Dubrovnik.

That time of year again, June, and time for another birthday trip for me. Summer was just beginning to blossom in the UK and on the back of that we were in the mood for the water - and so we headed to Dubrovnik in Croatia.

Dubrovnik is a beautiful city, one of the few that has kept its old medieval walls, and has real charm. Approaching the city from the south via coach, you are treated to a view straight out of some fantasy. Charming little villas clinging to the mountainside amongst the pines and native stone, giving way to the Old City, surrounded by its monolithic walls. The coach weaves its way downhill through the town outside the wall, under arches, round tight bends, and deposits you at Pile Gate.

From here you wander into town with your bags, ready to discover something that Dubrovnik has in plentiful supply: stairs. The city forms a bowl of sorts, with the main street in the centre of town being the lowest point, and everything cascading upwards from there. Much to my delight, our apartment was near the outer wall, so I was able to climb about as many steps as possible in the town before dropping our very heavy bag off and trying to die.

After that, it began to rain.

And rain.

And rain.

For like, days.

This kind of limited our activities. We had gone there hoping to get some sun and relax on a beach, but that wasn't going to happen. The rain was near tropical in volume (and temperature, thankfully) to the extent I had to buy some thongs for the first time in 15 years, because they weren't cold and wet, and they float. So we didn't get out as much as we had hoped - and ended up spending most of our time wandering around within the walls and hanging out at D'Vino, a funky little wine bar run by a Canadian chap. Can't recommend the place enough. We also managed an afternoon routine of heading to a little bar called Buža, which was perched on the cliffs outside the wall, perfectly placed for sunsets. One of the best spots in the world I've had a beer.

A direct result of all this skulking about was that we were penned in to the tourist areas (and believe me, it is very touristy), and had to subsist on what I consider pretty average food for the price. Turned out to be a pretty expensive trip because of that.

You can see why it is a bit of a tourist trap though. The Old City is quite a marvel, with polished marble paths, tiled roofs (90% of them having been re-done since the shelling of the early 90's), little coves, tight alleyways with washing strung out, beautiful architecture mixed with abandoned ruin, cats, The Wall, monasteries, restaurants, cafes and bars. There was actually a fair bit to take in in that regard, and it was a fun place to explore for a few days.

When the rain did finally let up, we took to some island-hopping. The nearest island, Lokrum, is a 10-minute ferry from the main port, and a fascinating little place to check out. It holds the remains of an old monastery that looks straight out of a movie set, and more peacocks, peahens and chicks than you can shake a stick at. It also had one of the best swimming holes I've ever been to, and we lazed about there when the temperature soared above 25ºC. The other island trip we took brought us to Mljet - about a 1.5 hour ferry ride north of the city. We ended up hiring bikes and climbing up the hills, and back down the other side of the island, to about the furthest possible from the bike hire place, and then got a flat tire. It got less fun from there. Having said that, we still enjoyed our time there. We go to see another monastery on an island, on a lake, on an island. Can't be too may of those. Had a swim. Rode in some of the prettiest scenery I ever have, and didn't get rained on.

Overall? Great place, we just lucked out on the weather. It really did change the experience, and ended up costing us a bit more money because of it.


Photos here.

Right, where were we.

Ok, so maybe it's been a while since anything was posted here, and maybe the guilt has finally caught up. I'll get to writing over the next few days and see if we can't catch you all up.

Morocco.

For quite a while now, Kat had been harbouring a strong desire to go see Morocco, and earlier this year we had a chance to address that. In march actually, and yes, I know this is a bit late for a write-up.

At the time, London was in a state of Big Freeze, so a trip to the continent (well, a continent) was quite welcome. By chance, my freelance gig was winding up and Kat's was due to start in a bit over a week, so on the Friday we said "lets go to Morocco" and on Sunday we were there. That's why we live here.

Not knowing much about the place, we were traveling a bit on the recommendations of friends, and on the basis of those, we ended up first in Essaouria — a groovy little town on the atlantic coast that's renowned for being quite relaxed. Jimi Hendrix once visited, along with the Stones, and the locals are still harping on about it. Essaouria is a port city — and the Old Town in which we stayed is the heart of it: a walled city. Generally people wind up here to relax after the intensity of other Moroccan cities (such as Marrakech, which we were to visit next) so to begin here we were kind of doing things a little backwards. No surprises there eh.

After a long taxi ride through the desert to get here, we arrived after nightfall, and were rather unceremoniously dumped into some square/parking lot and had to find our way to our hotel. Speaking neither Arabic, or French (the second language there due to occupation) and lacking anything like a map, this seemed to be a challenge, but fortunately A Man With A Cart appeared and ferried us to our hotel. Thank God he did because as we were to find out again later, Moroccan cities are labyrinthine in extreme.

I think that that hap-hazard style of city 'planning' is what gave the place what charm it had. Rough walls with plaster falling off, dirt-covered cobbled paths and narrow, windy dead-end alleyways were a far cry from the sterility of Sydney and it's ilk, and the place immediately felt 'foreign'. The place had an ever-present smell of sea breeze mixed with dirt, cat urine, leather products and refuse. Lets be honest here — Moroccan cities aren't pleasant. But they are interesting. That fact was undeniable and I remember wandering around agape trying to soak it all in, while avoiding the continual hassling of the market-stall owners selling their touristy crap.

So, we spent about 4 days here, wandering round trying to find ways to keep ourselves entertained. We would generally sit up on the roof of our Riad (an awesome little place run by a friend-of-a-friend called Dar Afram) and read till late morning, doing our best to keep the local breed of seagull (these things were enormous!) away from our food, then head off for a wander around town and the markets, trying not to buy anything, and generally succeeding. Dinner consisted of tagine and cous cous, or cous cous and tagine. To be honest, the days kind of blended together, and I'm not sure what you would do if you were there for any longer. You end up doing things just to do things. On one day we found ourselves on an sand dune half an hour out of town, seemingly left alone, when someone wandered up out of nowhere and asked if I would like to buy some weed. When I declined, saying I don't smoke, he then asked if I would like some opium instead, then wandered back off into the dunes, leaving us alone again. Surreal. This is what traveling is all about, isn't it?

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Following Essaouria we headed to Marrakech. This time we caught a bus that appeared to have no suspension, which, coupled with poor roads, made this feel more like a boat journey than a bus trip. So much so that the guy in front of me was quite ill from the constant swaying. I felt pretty rotten myself, which is rare. Once we arrived we got on another taxi, followed by another Man With A Cart and after getting lost a little bit (it even happens to the locals) ended up at our riad. Riads are an awesome experience for anyone who would like to try the local thing.

Marrakech was full-on. Really full-on. Like no-where I've been before. It's like where we had just come from, but turned up to 11. The streets were even more twisted, the roads dirtier, smells stronger, and sun hotter. On our first night there I was blown away. THIS is what traveling is all about I thought. We wandered down into the main square (Jemaa el Fna) past a throng of human traffic. You generally can't fit cars into the narrow paths — mopeds constantly weave their way suicidally in and out of the crowd. Once you get there you are treated to quite a feast — both figuratively and literally. Market stalls stay open late into the night, food vendors ply their trade, there were even snake charmers — snake charmers! with cobras and everything! — sitting around trying to get some of your money. It was all a lot to take in.

The rest of our time there was spent wandering around the souks (markets) getting lost quite frequently, and getting hassled even more. For the most part I was lugging round my ludicrous and impractical camera set, looking for the ultimate photo, which was exhausting. Not only because of the weight of it all, but also because it felt like there was a general hostility in the air towards foreigners — it was a bit like Cambodia where you were viewed as a wallet with legs, but also like they didn't want you there, and it was only begrudgingly so that your presence was allowed. This made it quite hard I found to take nice photos because as soon as you took the camera out, you attracted people trying to sell things (or charge you for taking the photo).

Now fine, it's not all about taking photos, but this feeling penetrated pretty much all activity you undertook in Morocco, and so left something of a blight over the whole experience. That was the overwhelming feeling we came away with — it could have been an amazing experience, but for the locals. Shame really. If we hadn't been to Turkey before here (which had a lot of similarities, but also very friendly people), we probably would have left with the balance sitting in the 'wow' corner but as it is, the good (fascinating place) probably balanced out with the bad (the hassle).


Photos here.

Bored.

No-body reads this, do they. Oh well.

It's lateish at night here, and I'm a little bit crook with a head cold, and I'm waiting to get tired enough to go to bed and pass out without all that tedious coughing first. So I have some time to write.

What's news then eh? Well, the other weekend we went to Paris for the day. No, not overnight, for the day. You can do that here. It was as good as Paris ever is (well, it's the second time I've been there, bringing my tally to nearly 4 whole days) and I finally manned up and ate snails. They actually don't taste all that bad — I found the trick was to pop it in, get a bit of flavour action happening, then chew like hell and swallow it before your body realised what it was eating. The system works - even Kat ate one! Anyhow - there's some photos at flickr for those interested.

Um, in other news... pretty much same ole same ole. I'm freelancing at my old job, and Kat is on the job hunt, as well as putting in a lot of effort to keep the house tidy after my messy habits.

Warmed up nicely to a rather humane 12ºC here, so I'm on the lookout for some shorts soon methinks.

White Christmas.

Well, for Christmas this year I lost the battle to win the war. (Don't tell Kat I said that). The war: where to go for Christmas. Kat was wanting somewhere warm as an escape from the rather gloomy weather in London, whereas I wanted to go snowboarding and have a white christmas. And therein lay the battle – I eventually persuaded her to come along, but we were to go skiing instead of snowboarding, because when we tried snowboarding in Dubai Kat didn't enjoy it. (Jokes on me though, cause she really enjoyed the skiing, and it looks like it'll cost me a fortune in the years to come. Oh well.)

We ended up booking ourselves into a guesthouse at Mayrhofen for 7 nights, and 6 days of ski lessons. It was our first time and we had no idea what to expect, but we made sure we had medical cover, that's for sure. We went for the 6 day option because it was basically the same cost as anything less, and we figured we could bail if we'd had enough. To be honest, most mornings I woke up in a mood, covered in aches and pains, and said that I'd had enough, but we stuck with it for the whole time, and enjoyed it — once you got moving it was ok. By the end of the week we could handle most red runs on our own, we'd gotten past using the 'snow plow' move and throughout the week there were no major tumbles or anything, so the lessons went well.

Our usual day consisted of getting up early and grumbling a lot, having breakfast, then trying to to beat the queue at the gondola (which climbed 1200 in altitude in order to get you to the slopes). If we didn't make it early enough, a 40 minute wait could be expected. Once up there, at the start of the week we reported in to ski lessons, but as the week progressed, we hit the slopes on our own to warm up and get some clean runs in. It made a huge difference to your progress if you did, because when you travelled as a group, you travelled 10 times slower than on your own. At lunch, we generally had some quick & cheap food in order to get some more practice in before the afternoon session began. At the end of the day we nestled in to a glass or 2 of Glühwein (often joined by our instructor, Chris). It's basically mulled wine, but the way they made it up on the mountain was different. Much much stronger, and very very good to postpone all the aches and pains (or any sensation below the armpits). After that we made the fatal mistake of heading back to our lodgings and having a shower before heading out. It was very hard to re-motivate after that shower, let me tell you.

Anyhow - everything went well. We learned to ski, met some other Aussies who we ended up having Christmas dinner with (which it snowed for - awesome), and got to see some proper glacial valleys and whatnot. Good times had by all. I'll leave you with a couple of videos we took while we were there.

A Christmas Message:


(Unbeknownst to me the thing was zoomed in or something, so I was cropped out, and it was too cold to do a second take.)

Some views:





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You can find the photos here.