Times they are a changing…

Whilst you’re waiting for the pics to appear in the gallery think – Lavish, Stylish, Opulence, Beauty, Champagne, Oysters, Fresh Fish, Super Yacht, Adriatic Sea…. A most excellent of evenings that I will never ever forget.

Pics will be going in here…http://www.logicalthinking.co.nz/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=75

Something to keep you all waiting in anticipation though…

Serene is the word I would use to describe the area we visited – Dubrovnik.  It was absolutely stunning, considering the turmoil it went through in the early 90ties.  Over 70 percent of the buildings in Dubrovnik were damaged during the siege of Dubrovnik by the Yugoslav army from October 1991 to August 1992. Today, you have to look hard to see any the remnants of the war. The Old Town pays respect to this war by way of billboards illustrating where the damage was caused.  It really did amaze us as to how quickly this city and people have recovered.

From when we arrived in Croatia until we left we had a most excellent time.  Seamless flights accompanied by scenic landings.  This was all topped off by gracious customer service whilst airborne  and on land.  We  stayed at a resort that neither of us could quite define by just one word. It had breath taking views, decor, restaurants to say the least.  We felt very fortunate and somewhat… magical!

So of all the great things that happened on the trip here are a few of the highlights – be sure to also check out the ‘Croatian 31st Birthday’ blog as well.  It deserved a separate entry!!

Mooching Around

We had lots of days where we hazily awoke to the soft sounds of the birds outside our hotel room and when we gingerly pulled back the curtains we were greeted by the sprawling Adriatic sea. Every day was a stunner and the landscape was by no means boring. You had grand mountain ranges on one side, and an endless view of the Adriatic on the other. In the middle was a well planned coastline with the right balance of lush greenery mixed in with rocky beach access areas. 

The rocky areas were by no means an obstacle as there were free ‘posh nosh’ sun lounge’s that you could relax on for FREE!  To make it even better there was a full bar service so we could merrily pass the time sipping away on our cocktails whilst agonising over whether we would dip into the pool or the sea first.

Breakfast each morning was fabulous. We would wander down to the breakfast area which was surrounded by water and every day the spread was 5 *. Fresh fruits, cereals, hot options and a full range of sweet bakery foods.  The coffee they came around with was identical to that which I’d tasted in Italy so no complaints from me!

Dinners did not let us down either. Every night we could find a well priced restaurant that would often put on silver service for us, for a ridiculously cheap price.  Dave and I partook in 3 – 4 course meals many a night and had no hesitation swigging it all back with Italian, French or local wines of which there were many to choose from.

Lastly I must mention the range of weather patterns we would get. Due to the humidity most afternoons a huge tropical thunderstorm would pass through the region. The benefit was, that this mainly occurred out in the distance.  There was nothing more relaxing that sitting on your own balcony sipping a local beer and watching fork lightening whilst knowing a huge boom was on its way!!

Old Town

To get to the Old Town you have to catch a very stuffy bus for ten minutes but when you get there it’s another beautiful view that meets your eyes.  Every corner you look into was a picture waiting to be taken and I was sure to full up the memory card as much as I could whist wandering through alley ways and small squares.  It was the norm to stop at a café every now and then to have a beer and a light snack whilst watching the hoards of cruise ship visitors bustle through the cobbled streets and congregate in all the squares. A lovely way to chew through a couple of hours each day.

Also in the Old Town was the ‘Ancient City Wall’ walk which we decided to take on the last day there. It again was a spectacular adventure. The coastline is very charming from a birds eye view.  You could quite easily spend an entire day doing this walk as there are small café’s spread along the trail where you can sit and have an unparalleled view of the Adriatic Sea.

Another tour we wanted to go on was the ‘Gondola’ which we had spotted on one of our various walks and we followed our noses to the base of this.  Unfortunately it hadn’t opened yet, the launch was the next day!  This clearly gave us the incentive to return!.

So I can sum up the holiday by absolutely recommending this place if you would like an affordable, relaxing, sun seeking holiday.  The people are friendly, the service is fantastic and the weather is just second to none.  This place has surpassed my original favourite travel spot which was ‘Ko Chang’ in Thailand and gone straight to the No 1 spot!!

Take care,
Sarah

Photos can be seen here: http://www.logicalthinking.co.nz/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=57

Finished fifth at the selection shoot, with the top 10 getting places.

Got a job at SCC back doing architecture work. Will mean travelling around a bit, but will be a much better, more challenging job for me.

Hurray, drinks all round (buy your own though, I haven’t got the extra money yet) :-p

We arrived in Sorrento just after lunch and first impressions were that it was a cute little village on a cliff face. Matt reviewed the route to take us to our hostel and we set out on our way. We winded through small cobble streets, dodged some crazy scooter drivers and eventually found our way to the hostel. We knew from that short ten minute walk through the city centre that it was definitely a place we wanted to come back to!!

Our hostel was more like a hotel and a flash one at that. Trip Advisor had told us this, but you never know until you arrive. Marble foyer, plasma TV and a bar area were what we saw when we walked in. We checked in and went to the room. King Size twin bed, double cupboard and a massive bathroom, with stonking shower pressure!! Fantastico! We decided not to dwell on our new found comfort for too long so went to reception and asked for a lunch spot recommendation.

Made our way down to the seaside and stopped at this small cafe. Safe to say this recommendation was crap and we will let Trip Advisor know so soon. Following lunch we got out our map and traced a path up the cliff side back to the main Piazza. This took us about twenty minutes with lots of stops along the way to take pictures. We found the information centre and by chance realised at the back of this was a restaurant with a fantastic lookout area. Ocean as far as the eye can see, sun beaming down on us and little to no wind…and no-one else there!! We had to stay for a ‘Mezze Vino Rosso’ (1/2 Litre Red Wine). The rest of the day was taken up with pottering around the many boutique style shops and where ever possible taking pictures of the views.

We were absolutely stunned at how beautiful the views in Sorrento were, we had researched the place on the net, but until you actually see this place it is hard to comprehend. It definitely made us miss NZ, the sound of the waves lapping onto the shore was quite novel for us. We were made even more homesick when Matt started to compare it with the beauty of the ‘Milford Sounds’. Seriously the photos do not do it justice.

That night we took another recommendation from the front desk for dinner, but checked Trip Advisor too. La Tavernetta was the name of the place and it was mouth watering. The restaurant sent a free taxi to pick us up from our hotel and take us direct to the restaurant which was a nice surprise.   We spent a lazy evening drinking fabulous wine and great food whilst doing a bit of people watching too. Due to the wine being soo good we decided to order a second bottle which kind of got us back in the early hours of the morning when we had to get up for the Easter procession at 3am! (More on that later).

On Friday we decided to do some more exploring and we decided that we would look into getting a scooter for Saturday as we really wanted to get the best out of the surrounding coastal area. We were in luck as it was a cheap £35 for a full day so we decided that yes we were going for a bike ride. We paid a deposit and organised to pick it up at 7pm that night. The rest of Friday was another lazy afternoon just chewing the fat and drinkin vino rosso till our bellies were full. We perused all our travel books and maps to see how we could maximise our time on the bike around the Amalfi Coast and planned out our routes. By this time…we were hungry again

We visited another restaurant called ‘Ristorante II Borgo’. We were expecting good things as this is number 3 on Trip Advisor. It wasn’t a complete let down, except we felt the food did fall short of what La Tavernetta had offered us the night before. Still we enjoyed ourselves and nothing could of detracted from our excitement of the impending bikeride.

Saturday we were up early for breakfast and then jumped on the bike and let the wind fly through our hair. We headed along the coastal road toward Positano, stopped off at Amalfi for lunch and then in the afternoon visted Marisa Cuomo vineyard based in Furoro (http://www.marisacuomo.com/ ). This is located 500 metres above sea level and is famous for the wine ‘Furore Fiorduva’. This was somewhat hard to find, but we eventually followed our nose and located an open door. It is run by a family of four and we happened to just bump into the owner who offered to take us for a small tour.

It was really interesting to see how they make wine over there. This particular vineyard had just picked up some new technology, from Sweden, where-by you drop a ml of wine into a machine and it populates the details of the wine onto your pc screen. Details such as acidity, PH value, alcohol content etc. This is very useful to the wine maker – but also is still viewed as a support mechanism. Taste from the wine maker is still the overriding factor as to whether a wine is ready for bottling. The barrels of wine are stored in a man made cave in the side of the hill. It had a state of the art air monitoring system built into it and was small by anyones standards. Check our blog out for some pictures of this. Also due to the landscape, that the vineyards are on, no machinery can be used to pick the grapes. It is also common to grow all types of grapes on the same vines. This means manual labour is used to pick all the grapes and then separate them into their respective colours. We were enthralled with the whole process and we felt it only appropriate to pick up a bottle to take back with us for our collection.

Following this we took the bike around to Rovella to check out the sea views as this is the place that the books all say to go to. I think the books were probably referring to those that didn’t have a scooter!! We had much better vantage points that we found just through guess work. After a thoroughly enjoyable day we took the inland road home and were very thankful for that. We missed all the traffic, forced police stops and saw another side of the coast that we’d never have had the chance to see if it wasn’t for the bike hire. We dropped the bike off at 7:00pm and almost felt like we had been away for about a week when we’d only had it for 24 hours. Bike hire is a must for anyone who goes to the area.  We dropped into the hotel to have a freshen up then straight out to another restaurant recommended by a local. Another fabulous day in Sorrento.

Sunday was another day of much the same, we re-grouped our gear and did a full test pack to see how we could fit in our goodies that we had picked up and just managed to fit it all in. We decided on Sunday night to revisit La Tavernetta as it was that good the first time around. We were given great service again and got to try out the famous Argentinean chocolate board which Matt had eyed the locals eating the first time we went. It’s basically about 5kg of chopped up dark chocolate served on a chopping board. Yum! The owner of the restaurant went the extra mile this time around also. He sat with us after our meal and discussed our time in Sorrento over a free Limoncello. This topped off a really enjoyable time in the area.

The next morning we headed to the bus stop early in order to arrive within the check in time at the airport. Made it to the plane on time and landed in London just before peak hour traffic which allowed us to head home at a leisurely pace. All relaxed and ready for work the next day. Another amazing holiday over on this side of the world had.

A few extra bits of info on Sorrento’s Easter Processions below:

Over Easter Sorrento held two processions to celebrate it. On Good Friday were those of the Our Lady of Sorrows or of the “Visit in the sepulchres”, organised by the Venerable Arciconfraternita of Saint Monica and that of the Dead Christ, organised by the Venerable Arciconfraternita of the Death. The first procession took place at 3:30am on Holy Thursday and involved hundreds of participants dressed in hooded white gowns. The Madonna was carried aloft in the procession, and accompanied by several religious articles as she searches the town looking for her son. The procession started in the Corso Italia, turned through Piazza Tasso, and then visited each of the town’s churches – stopping in each one for a short ceremony. The Madonna was accompanied by aides carrying incense, and a large male choir and band. The second procession was at 8:30pm on Good Friday and reflected the Madonna’s mourning as she finds her son dead. Hundreds of participants, dressed this time in hooded black gowns, marched down the Corso Italia and then winded through the smaller laneways of Sorrento. We went to both and they were suitably spooky but were also very humbling at the same time. It definitely evoked emotion!! Again check out our photos as these will be going up in due course.

We finished our trip to Rome with a wander around the Vatican museums. Although the most well known part is the Sistine Chapel, we found the most interesting part to be the Egyptian relics. Some of the artifacts were over 4500 years old. There were a couple of of mummies too as you can see from the pictures below. 

After dinner on the last night we took half a bottle of wine and some chocolates to the Trevi Fountain to see the place lit up.  We enjoyed our time in Rome and felt it was definitely time to head for some RnR in the Sorrento area. Neither of us had been there before so were quite exited about it.

One thing we didn’t think we would experience in Rome was a train failure. We were only one stop away from ours and the power disappeared and the lights went off. Marginally better than being in plane when that happened I guess, but being that our Italian was a bit light and we were in a tunnel, I wasn’t feeling the love in this situation.  After a calm five minutes nothing was happening then in about the 7th minute someone came on the speaker and said something…in Italian which we didn’t understand. Thankfully someone next to us translated that into English and said that if the power doesn’t come on in the next minute we are walking out of the tunnel.  The power didn’t come on.  We walked out of the tunnel. See pictures in our photos area for that one too. Exciting but nerve wracking – we were glad that it was the last train we were catching in the area though – as we were leaving the next day.

We found that the reason everything was closed was because the Pope was having an audience except it wasn’t advertised on the net or at the Vatican entrance. Safe to say we weren’t only ones annoyed. We were early enough to be at the front of the queue to get into the gates though and since we had our Vatican Museum entrance booked for midday we had some time to kill so we decided to hang around and see the Pope. We ended up walking through to the seated area and perching ourselves down near the front. We realised a little later that you were actually supposed to have tickets to the ‘audience with the pope’ but we just looked the part and continued on

There is certainly lots of mass histeria amongst the masses who gather to see him, and hear him speak. We inadvertaintly ended up with some of the best seats, right on the edge of the seating area so we could see the Pope come past in his Pope Mobile. No Prada shoes this time. You can see we were very close from picture attached.

We hung around for him to take the stage and say a few words and listened to one of the readings, then headed off.

Pope done!!

PS: Mum/Kate, I’ll send you some further pics via email as you might like to frame them for your work wall. Maybe my RE award in 7th form has finally paid off!!!!

PPS: Dad/John, the Pope has nothing on your outfit

We had a bit of a lazy start to the day as we enjoyed Fulvia, our hosts hospitality. Casa Romana (www.myromeapartment.com), although it only has 3 rooms is a beatiful little B&B close to the station. Definitely recommended if you plan to visit Rome.

We set off to see The Catacombs of San Callisto, which are outside the main city on the Appian Way (Queen of Roads – 4th Century BC). This involved catching the Metro then waiting for a bus which we thought might never arrive, but we got there in the end.

We finally arrived, bought our tickets, and waited to be taken on our tour. We were greeted by an enthusiastic lady from Slovakia, who had taken a couple of weeks holiday from the convent/school she worked at to come and take people around the catacombs.

The catacombs were very interesting, although not exactly what we expected. There has been extensive restoration work carried out since the catacombs were rediscovered in the 1800′s. There are no longer any bones on display to the public, and much of the area which you can visit has been rebuilt or reinforced, as opposed to being the old tombs in the volcanic rock. Still worth the visit to see how it was done almost 2000 years ago.

From there we headed back in to the city and took a wonder up the Avantine hill to have a look through the keyhole. A nice unusual thing to do, but nothing too special.

We then wondered back down the hill and across the river to Trastavere for lunch. We found a lovely little trattoria in a back street which was delicious.

After filling our bellies with carbs we continued our meander through the streets and back across the river, heading past palaces, through piazzas, and finally ending up on Via Veneto near the Spanish steps.

This is where we found the most macabre / disgusting sight you can probably find in Rome. The Cappuchian Monks who occupied the Church of Saint Maria of the Immaculate Conception had their own cemetary underneath the church. Here they arranged their bones in various patterns on the walls and ceilings of the tombs. To say that the place smelt a little funky would be an understatement, it was rank!! In addition to the bones of hundreds of people, children included, there were the full skeletons of many placed in different poses around the tombs. While this only sounds mildly disgusting, it was the skin still hanging from the bones and faces of many of the skeletons which was moat unpleasant. There were even a couple of arms which had been severed and placed in the shape of a cross on
The wall still covered in skin.

Needless to say we didn’t eat until a few hours after this experience When we did however we found a lovely little place called Trattoria Polese. Highly recommended.

Ciao