Shiny happy Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik’s old city is one of the few places where we literally stopped and stared upon arrival, absolutely blown away by its incredible beauty. It is a vision in marble, pristine and shimmering in the light.

The only problem with it really is that you have to pay serious attention while walking or you smack into the back of somebody else that has stopped and is in mid-gawp.


Millions of people over hundreds of years have worn the marble to a very jandal-unfriendly surface

Even the ceiling of our hostel was epic. Once we had settled in, we joined the hordes of tourists for a wander around the battlements. Some of the biggest & best I've seen since Jodhpur.




Aside from walking there was plenty of coffee, massive slices of pizza and jazz bars. Everything you could want on your day out from the cruise ship...

So even though it was beautiful, it did leave us feeling like another cog in the tourist machine.

A Montenegroan

One day we travelled 144 kilometres from Tirana, Albania to Podgorica, Montenegro. Our journey took us seven hours and included furious arguments with two taxi drivers, walking in circles around icy Podgorica for half an hour with all of our baggage and an incident where an irately thrown water bottle hit a parked Mercedes (accidentally! there are so many Mercedes in Podgorica that it is practically impossible NOT to hit one!). Then, on our single non-transit day in Montenegro (which was a Sunday), everything was closed.

It was just not meant to be. But we have a few photographs that show what a lovely place the land of the black mountains is for people other than us. Word in the hostels is that tourism-wise Montenegro is the new Croatia. I would really like to spend some proper time there, despite the above.



The first of many, many millennium bridges in this part of the world

Despite the shops being closed, Soph still dreamed...

From the bus as we passed through a beautiful little town on the coast

We stopped off in this little town on our way to Croatia, don't ask me what the name is...

Moustache spotting in Tirana

We originally intended to spend one night in Albania en route to Croatia. However somebody left our Euro credit card in Meteora so we hung out in Tirana for a few days while we waited for it to catch up with us.

There weren’t any ‘you must see it before you die’ tourist attractions, or any tourist attractions at all really. So we walked the streets, drank lots of espresso, ate many foods with dipping sauces and people watched. It was nice feeling free of the responsibility to learn about things and appreciate them ‘properly’.

Here are the five things that I thought were most interesting: 

1. Albanians are super super super friendly and helpful. Speaking different languages does not prevent them from having a 20 minute conversation with you in the pouring rain. They are just so excited that someone has made the effort to visit their country. 
2. Many of the bleak communist apartment buildings are painted in bright colours and patterns due to a policy of former mayor Edi Rama who is also an artist. The buildings look really neat, and are definitely no longer bleak. 
3. The western clothes from the 1990s are now living in Albania. (The western clothes from the 1970s now live in India, so where are the clothes from the 1980s?). 
4. Despite every Albanian of historical importance having a moustache (except perhaps for Mother Theresa) mysteriously nowadays only about 5 people in the whole country have one. Their absence is curious... 
5. Albania is about to get its first multiplex cinema. This shows how far Albania is behind most developed nations, but I don’t think that it will be for long. It has enormous tourism potential and evidence of significant manufacturing abilities... watch out world!

Our taxi ride covering the length of Albania set us back about a tiny $25, in a Mercedes no less... entering Tirana we discovered colourful buildings, wild wires and fried chicken that almost reminded us of home.
The food was a shot in the dark mostly... sometimes it had teeth!

See the army guy? I didn't... he wasn't too happy about me taking pictures here. Don't even know what the complex was, I just wanted a picture of the clock tower.... honest


Crazy pyramid in the city, designed by the president's daughter or something. Not used for much any more but had heaps of cool graffiti all over.

And then our credit card arrived safely. So we once again flagged a Mercedes and hit the dusty, bumpy road to Montenegro.

Mighty monkly Meteora

We finished our time in Greece with a visit to Kastraki, a quaint little village surrounded by sheer sandstone cliffs. On top of the cliffs perch eastern orthodox monasteries which are known collectively as ‘the Meteora’. In the times before tourists the monasteries were accessible only by undertaking a slippery climb that was fraught with peril at every step. This made the monasteries easy to defend and tested the faith of those who wished to reside there.

The hermit monks who lived there were seriously cool and surprisingly communal. They led political resistance movements, fought in armies, were skilled craftsmen and were significant collectors and creators of literature. They also knew how to have an incredibly good time, judging by the wine cask the size of a living room. We have had to revise our impressions of hermits and monks significantly.


Getting to the monasteries was half the fun... especially scaring the tourists coming off the tour buses when you emerge from the bush covered in half a jungle and panting maniacally.

The views made all the walking totally worthwhile


The monasteries were pretty cool. Unfortunately no photography allowed inside, so you will just have to imagine the room of monks skulls, the floor to ceiling murals and cool monk weapons.

But eventually the monasteries closed and apart from the awesome food there's not much else to report from Meteora.

Tragedy!

We have met with a small problem.



An unfortunate event occurred while we were breakfasting and/or showering in Prague one fine morning.  A midget opportunist of indeterminate gender who had been sleeping two beds over went on a crime spree (with two people asleep in the room no less!) and then promptly checked out of the hostel.  Dan's laptop was among the victims, leaving us with very limited blog creating abilities.

But all is not lost: Dan is still taking photographs and we will resurrect the blog once the insurance money comes through.  And on the bright side, I now know how to make money if we can't get jobs in Edinburgh.

A tale of two Athens

The Parthenon inspires awe. Its sense of presence is spine tingling and once you have recovered from a brief case of slack-jawed yokel syndrome you begin talking in hushed tones out of respect for this immense, perfect, geometric structure. Even when the structure is covered in scaffolding and no longer perfectly geometric due to a somewhat embarrassing incident in the 16th century which involved the storage of gunpowder within.

Your brain then reels with jarring, lurching confusion when you look down from the Parthenon to the city of Athens below – a white concrete jungle that sprawls for miles in every direction... how did the civilisation that created “the foremost monument of western civilisation” way back in 447BC advance to this?



The mind boggles.

But once you are in the concrete jungle it’s actually pretty neat. The inner city is very walkable and dotted with interesting ruins, marketplaces, funky public squares, creative street art and kittens. The people are friendly and the house wine is delicious and practically free. But there are definitely signs of discontent – there is a lot of angst in the graffiti, the cafes are filled with people talking exasperatedly about political matters, the police are kevlared to the hilt and all planes were grounded and all tourist attractions closed for a strike during one of the three days that we spent there. The enraged shouting was audible almost a kilometre away from the protest.



Despite warnings... we headed into the battleground.

We didn't see too much unrest, but the police presence was hard to miss. All of the attractions were closed on our first day too, luckily we were on our walking tour which only visits the outside of everything anyway.

The gates of the Acropolis from an ancient hill.

Our very own archaeologist/walking tour guide, and yes the guy to the left is wearing stubbies. Back in the good ol' warm days...

Jumping for joy in a renovated roman market hall. It was really cool to see a roman structure as it would have been, since this was done the UNESCO rules have changed and no longer can you fully renovate an old building like this.

Our Brazilian buddy Louis, about the join the crowds with us for the main attraction..

The Parthenon... after learning so much about this structure is was amazing to finally see it. For those who don't know much about it, there's a couple of reasons I think it's so great. Firstly, the design. Although it looks like a simple building, the Parthenon doesn't have a single straight line on it. The ancient Greeks were masters of their craft and employed subtle curves throughout to correct optical distortions in our vision and to embue the structure with a real presence. The angle of this photo is no accident either, the architects designed the Parthenon to be on the perfect viewing angle just as you walk through the gates of the Acropolis. Secondly, the craftsmanship. The Parthenon is built like a massive jigsaw puzzle and because of the curves, every piece is unique. This actually threw off the modern Greeks when they tried to renovate it in the past, they thought the column pieces were interchangeable and it wasn't until the 90's with help from modern Japanese imaging teams they worked out the Parthenon's great secret. Since then they have pulled it apart completely and put it back together, giving us apparently the best Parthenon we've had for centuries. That also highlights another feature of the craftsmanship, the Parthenon is entirely held together by the interlocking pieces, there is no "glue", which makes it really earthquake proof. If it weren't for the idiot soldiers who stored massive amounts of gunpowder in there during a siege and subsequently blew it up from the inside, the Parthenon would be to this day surviving earthquakes unscathed. Even though, it's still an incredible monument from a civilization that was ahead of their times. Look up 'Secrets of the Parthenon' on YouTube if you've made it this far and you're still interested!

More islands that end in 'os'

Hi everyone,

We checked out four more Greek Islands before heading to the mainland for moussaka and protests:

Mykonos



I have always wanted to go to Mykonos because the chorus of one of my favourite songs by the Fleet Foxes goes like this:

“And you can go to Mykonos,
With a vision of a gentle coast
And a sun to maybe dissipate
Shadows of the mess you’ve made”

This does not even come close to an accurate description of Mykonos. It is more like this:

“And you can go to Mykonos
Where you’ll drink until you’re comatose
And spend all your money in one day
Oh what a mess you’ll make”

We weren’t enamoured with Mykonos because there wasn’t much to see or do there other than drink yourself poor at 6 euro a beer and buy t-shirts that say ‘Mykonos’.



Delos



According to Ancient Greek mythology Delos was the birthplace of the twin gods Apollo and Artemis, and for this reason it was incredibly sacred. Rulers and powerful citizens from all over the Greek Empire built lavish temples on Delos to honour the twins, which was really just an excuse show off their wealth and the masonry skills of their craftsmen. Nowadays the island is uninhabited so we took a day trip to check it out and were hugely impressed by the craftsmanship of the Ancient Greeks and also by how many lizards could live in one place.


After a packed, rainy boat ride... the captain squeezed us onto the docks of Delos

Lizards are my new squirrels... and just as hard to photograph.




Santorini



We arrived in Santorini intending to spend 2 nights and ended up staying for a week – we just couldn’t resist the surreal beauty, varied volcanic beaches, steaming volcano with gale force winds, antiquated villages in white sitting atop sheer volcanic cliffs, decorated donkeys, vineyards galore with delectable white wine, cactus juice, stunning views in whichever direction we happened to turn our heads and sunsets that looked like they were drawn by Monet.

It is one of those rare places that has something to please everyone.



Some of the local produce.. we didn't waste any time getting to work sampling it all. Even found some locally made cactus juice (no, not the fun stuff) which set us back a cool 10 euro a glass! Mental note... always check price before buying stuff, even drinks

We sampled some of the local wines too, after finding a beautiful old vinyard in an old traditional Santorini town. The vinyard had two styles of producing wine, one being your modern technique: fresh grapes fermented in stainless steel temperature controlled vats, and then aged in the barrels on the top row. The second was the age old Santorini way of first sun-drying the grapes for a week or so, then squashing them with their feet in the chamber at the back of the second picture. The juice would drip through into the front chamber where the sediments were filtered by a basket... awesome. It is then fermented and left to age in the 100 year old barrels on the bottom row. Because of the drying process they have to use four times the number of grapes, as a result the flavour was strong and sweet, and even has a slight raisin-y-ness to it. As you can see, I have become quite the pro wine taster.

Even the donkeys in Santorini are beautiful.

Less beaches that we expected.  But this one... fittingly called Red Beach, was a treat.

Milos



By the time that we reached little Milos the tourist season was drawing to an end and aside from being lovely it was quiet... too quiet. There were signs of life everywhere – cars parked in front of houses, washing on washing lines, open windows and so on, but we hardly ever saw anyone. It was completely idyllic but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the children of the grapes were lurking just around the corner (they’re the Greek equivalent of the children of the corn).


So we just explored the landscapes...


...found ship-wrecks, and grew elephant legs.