CROATIA-VENICE-AMSTERDAM... PART TWO KOTOR & MOSTAR..

There were two excursions from Dubrovnik planned on the itinerary I inherited.  The first taking us to Kotor, Montenegro... another to Mostar, located in Bosnia and Herzegovina... country names with which I was rather too vaguely familiar from the war in the 1990's, but I still have not grasped that history with much understanding.  Seemingly mostly religious intolerance... about which I might observe as being "not my thing", until I realize that bit of lazy thinking makes most of history "not mine." I'm sticking around hoping to learn more.

For each of the day trips we were to have a car & driver.  Nilola & Boris, both usually bus drivers, considered these trips in their company’s Mercedes as a bit of a holiday from their usual work with larger scaled vehicles carrying much larger groups. They were not guides & their English was a bit more limited than the Croatians with whom we'd been staying. These guys were from rural areas, working the tourist season while longing to get back to their villages.

We gradually, tenuously learned as we chatted with them in honest curiosity along the way, appreciating by turn how much intelligence of their own they had to share.

Nikola picked us up early, driving us to Kotor, Montenegro, another walled city... small, ancient & quite well preserved.  It snuggles deep in a finger of water, fjord-like but actually a riva or a submerged river bed... forming a sheltering port.  While it had long become sleepy, now cruise ships bring the pluses & minuses of the tourist economy of which we are a part.

History has always been commodity... 

[I must acknowledge my own consumer-hood]

One church displayed only these few remnants of once elaborately painted walls.

 The commodious qualities of stone frequently write visual poetics...

Not foot-polished stone, but contemporary bronze church doors 

in an ancient town... progress responds to loss

I come to understand
 that this travel is to be all about
walled cities...built mostly during
the Venetian Empire.

Appropriate,
because we are going to visit that city later in this travel...

Next morning we met Boris,... a bit younger & a bit less reserved... who drove us to Mostar, which proved to be rather a long drive, with several crossings of the complicated borders.

I savored the views of the undulating coastline the highway followed north up & then east... away from the Adriatic waters I found myself loathe to leave... would there be octopus for lunch? The route reminded me some of the lovely mid-coast parts of Highway One in California.

We learn that the reason for the route has to do with a quirk of geography created during the drafting of borders from the recent peace negotiations (in Dayton, OH!), giving the country named Bosnia and Herzegovina a finger of territory connecting it to the sea... thus making a puzzle of multiple border crossings in order to use the route of the highway.

Rising through farmland becoming more occasionally forested, we gleaned bits about the agriculture, geography & history... with sub-currents of the several cultures living a long discomfort in these beautiful territories.

Remnants remain of the war's destruction...

That confrontive friction has long been creatively connected by a lovely stone bridge,
famous for 450 years, since being built by the Ottomans... linking a valuable trade routes.
That meeting of Muslim East & Christian West has mashed or mixed since ages before then.
By choice-in-necessity the city, while gently culturally divided cities on each side of the river communicated over a stunningly designed geometrically sound structure.

It defines for me an "enormous delicacy"...

The name of the bridge is Stari Most.

In the war it was destroyed!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2JMQvjV-B4

Then, by what seems miraculous

 it has been rebuilt... 

hope springs

We arrive as yet two more tourists in the crowded continuity of this historic connection. Polished stone abounds for such foot traffic. The bridge seems actually a bit dangerous... it requires hard work to make such vital traverse on the polished stones. Meanwhile a man is soliciting funds toward the ticket that he would dive from the center of the bridge... there are videos I've not seen. But, the kitty [containing a Euro from Stephen] doesn't match his price, so we did not see him do the feat.  Fair enough.

You can see a dive here: http://cliffdiving.redbull.com/en_US/event/mostar

This is not in any way an easy bridge...
yet it is so beautiful in form, function & symbolism.

The color of the water is incredible...
luminous shades of turquoise & aqua.

It is simply spectacular.

The view upstream shows the mosque

 on the other side of this ancient cultural divide this bride spans.

The much smaller "Crooked Bridge" was built a few years before its much larger sister as a study for the construction techniques. We had lunch at a table looking up at it.

Built as a monument after the war this tower rises from a terrace with differently colored paving stones illuminating the footprint of the foundation plan of the destroyed church which it memorializes

A new concrete sanctuary stands beside it... still very dusty for the finishing work being done.

Yet within sight of all these remnants of the war, we observed these souvenirs!

Humans are so curious!

The city has some fascinating street art, which we observed on a side trip to the new mall... contrasting the ruins with too-familiar contemporary retail, of course. War & shopping seem to be hallmarks of human culture...

Stephen discovered that there was a Sufi Monastery nearby, so we requested a side trip to discover a small compound Blagag tekke built perching above 

where a subterranean river flows exuberantly from a sheer cliff... 

again, water with that incredibly luminous color.

 Yet even more color burst from the rugs inside the rooms.

 

 

I then came to appreciate the subtle sculptural strength of the stucco details. 

supporting that riot of chromatic exuberance.

I certainly became enamored with the naturally irregular slate tiles on the roof hung in delightfully organic patterning. I would observe this treatment other places as informal effective function.

Beautiful...

 Having  had recent experiences with wheelchairs I smiled to realize this was a similarly folk version of handicap access...

This place was indeed a spiritually sacred emergence

I was pleased to be able to feel its power.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I understand that this travel/ride is to be all about
walled cities, built mostly during the period of the Venetian Empire.

Appropriate... we are going to visit
our favorite city, later in this travel...

Ah, but our next destination became
 my favorite city of this trip...
Korçula

CROATIA-VENICE-AMSTERDAM... PART ONE: DUBROVNIK...

Where is the beginning of this saga? Since no story truly has a beginning… there can only be a before… 

The before of this travel had my sister Merrilee & Diana, our Sister-in-Love, arriving for their first visit to Soundcliff, after these two decades I’ve been here with Stephen. Our joy in that bloomed over any pinch in our schedule, which is typically often pinched. We enjoyed the fabulously rare time to share our lives in garden & beach walks, stories & meals… all food for our souls! 

They left for Port Townsend just hours before the next guest: Joel... who used to live in Port Townsend!... arrived on his way to a family wedding in Canada before returning home to  Bali. [Read my posts about our times with him there…]

Such tight timing is a good way to introduce this travelogue for me, who quite unexpectedly... yet certainly happily... became Stephen’s traveling companion for this trip to Croatia.

He had been planning this trip with our friend Edward for many months. I had a ticket to meet Stephen in Venice, after the two of them had finished their tour of the Dalmatian Coast. But when Edward had to cancel on only several days’ notice because of poor back health, we changed my ticket at the last minute to become his replacement. 

I rather felt at times I was traveling with his ghost! 

The flight through Paris to Dubrovnik was predictable. Being functionally exhausted I dozed.  After all of these preparations en-extremes... changing my schedule while keeping to our usual style of comfortably easy hosting might have pestered me more had the visitations not attained some sort of perfection in entertaining... as welcome distraction.

Having had no hand in the planning, nor much of any time for preparation, I had little notion where the ghost of Edward had landed me. Our young driver Anna spoke easily fluent English for the rather long ride from the airport. She explained that students study the language from the first grade, thus being capable to host the country’s burgeoning tourist industry. The good road was built high above a beautiful coastline giving us a first peek down into the ancient walls of the old city. 

This coast has few sandy beaches because of the islands buffering it from the wave action already lessened by the narrowness of this finger of the Mediterranean Sea:

 

I could only delight finding us in an new hotel interestingly built on numerous levels tumbling from the street down to the intensely blue waters of the Adriatic. The room was on a lower level, in a newer addition, the route to which would never quite become familiar, with the various circuitous routes to find our way down from the lobby, around & through the complex… seeming always to involve several separate elevators… & even a short bit through a corner of the immaculate parking garage! 

We arrived without much jet lag, settling into our room & exploring a bit to find a drink before choosing to have our first dinner at the terrace restaurant we could see down below from our room... 

... as the sun was setting,... 

lighting a sliver of new moon over the several small islands we saw from our glass balcony... one with a lighthouse twinkling into the deepening colors over the Aegean Sea.

Our first course obviously pleased us!

 I was seduced to choose the first of what was to become
my favorite meal… grilled octopus... succulent & flavorful! 

We probably ordered it a dozen times more over the course of our trip… usually grilled, but also ... sliced thin as part of a salad. Of course I am now learning how to shop for & prepare it at home!

Staying on the Dalmatian Coast, with its abundance of good seafood offered on any menu, we frequently ate from the sea. The food was wondrously good, with wines surprisingly delightful. We could imagine our lives being part of a continuum reaching back millennia, albeit celebrating only the more peaceful times... since even recent history unfortunately includes still-lingering disturbances. 

The Hotel More [logically meaning sea…] is located above a cove some distance from the urban center. Neighboring hotels tumble similarly down accessing a paved public walkway built just short steps above the sea. No sandy beaches, but numerous small paved bathing terraces tucked into pockets of rock formations, with ladders giving swimmers access to the gentle surf. 

We came to choose this picturesque route for our forays into, or more frequently returning from, town... once we learned that the bus system returning us from the old walled city had a stop down at that water level before riding up only slightly closer to the hotel’s front entrance. It was far more pleasant than walking further up a street which was too busy & narrow for pedestrians.

Evenings we could then find a moment for a last drink on one of the bars with seating steeply up & down numerous terraces…  or in the hotel’s famous Cave Bar, part of which was built into a cavity gouged into the cliff by the sea long ago. 

The deepest part had a glass floor suspended over its chthonic mysteries!

Pondering

Owning... for a moment

Yet it was always much more pleasant to sit al fresco
on the steep-stepped terrace bar to enjoy a drink in the evening's glow.
From there it was a short elevator [or two!] ride
or a creative walk up to our room.

Croatia sits between Greece & Rome… the ancient historic classical standards of our western culture. Geography has made its history a richly tormented stew between that “classicism” & the more oriental “East” … Our destinations had even stronger history with maritime empire of medieval Venice... three walled cities: Dubrovnik, Korçula & Split, with day trips to Kotor, Montenegro- another walled city, plus Mostar, Bosnia, with its amazing stone bridge.

Forts like this will be our abodes for more than a week’s travels… with photographic opportunities abounding! I have an affinity for...Stone!

Even now, even here, there seems no good… certainly no easy… understanding of the simmering still inside the recent turmoil of a war between faiths which I suppose I will never quite grok. We get a sense that something still smolders under a surface most everyone hopes to pave over.

We are tourists in places dependent on our value to their economy… we all quietly choose to honor the more durable stones of history.

We were easily enticed to climb up to walk atop the high ancient stone walls, rising from the sea, protectively thick & thus occasionally wide enough to become small streets with terraces … places for restaurants & bars offering views on one side out to the water or down the other side onto the tile roofs of the old city.

 

 

We rewarded our exertions with a cool beer before continuing on, climbing many more... usually more narrow... paths stepping steeply up & down between parapets protectively defining & enclosing the old city

 One moment arrested my eye... this single shot of a tiled roof
carefully sawn... adjusting to the building's geometric evolution
rather high atop the ancient organic / cthonic footprint...  

 The route eventually dipped down close to the water of the harbor.

Bell towers became a focus on this trip after seeing the mecanique of the iron gents wielding hammers to strike the bells. Later, we saw these retired originals in the museum...

  

The hotel’s buffet breakfast usually held us well until we found a late lunch, re-grounding before moving on to the next museum, or church, or to simply stroll through the streets... exploring how the generations who polished these stones traversed daily such a tight geography.

Curiously… or not, in this ever smaller world… as we sat waiting to be served one of the traditional lunches made with slices of meat stuffed & rolled like a wrap, at a table right in a narrow side street... a couple of guys we know from Seattle stopped to greet us! 

Our itinerary has us staying in three cities along this coast, each with its central old section inside ancient dramatic stone walls. These fortifications are astounding feats of engineering craft & art. 

We are scheduled for several days with drivers taking us inland to visit two neighboring countries familiar to the news stories of war in the Balkans several decades ago: Mostar, in Bosnia & Kotor,  in Montenegro. Following these excursions we drove in a sporty rented Mercedes up the coast, choosing the older coastal road over the newer freeway cutting more quickly above the vistas we enjoyed.

More posts will follow to cover these adventures...