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...

INDONESIA QNE - BALI...

We love escaping the overwrought holidays 

 with their traditional obligations

[usually involving some gleeful threat of snow...]

Whenever we can free ourselves.

Thank you, my Sweetman, 

for your irritating wisdom 

about planning!

After our last trip four years ago, 

we hungered for a more tropical solstice.

We flew to visit our friends Joel & Nirgrantha. 

They host guests at Villa Vajra

in the village of Sebali, near Ubud, an artistic center on Bali, 

only one of the many islands collected as the country of Indonesia 

in the the South Seas.

After nearly 30 hours of door-to-door travel we arrived in Bali just before the Solstice... Mostly escaping the frenetic holiday energy, although Christmas is a commercial event with decor widely seen even in Buddhist & Muslim countries.

Our 13-hour flight from Seattle, left for Taipei just after midnight Saturday/Sunday, crossing the International Date Line to arrive early Monday. We flew EVA Elite so we enjoyed slightly more spacious seats plus, quite nice service & good food.

Meals on the flight to Taipei consisted by our choice of mostly Chinese foods, avoiding the western load of gluten: pasta & bread. I especially enjoyed the breakfast presenting multiple bowls, a variety including “congee”... as written on the menu, but verbalized by the hostess as “porridge”... a soft rice, more liquid than not, with additions including a packet of fluffy flavoring powder delightfully, aptly, called “fish floss". I want more!

I have a memory of being introduced, decades ago, to a similar breakfast a friend from Singapore called “jook”. I realized too late that the pickled salad was intended to be added, as Tinnee had taught me in those Sedona days. I prefer savory breakfasts.

Another 5-hour flight brought us to Denpasar, Bali where our friend Joel met our plane & drove us... while rain threatened... an hour more up to their Villa Vajra near Ubud…  putting us, for the first days of this visit, in the larger guest villa, which is usually rented to paying quests, but tourist times are tough on Bali and in much of Indonesia, due in part to overbuilding by expats.

Joel had arranged to have a masseur ready to welcome us with wonderful body-work before a simple dinner. What a delightful treat to have the wrinkles of traveling deliciously ironed out! During my massage there came as well the welcome of a first delightfully booming thunderstorm!

This was the view from the massage table on our bedroom's covered deck looking down into the living/dining pavilion... two stories of open space with drop-down weather shades.

We had indeed leapt ahead of time by flying over the International Date Line... so we went directly to bed, quite ready to sleep into our jet-lag.

I began a journal on the plane which continued to evolve fulsomely throughout this entire travel. I have a rather checkered history with such travel journals, which often find themselves neglected in all the movement. This one informs this text.

Remember that I am rather a hermit meditating in a fast lane. I've become comfortable choosing to miss some excursions to enjoy instead rare qualities hovering 'round the solitude essential to savor dancing so lively in time & place. Travel has many complexions...

Waking from deep sleep accompanied by intense frog-song, we joined Joel &  their sweetly aging dogs, Abelard & Heloise for their regular morning walk along the nearby ridge familiar from our last visit four years ago...

The grass growing along the ancient stones is what becomes the traditional material for thatched roofs, which are increasingly more rare due to their shorter lifespan than iron-wood shingles, which, while more expensive, last years longer.

A treat was to see a small, low growing, version of Passion Flower...

At the trail head is this demon's mouth doorway, 

carved from the wood of a tree root system...

Back home for a gorgeous breakfast with Nirgrantha in their delightfully efficient villa. A lovely plate of fruit: banana, kiwi & the incredible, richly flavored mango & papaya which are in high season.

A lovely wild native orchid blooms in front of their sofa:

On the wall of their courtyard garden is a zig-zagging black pepper vine, which I identified in answer to Nirgrantha's quiz, having seen them in India.

The rich exuberance of plant life in the tropics is exemplified by even simple moss on a lovely pot...

I might wish to attend the sale of his textile collection which Nirgrantha intends, such as this jacket on their bedroom wall.

Or... this sarong patterned to guarantee making any movement an undulation... I doubt I could afford such treasures as he has collected in his years here.

Joel suggested lunch at a vegetarian/vegan restaurant he’d recently discovered, accessible only along a rough road followed by a bit of a walk, which made it impossible for Nirgrantha to join us.

He is confined to the interior of their walled villa's two roofed sections... living & sleeping... with a garden & pool between. Such architectural incorporation of the tropical bio-system becomes lovely logic.

Moksa (the restaurant) is another open pavilion set well above & overlooking its garden planted in the river-bed’s fertility. I was entranced by the graceful swirls creating beds shaped with puzzle-nobs of paths interlocking soil. All bordered with a staccato of coconut husks, sensibly allowing the middle of them to be easily accessed… delighting this gardener!

The plates were deliciously inventive… served in / on pottery made by the partner of the owner who runs the front-end. I got to meet the other partner, who is the chef, to compliment him on the raw squash “spaghetti” I had so enjoyed sauced with a turmeric dressing... which I finished with a spoon!

We ought to have visited the potter’s studio/store, but we had too little time… Joel wanting to get back to check on Nirgrantha. We did stop to change money, each rather instantly becoming millionaires several times over, in the local Rupiah, for a $200.00 investment!

Both of us napped more deeply than intended… waking in the jungle twilight just before dinner. Grilled Mahi-Mahi & poppingly-delicious small potatoes roasted with rosemary… plus the Brussels sprouts which we’d brought from home at their request, being impossible to get in the tropics. A holiday feast!

Another deep sleep, with curious dreams, brought me to waking just before dawn, to watch the fireflies blinking like morning stars above the mosquito netting of our bed. I got up to enjoy the coming of the light on this Solstice morning.

Solstice still is important here, almost at the equator… just enough below to make some noticeable difference, according to Joel, as the longest day of the year.

Leaves from their Bodi tree... genetically a true scion of the Buddha's... hold deep truth.

We decided not to follow our original plan to go into Ubud for lunch & to shop. It seemed it would be too crowded. Instead Joel suggested lunch at a new eco/farm restaurant higher up the road where he’d celebrated his recent birthday. The half-hour drive took us through an area frequented by tourists, so there were numerous open shopping places for all sorts of schlock around a once picturesque rice terraces… now looking too shoddy for that traffic to even want to photograph… illustrating what he explained as the rapid deterioration of local culture.

At Basanta we were met as we parked by a guy with walkie-talkie bringing a young woman who turned out to be our guide [& later our server]  through the rather newly developing gardens, showing us the two strains of coffee [Arabica & Robusta] which they sell as “Luwak”… which I will explain later to those not too faint for adventure. We ate in one of several typically open thatched pavilions overlooking a lush valley.

Joel & I had interesting avocado smoothies laced with chocolate, pretty, but I might prefer a spicier addition rather than such heavy sweetness. They were too much like dessert! Stephen’s drink was made with beets… a lovely color. We were put-off by the plastic straws, after having a more beautifully organic version made from stems of papaya… a clue to how clueless we ultimately found much of this operation.

One starter was deep fried spinach… a variety with large densely textured leaves. I’m curious what was the batter’s binder, making an equally sturdy crispness… eggs, perhaps. The other was a timbal made of fruit & veggies enclosed with long thin petals of sliced cucumbers, another technique I wish to try at home. Main courses were a fruit & vegetable “paté” contained in a collar of banana leaf stitched with a pick of bamboo, a similarly wrapped bundle of batter-fried potatoes, perched horizontally atop, floating in an orange sauce. We shared a second preparation of red rice served with a basket of various sauces, small salads & bits of flavorful preparations & sambals, all contained in a tight composition of more stitched banana leaf vessels.

While all was fine in its elaboration, the meal did not seem so well tended as the lunch the day before. The entire experience seemed contrived toward the notion of the curious coffee, which involves collecting the beans after being processed through the digestive systems of civets [a weasel-like animal] which supposedly works some wonder worthy of exorbitant price. We did not like the idea, seeing the rather cruelly caged animals & samples of the the end of the process. Such curious excess of obvious & overt-marketing seemed another example of what “eco” & “organic” are not really about. The gamelon music was boringly repetitive & the rackety walkie-talkies the entire staff carried at full volume were distracting & disturbingly insensitive.

We would not recommend it over Moksa… or indeed at all!

No matter, 

by the time we arrived home all was again refreshed