the hostel, talking to people, doing laundry, and working on the guest computer. The rain finally stopped after dinner and I was able to do a walk through the old town before going to bed.

The next morning I had a few hours before my bus was scheduled to depart to get in a few bits of sightseeing. I paid a visit to the St Dominus Cathedral, which might be the tiniest cathedral on earth. It used to be the mausoleum of Emperor Diocletian but it got converted to a church in the medieval period. Nearby is the St John (Baptist) baptistery, which was once the temple of Jupiter. At the baptistery, and many other places across Europe, I couldn't help but notice all the coins people throw away, and part of me wishes I had an industrial strength magnet to recover them. The final sightseeing item I did in Split was to climb the cathedral's bell tower. As I was up there surveying the city, it occurred to me that I really don't know exactly what it is about Split that I like, but I do hope to keep coming back to it from time to time. I came down the tower, went back to the hostel for my backpack, said goodbye to Ladybird, and then walked over to the bus station. Next in line was my final Croatian city: Dubrovnik.

Zagreb: Stone and Water

After being gone for nearly a week in the San Francisco area, I am back and once again slowly grinding out these travel log posts. Now, where were we?

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It was a scenic bus ride for most of the 3.5 hours between Rovinj and Zagreb. When I arrived it was late afternoon. Zagreb was exactly as I remembered it from my last visit and I hardly used the map as I made my way from the bus station to my hostel, which was two blocks off of the main square. As the capital of Croatia, Zagreb has a much more modern look than some of the other major cities in the country. Even the older parts of the city don't feel that antiquated. For an evening meal I went to a fast food place that I had ate at on my last visit, though I think the shop went by a different name back then. Maybe it's not the same shop, and it actually was replaced by the current one. Anyways, this place specializes in french fries with chicken nuggets and other things. Back at the hostel I made arrangements for a day trip to Plitvice Lakes National Park for the second full day in Zagreb. My throat was still bothering me and would continue to do so for the whole duration of my time there.

Clouds and rain moved in the next day. It was like the weather was trying to mirror my health. I knew that I just had to wait it out with my throat problems, but that didn't make it any less unpleasant. My energy felt a bit sapped, but that wasn't much of a problem because I didn't plan on doing too much sightseeing in Zagreb. That wasn't a judgment against Zagreb itself - the city is a nice place - but from my last visit I knew what the city had to offer and there was nothing I was dying to see. The main reason I was in Zagreb was for my day trip the following day to Plitvice Lakes. Still, even with my sickness and lack of motivation, I did a decent amount of sightseeing on the first full day. In the morning, after buying food and some cough drops, I went over to the main square and checked out the market that had been set up there. Outdoors was mostly produce and indoors was mostly meat and cheese and a little seafood. It's rare for me to actually buy food from these markets but I always like visiting them. As it got close to noon I walked over to St Mark's Square as I had read that on some Saturdays there is a mini changing of the guard ceremony. I got there late, so I don't know if I missed the ceremony or if it wasn't being done on that particular day. The church on St Mark's Square has a colorful roof with the national and city emblems on it, though the church itself is closed to the public. Apparently the priest who administers the church does not want to deal with the hassles that come with tourism, which I can understand, even though it would be nice to be able to take a look inside. The Croatian national parliament is also on St Mark's Square, though it too is not open to the public. I think I only saw two or three cops on patrol outside the building, so it struck me as under-defended, but maybe there's more security than I could see. When I finished at the square I went over to the nearby Museum of Naive Art. In this case, Naive Art refers to art done by Croatian peasants with no formal art training. Most of them were poor and painted on glass, which was more available to them than standard canvas. There's also a lot of winter scenes in their paintings because the rest of the year they were busy working their farms. The museum itself isn't very big so I was done in half an hour and then I walked east, passing through a stone arch and by the altar of Mary that's in the small tunnel connecting two of the main streets (sorry, I know these descriptions won't mean much to most of you). A few people were praying at the altar and it reminded me of how Croatia is still a majority Catholic nation, which contrasts with the largely secular western Europe. With a bit more walking I came to the Zagreb Cathedral. The last time I was in Zagreb the city was doing restoration on one of the cathedral's towers and while the work still wasn't finished, I could see that they had made progress. Outside the church there's an exhibit showing how badly the stonework of the church has been eroded over the years and what the restored exterior will look like. Part of Zagreb's old city wall is also next to the cathedral, along with a large clock that was stopped at the moment the 1880 earthquake struck the city. In some of the crannies of the wall there were Legos that were filling the gaps. I'm not sure if it was some sort of art project or just people messing around. Inside Zagreb Cathedral it was fairly dark until someone turned on the church lights. On one of the walls near the exit you can see a strange looking inscription that looks like some sort of alien language. It is actually written in Glagolitic, a script created around the 9th century AD, probably by the missionaries Cyril (the same guy who created the Cyrillic Alphabet) and Methodius. Since the Slavic languages eastern Europe had sounds that didn't match up the the standard Latin-based alphabets, Glagolitic and other scripts were created. These days Glagolitic isn't used, but it's considered an important part of Croatia's national history. Once I was finished at the cathedral I returned to the main square and saw that some sort of ceremony was taking place. I couldn't tell what it was for, but based on the emblems being flown and all the guys in wheelchairs, I'm guessing it was a tribute to wounded soldiers. A folk band and choral group performed and speeches were given. I started feeling really sick after a few minutes and returned to the hostel to sit down for awhile. When I was feeling better I went back outside and did one final bit of sightseeing by walking along the "Green Horseshoe" of parks, which is a long series of parks that look like a large U when viewed on the map. Along the way I passed through a small botanical gardens. Back at the hostel I researched and made reservations for some of my upcoming hostel stays in Spain and printed out directions to the next several hostels I was going to be staying in. I also got some blogging done and uploaded photos to social media. It struck me then that, for a vacation, I seemed to be doing a lot of work. That night I went to bed hoping that rest would do me some good, but I had a bad feeling about how the night was going to turn out.

As feared, that night was miserable. I got very little sleep and kept having to get up every hour to use the bathroom. There was no stealthy way to exit the room, so I probably woke up the others repeatedly that night. When morning finally came, I remember looking in the mirror and seeing bloodshot eyes staring back at me. I was tired and felt awful, but I had a trip to Plitvice Lakes planned and nothing short of being hospitalized was going to keep me from following through with it. To get to the bus station rode the tram and once there I found the bus and got on. It was about 2.5 hours to the lakes and during the ride the bus passed through parts of the Croatian interior still scarred by the war in the 1990s. If you go through there you'll see a normal looking house and next to it will be an abandoned house with bullet holes and sections of the walls or roof blown out. From what I've read, most of the derelict houses belong to Serbians who fled the area during the war and have never come back. When the bus reached Plitvice Lakes National Park, it dropped me and everyone else off on the road, towards the west end and Entrance #2. My plan was to start hiking at the trailhead at Entrance #1, so I had to ride the park shuttle and then do some walking to get there. At Entrance #1 I made my way down a series of switchbacks down to the water. I had seen photos and video of Plitvice Lakes in the past, but being there is something else. When you're not on a regular trail you're on these wooden walkways directly over or next to the water, so you get real close to the scenery. There are also no guardrails on the walkways over the water, but they're wide enough that I never felt in danger of falling in. I went over to the largest waterfall, called Veliki Slap and climbed up alongside it to an overwatch point. Not too many people make the climb, so I was by myself for most of the time I was up there. When I came down I followed the "B" route, which was supposed to take about three to four hours to hike. You could probably do this route in a little less time than that, if you can somehow stop yourself from pausing to take photos. I seemed to be stopping every few minutes, as every turn of the path yielded another great photo opportunity. Plitvice Lakes has the highest concentration of streams, lakes, and waterfalls I've seen anywhere. The water is also very clear and full of calcium carbonate, which explains much of the rock formations in the park. As I hiked along the trail I photo-bombed a group of middle-aged Asian women who were taking a group photo. Another item checked off the bucket list. The trail moving west from Entrance #1 towards Entrance #2 is uphill, but easy. Personally I think this is the better way to do it, because if you're moving east then you'll keep having to turn around to see the waterfalls. After some hiking, I came to the boat landing P3 and caught a boat across the largest lake to the landing at P2. At this point I was near the end of the B route but I still had over an hour before I needed to leave the park and go to the bus stop, so I looked at the map and decided to loop north around two of the upper lakes. There weren't as many people hiking around the upper lakes region as the lower lakes. I hiked past the two lakes and a large waterfall, up to an intersection with another trail going even farther north. If I had more time I would have kept going but by then I needed to start making my way back. I arrived back at the P2 boat landing and got on a boat to P1, which is near Entrance #2, and from there walked to the bus stop. Generally it's not advisable to be doing lots of physical exercise when you're sick, but in this case I was feeling better overall when I left Plitvice Lakes. My throat wasn't bothering me so much, though my nose was running a lot. Back in Zagreb I was able to get to bed at a decent hour and slept a lot better than the night before.

My bus to Split wasn't scheduled to leave until 2:00pm the next day, so I slept in and after I got up I didn't leave the hostel until the late morning. I made use of the guest computer to publish a blog post, print my travel visa for Turkey, and book a pair of hostels for my upcoming time in Spain. With the little time I spent outside the hostel I went up the Zagreb Eye, which is an observation deck on a tower on the main square. The guy operating the tower's elevator asked me where in the United States I was from, and I told him Colorado. I don't know if it's funny or if I should be concerned, but the first thing he knew about Colorado was how we had decriminalized marijuana. After getting some photos from the observation deck, I came down and got a meal from a place nearby. Then I went back to the hostel for my backpack and went over to the bus station. It was time to head to the Dalmatian coast.