A live concert in the town square by the harbour as there was a festival going on this week.
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This morning we had a local guide, Diane, for a walking tour through narrow streets to the 15th century Franciscan Monastery which housed a beautiful large painting of the last supper with Jesus and his disciples as Judah was about to betray him. Diane walked us through the narrow streets of town explaining the origin and significance of many of the buildings. We also visited St Stephen's Cathedral on the main square and saw many beautiful paintings within.
We had a group lunch at a little restaurant nestled in the middle of the town on a quiet narrow street. There was a pomegranate tree there. The afternoon was free for us to explore. A group of us hiked up the staircase and winding path 100 metres to the massive Venetian castle that overlooks and protects the harbour. Hvar was an important port for centuries situated along important trade routes. It changed hands many times with the coming and going of different empires and nations. Then we walked back down and around the harbour again and continued around the headland to a pebble beach where we saw a few people swimming in the rough water. From there it was a steep climb back up to our hotel. Although the weather had cooled I went for a quick swim because I couldn’t resist the beautiful, cool hotel pool.
At 6 Terry and Lorraine, Reg and Brenda, Phil and Sanda and Shanya and I walked back down to and around the harbour well past the Monastery to a little restaurant where we had a light meal and drinks. The four women sat at one end of the table and drank water with their meal and the four men at the other end and had a couple of beer. The conversations were very lively as we know each other well by now and have fun. The usual ugly topic of tipping the guide came up with all of the complaints and comments I have heard on every tour I’ve been on. But eventually the women got into several hilarious conversations and one would have thought they were the ones drinking and they were loud and laughing uncontrollably. Altogether a very enjoyable night to end an excellent day.
Tuesday, October 1st.
This morning we had a walking tour through the heart of ancient Split with another excellent local guide, Luca, who gave us a wealth of information and insight into the turbulent history of this city and the country. We started with the cryptoporicus (underground vaults) of the ancient Roman palace built between 295 and 305 ce at Split, Croatia, by the emperor Diocletian as his place of retirement (he renounced the imperial crown in 305 and then lived at Split until his death in 316). He was not Roman, but became the Roman Emperor and most Roman Emperors never held the position for long because they often died or were murdered in office; so his building a huge retirement palace and actually living in it for a few years was very unique. Then we visited the Emperor Diocletian’s Mausoleum which he is no longer buried in. His body was removed and destroyed years after his death and replaced with one of his victims, a kind of unknown soldier. Then we visited the Church of St. Donatus and explored the ancient narrow streets still paved with the lustrous white stone of Brac Island. In the entrance way to the Palace (which used to be a trap for invaders who would be attacked by archers and boiling oil and flames) we listened to three excellent acapella singers performing here with its wonderful acoustics. We exited the Golden Gate of the palace to walk along the promenade of the harbour front. The promenade was built using stones from parts of the Palace that Napoleon destroyed in order to open up the city and provide more sun and fresh air into the narrow streets and help rid the city of illness as the bubonic plague had been rampant in the city for 500 years! Today the promenade is home to a number of restaurants and cafes and provides the locals and tourists with an excellent view of the harbour and the sea.
Shayna and I visited a 16th century synagogue (see the previous post). Then we hiked up a long series of steps through the city along the coast to get a spectacular view of the city of Split. We walked back to meet Amanda and the group.
Then we took a two hour ride on a large car ferry to one of the 78 islands of Croatia: Otok Hvar (Otok means island). En route we passed the island of Brac, which provided the lustrous white stone for the construction of the Cathedral of Sibenik, Diocletian's Palace at Split, the Cathedral of Liverpool, and the White House in Washington, DC., among other places. Otok Hvar receives 2,724 hours of sunshine per year, more than anywhere else in Croatia, and is thus called the "Island of the Sun". Greeks from Paros first settled on the island in the 4th century BC in Pharos, the modern town of Stari Grad, where our ferry docked before we reboarded the bus for a 30 minute drive to Hvar Grad. In the 13th century, the capital of the island was transferred to the town of Hvar (a mutation of Pharos in Slavic) and prospered during the 3.5 centuries of Venetian rule. This picturesque town and marina is alive with the constant hum of activity.
We had dinner together in a restaurant where we had an excellent view of the harbour. What a difference a day makes, this restaurant, meal and waiter were all much better than last night. We had fun with a wonderful young waiter while eating a delicious meal. Then a group of us walked around the harbour at night enjoying the views, smell of the sea and a concert in the square by a wonderful group of Slovenian musicians who happen to be staying at our hotel, playing traditional and modern instruments. We stood and listened for a long time enjoying the music and the atmosphere before walking back to the hotel for the night.
Monday, September 30th.
When we got up I went around checking out this really interesting and different ‘hotel’, Ethno Houses Plitvica Selo, very interesting place.
We left early and traveled to the Dalmatian coast via Zadar, the ancient capital of Byzantine Dalmatia. This large city has its historic center crowded on a small piece of land jutting into the Adriatic Sea. We entered the city through one of the Venetian gates and proceeded to the Roman Church of St. Donatus and the Cathedral of Anastasius.
When it was occupied by the Germans in 1943, Allied bombings destroyed about 60% of the city as it was an important port. Zadar was rebuilt one more time, as it had been many times over its tumultuous history, it had been invaded or captured by many different countries or empires, including the Romans, Napoleon, the Venetians (who were here for 500 years), the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Italians, among others. It is for this reason that a variety of architectural styles, from Roman Corinthian columns to Romanesque churches and Venetian buildings are all found here. Chaotic reconstruction work was undertaken to repair the devastation Zadar suffered in the Second World War.
The frantic reconstruction turned much of the seafront into an unbroken, monotonous concrete wall. But by the Adriatic we saw two very creative and innovative pieces of art that a local Croatian architec, Nikola Basic, designed to improve the area: the Monument to the Sun and the Sea Organ. The Monument to the Sun, or The Greeting to the Sun, is a monument dedicated to the Sun. It consists of a 22-meter diameter circle representing the Sun, with three hundred, multi-layered glass plates placed on the same level as the stone-paved waterfront, with photovoltaic solar modules underneath. Lighting elements installed in the circle turn on at night and produce a light show. Smaller circles stretching from the big circle represent the planets and are spaced and sized accordingly. The monument symbolizes communication with nature. Basic also created the Sea Organ by placing a system of polyethylene tubes of various sizes and a resonating cavity concealed under the step. The waves interact with the organ and create somewhat random but harmonic sounds to make music which changes based on the size of the waves.
We continued on the bus to Trogir where we visited the 13th century Saint Lawrence Gothic cathedral and had a walking tour around the medieval centre of town.
After that we drove on to Split, the second largest city of Croatia. The historic city center actually lies in the walls of the enormous retirement Palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, built between 295-305 AD. It served as a palace, military fortress, and later, a fortified town. The city is enclosed by huge walls, pierced by 4 main gates, one on each side of the rectangular plan. Through some Adventure Aboard mixup we wound up at a different hotel, with the same name and were not located near the old city as we were supposed to be, so instead of walking into that part of the city we had to get Urska to drive us there. We walked the promenade along the harbour past the locals eating and hanging out along the harbour to our restaurant. Some of us had the specialty lamb or veal dish, but I wasn’t too impressed and Shayna and a couple of others had a disappointing meal of 6 mussels and 5 clams. We were at the end of the big table and talked to Chuck and his wife who were both in the US Navy. Chuck served on submarines! Very interesting. Then we had to take taxis back to our hotel.
