Quick! Pass the lavender oil

Before we left, lots of people warned of mosquitoes in North Norway, Sweden and Finland. Nobody said zip about Sicily. Why not?

By judicious planning and because you can see them as they’re the size of houseflies, we mostly avoided the Scandinavian biters.

In Sicily, we have no chance sleeping outdoors, especially when it’s much too hot to be under the covers. The tiny little blighters track   you down with no mercy. 

We’ve been bitten so badly that, to quote a Rob: ‘It itches so much you want to chew your own leg off.’ Thank heavens for the soothing salve of lavender oil.  

  

Medieval and wild

Walking through Dubrovnik old town, which is enclosed within medieval city walls that still stand proud,  you can’t help but notice the shiny floor.  

  It’s made of big creamy coloured stone slabs. Were they always that smooth or have they been polished to such a shine by 600 years of shuffling feet? I’m inclined to think the latter.

An extraordinarily well preserved place, you can see why the makers of Game of Thrones find it a perfect backdrop.The stone streets are lined with small open arched shop fronts. Narrow mysterious looking alleyways branch off to squares and courtyards while steep stairs lead up into the unknown. There’s even a monument with a relief of a queen with a dragon at her side.  

Altogether it’s a very special part of what is anyway an extremely pleasant seaside city.  

    
  My favourite bit is just outside the old town city walls. Overheated and in search of a swim, we follow towel toting locals through an arch and emerge by a restless navy blue sea.It’s heaving mountains of spray-topped waves up and over the cement esplanade and stainless steel swimming steps. It looks a bit wild but a few are swimming so we decide to join them.

Wild it is, especially getting in and out, which you have to time carefully to avoid being deluged as you enter or smashed into the wall as you exit. But it’s the best swim I’ve had since the bog pool in Estonia.  

   
 Fittingly, we leave Dubrovnik by sea, taking a ferry to Italy. It’s a lovely sight as we sail out at dusk with the city lights twinkling under a crescent moon. 
   
The ferry itself is not quite so lovely, being somewhat old and utilitarian in its fixtures and fittings. I wonder whether it will get us there.  

 
 

Dogs, eagles and what is that smell?

The coast of Croatia goes on forever (well, about 400 miles), every inch of it picturesque at worst and breathtakingly beautiful at best.  

  
Mountains swoop down to meet a sparkling Adriatic sea fringed by impossibly cute red-roofed villages sprinkled with stone wharves, pomegranate and fig trees, small vineyards and tiny olive groves.   Every few hundred yards, it seems, is a perfect place for yet another dip in the cool clear sea. You can see small silver and blue fish swimming beneath you and fat sea cucumbers rolling around on the sea bed.

This, along with the constant steep bends and occasionally extreme gradient changes, makes for slow progress southward.

We find that among the hundreds of ‘apartmani’ and ‘rooms’ signs that pepper every settlement, however small, are ‘autocamper’ signs. These take you to places where you might camp for the night. Some of them are traditional style campsites (though sometimes lacking basic facilities such as electricity); others are spaces in people’s gardens.

We try one of these and it’s definitely quite odd camping in front of their patio and beside the vegetable patch; odd but OK.

Here we meet Jimmy from Manchester who has taken up summer residence in the garden. He explains to us that we may have trouble driving directly to Dubrovnik along the coast as we’d planned. This is because  there’s a 20km stretch of coast between us and it that is Bosnian territory. Because it is not an EU country most insurance doesn’t cover it. This is indeed the case for us, so we must take a car ferry to a peninsula via which we can circumnavigate Bosnia.

At another campsite we meet a German man (there are a lot of Germans holidaying in Croatia)  who stages an unexpected display of dog training the like of which neither of us have witnessed before.  The dog follows his every move so closely it’s as though they are glued together.  

 We take a car ferry to Losjin Island, where every step you take releases amazing smells of sage, rosemary and other unidentified herbs. We see some soaring eagles which we think are golden eagles. They are certainly huge  have a  golden gleam when their backs turn to the sun. 

The coast of Croatia goes on forever (well, about 400 miles), every inch of it picturesque at worst and breathtakingly beautiful at best.  

  
Mountains
swoop down to meet a sparkling Adriatic sea fringed by impossibly cute red-roofed villages sprinkled with stone wharves, pomegranateand fig

trees,  small vineyards and

tiny olive groves. 
  Every few hundred yards, it seems, is a perfect place for yet another dip in the cool clear sea. You can see small silver and blue fish swimming beneath you and fat sea cucumbers rolling around on the sea bed.

This, along with the constant steep bends and occasionally extreme gradient changes, makes for slow progress southward.

We find that among the hundreds of ‘apartmani’ and ‘rooms’ signs that pepper every settlement, however small, are ‘autocamper’ signs. These take you to places where you might camp for the night. Some of them are traditional style campsites (though sometimes lacking basic facilities such as electricity); others are spaces in people’s gardens.

We try one of these and it’s definitely quite odd camping in front of their patio and beside the vegetable patch; odd but OK.

Here we meet Jimmy from Manchester who has taken up summer residence in the garden. He explains to us that we may have trouble driving directly to Dubrovnik along the coast as we’d planned. This is because  there’s a 20km stretch of coast between us and it that is Bosnian territory. Because it is not an EU country most insurance doesn’t cover it. This is indeed the case for us, so we must take a car ferry to a peninsula via which we can circumnavigate Bosnia.

At another campsite we meet a German man (there are a lot of Germans holidaying in Croatia)  who stages an unexpected display of dog training the like of which neither of us have witnessed before.  The dog follows his every move so closely it’s as though they are glued together.  

 We take a car ferry to Losjin Island, where every step you take releases amazing smells of sage, rosemary and other unidentified herbs. We see some soaring eagles which we think are golden eagles. They are certainly huge  have a  golden gleam when their backs turn to the sun. 

Rijeka! It’s the sunshine

With the temperature taking a tumble in Central Europe it’s time to head south. 

We make for the Croatian coast, having to show our passport at a border crossing for the first time since leaving England (apart from when we were pulled over by Polish border guards near the Belorussian border).

Northern Croatia introduces us to the dove grey and caramel cream granite, and deep red earth that predominates. It’s reflected in cream, grey and white houses with rust red roofs. We also see handsome white herons dotted across green wetlands.

After a fast drive through the mountains (it’s a bit like being back in Norway, with lots of tunnels and tolls) we arrive at Rijeka in warm pre-dusk sunshine. 

We book into ‘the purple room’ of a new and prettily decked out hostel with the strap line ‘my little piece of heaven’. Unexpectedly, for us, it lives up to this claim, probably at least partly because we have the place almost entirely to ourselves.

Although it’s right next to a busy container dock, Rijeka being the third largest city in Croatia, it has its own tiny beach with deep blue clear water.  You can see clean to the bottom even where it’s well over 20 foot deep.   We have time for a quick snorkel and see shoals of small fish, then an octopus. He’s a bit the worse for wear, clearly having had a run in with a boat or large predator at some stage and losing couple of arms. But he’s great to watch. We see another more perfect specimen in a small harbour a few days later.

There’s no kitchen in the hostel but we’ve got a perfect little parking spot right outside overlooking the beach where we can cook and eat. Our bedroom has a big window that opens to the sea and it’s warm enough to leave it open all night. Heaven! 

 We stay for a couple of days and explore the city, tracking down a Birkenstock  shop, which I’ve been searching for since my old pair disintegrated (they’d done a good five years).

 
    I’d definitely come back here. 

Hungary for the thermal spa

Who knew Hungary was the home of the thermal spa? Lots of people, probably, but not us. 

We first come across spa water in Slovakia near the Hungarian border where we follow swimming signs and arrive at a huge natural mineral water pool, not hot but definitely gorgeous. It’s obviously busy in high season but today we have it almost to ourselves although it’s sunny and very warm. 

    
 To ourselves, that is , bar the frogs and dragonflies, who swoop around as you swim and dive in beside you.

Then right on the border we find a whole complex of thermal spa pools. We spend an afternoon luxuriating in the 36 degree water, alternating with swimming in a 29 degree pool. Talk about living the life of Riley.

By the time we reach Hungary, we think we’ve done the spa thing and are much more interested in the blue Danube, which lives up to expectations handsomely.

First night we set up camp on an almost island where you have the sparkling clear river on both sides of you.  

 We’ve not been there long when a man who introduces himself as Frank the fish guard approaches us. He’s happy to hear we won’t be fishing as it gives him the opportunity to chat instead of charging us fees and explaining fishing regulations. (We later find lots of Hungarian men love to chat and will insert themselves into your conversation at any opportunity.)

On our map, he shows us all the thermal spas in Hungary. He also tells us that the remains of a huge fish we’ve found on the beach is a Chinese invader called a bruscha that can grow to 20 kilos.  

   
In Budapest (we get there the day after the station uproar over incoming Syrians) we walk along the wall bordering the Danube. It’s made of big blocks of pinkish stone that are full of fossils, especially swirling ammonites. 

    
 Budapest is a stunning city and we get a great lunch at the Maygar food stall in the big market. There’s little sign of any trouble except at one point a dozen police vehicles dash over one of the many bridges, all sirens blaring. 

 Later we discover the joys of gyros (a bit like small spicer kebab meat) and langos, savoury doughnuts the size of your head. 

Then the weather deteriorates. It goes cool, misty and slightly dank, so that the lake we are visiting, Lake Balaton, while still good to look at, is not so inviting. We are tempted by what promises to be a ‘romantic bungalow’ (surely an oxymoron) which turns out to be a Pontin’s style chalet, fully equipped with the requisite ancient fittings and mouldy smell. Even so, it’s just what we need at the time and sets us up the better to enjoy the spectacle of the milky white lake, coloured so by a combination of the weather and its mineral content. 

 And of course it’s great weather for yet another hot spa…

Almond surprise

On our last morning in Warsaw we breakfast at a patisserie. I buy a large golden nut-topped almond pastry for later. I wrap it tightly in its waxed paper bag, put it in my bag and promptly forget about it.

Several days later I wonder what happened to it. I have a clear picture in my mind of leaving it on the front dash of the car, where it now clearly isn’t. I know we haven’t eaten it and it certainly isn’t still in my handbag.

I’m forced to conclude it must have slid out of the window on a sharp bend. But this is not a satisfactory solution. Surely I would’ve noticed it and if not, what else might we lose, or already have lost, that way?

My thoughts return to this puzzle several times over the ensuing days. Rob gets tired of hearing about it.

Then we visit Krka National Park in Croatia and chose to walk round the wetlands cascades, with its pellucid grey-green pools, lush reeds, overhanging fig trees and currunculated travertines. The latter are sort of horizontal stalectites that build up from calcium carbonate forming barriers in the waterway and thus the many cascades.  

    

  
For the walk, I break out my rucksack and guess what I find in the front pocket? The almond pastry! Unwrapped, it’s almost as good as new, if a little dry at the ends. 

This sustaining snack turns out to be a bit of luck as we later take the boat trip up a gorge that was part of the very expensive national park ticket. At the top of the gorge we’re kicked off the boat. The ticket was only one way.  

 Reluctant to shell out more and faced with a massive queue at the ticket office, we elect instead to walk the several miles back down the valley to where our car is parked (also, as it transpires, costing us money when we were assured our national park ticket took care of parking charges).

It is a beautiful walk, suffused in sweet pine smells and ending at a swimming beach.  

 And, thanks to the almond bounty, we aren’t even hungry. There’s lucky isn’t it. 

 

Kings of the road

There are plenty of traffic police in Slovakia. In the same way we have speed cameras, they seem to have cops with speed guns. Fortunately, we are generally pootling along enjoying the scenery and don’t fall foul of any of them.

This keenness on rules of the road may account for the young traffic training facility we happen across outside a small town. A miniature road replica is set up in what was clearly a field until just recently. It’s equipped with traffic lights, a roundabout and any number of potential roadside hazards, including a shepherd and sheep, woman with a flock of geese, and a pair of ostriches. 

    
 It’s for primary school pupils to come for sessions on their bikes. If they enjoy it as much as we did, I’m guessing they’ll learn a lot.

On the subject of traffic and cars, we have yet more reasons to be grateful to the Citroen brand in Europe. Here they all are:

• A fab repair experience in Sweden 
• The front desk man at the Citroen dealership in a seaside town in Estonia who rolled up his pristine shirt sleeves to dig about in our noisey wheels  before pointing us in the right direction for the help we needed
• The man at the Citroen outlet in Slovakia who rung round all his tyre contacts to get us a new set of tyres supplied and fitted at short notice
• Ark Mihelic Citroen in Viskovo, Croatia who investigated and solved for us another worrying noise, again on-the-spot and for a minimal charge
• Not forgetting Citroen repair specialists Alexanders of Whitton, who have been happy to give us reassuring advice over the phone.

You’ve gotta like a brand that lives up to its promises. 

 

Colour me European

 When I was about 10 years old, my research  scientist  father went into Soviet controlled Czechslovakia on collaborative visit with scientists there.

I remember there was great trepidation at home about this potentially hazardous trip and no certainty at all about when he was flying back in. Retrospectively, there may have been other reasons for that uncertainty than Cold War politics. Nevertheless the whole episode made a great impression on me, so I was especially interested in seeing what the Soviet architectural legacy looked like in Slovakia (sadly we’re missing out the Czech Republic).

The answer is, it looks colourful. Whereas is Latvia and Lithuanuia have done their best to expunge or leave deserted any Soviet architecture and Poland has added to it with new construction, Slovakia has painted it in rainbow colours, to excellent effect (although the pictures dont show good examples, annoyingly. Just a more general use of street colour).

   

A close (Ukrainian) shave

Despite various dire warnings and promises, there is a moment where we think we might sneak across a corner of the Ukraine.

We are in a national park in Poland (with bears) where it looks like it might be the quickest route to where we want to be.  

 We can see the border crossing on the map and drive down ‘just to have a look at it.’

Luckily we are saved from ourselves when we are spotted by Ukrainian border guards. Yes, we can come in, they say, but only on foot not in a car. Phew!