Miesiąc: sierpień 2012

Croatia Return: Graz

Although we have spent marvelous 2 weeks in Croatia, our desire to see new places was never satisfied. And so, on our way back home <boo hoo> we stopped off at Graz – the second biggest city of Austria. Having done that, we put a fourth country on our list of visited countries during that holidays.

What can I say about Graz? It stood up to my expectations of Austrian city. Perfectly neat and clean, full of bikes, with charming façades – that’s Graz. Unfortunately, we were a bit tired and didn’t immerse the city properly. We also didn’t take so many pictures, so I chose just a collection of them for you to have an idea of the place.

Croatia Day 12: Crikvenica

That’s it, our last day in Croatia. I felt a penetrating sadness that we must leave. I fell in love in Croatia – there’s no doubt about that.
As our farewell to Croatia, we went to Crikvenica (15 km from Senj) which was, to be honest, not very attractive to me.

In the evning we went for a walk round Senj, to have a final goodbye with the sea, warm breezes, holiday carefree attitudes and the charm of Croatia.

Croatia Day 11: Zadar and Nin

Our Croatia trip was getting to the end so this was almost the last chance to see more of the country’s beauty. This time we headed south, to Zadar (centre of Dalmatia) and Nin (the town with the smallest cathedral on Earth).

Zadar is an amazing place. Full of tourists and full of richmen on their spectacular, jaw-dropping yachts. The old part of the city is also magnificent, it looks really old, like from ancient Roman times.

As most of Croatian towns, Zadar also had a tower to climb. I consider tower-climbing as a must on a tourist’s checklist.

Except for the view of red roofs, what was special in the city was the see organ. I’ve never seen or heard anything like that and I found it mesmerising! The waves press the water into the organ holes playing a tune of magical tone. It sounds strange, like a cacophony a bit, yet it made me want to stay there for hours (Radek needed to  hurry me because I didn’t want to leave the place). I wonder if it’s possible to get hypnotised by that sound. If you are interessted by my description, check out the YT video that shows the place.

In the end, I bowed to Radek and left the enchanting see organ and we drove to Nin. Nin is very small and not so swarmed by tourists. I liked that! We spent there lovely 3 hours, walking around and having a lunch.

Croatia Day 10: Ljubljana

We headed north from Senj to see Ljubljana – the capital city of Slovenia. We were lucky because we arrived in a perfect time to have a guided tour organised by the tourists office. Seeing places with a guide gives always a very different perspective than seeing them alone. One must devote more time to analyse everything, also the stories that are told enrich the memories of the places. That was also the case of Ljubljana.

The guided tour comprised of visiting the town hall, degustation of Slovenian national dishes in one of the posh restaurants in the city centre, a tour around the city with a guide and a cruise with a ship on the Ljubljanica river that cuts the city in two halves.




I really liked the ship ride on the river. The boat passed slowly, the reflexes from the water were everywhere and the angle made everything look different. We swam under all the bridges (there are so many of them and each has it’s unique story and artefacts – example: shoemakers bridge has the shoes hanged over). 



After this lovely boat ride we went to a lovers bridge we had seen from the water. Many lovers come there to honour the tradition and close the padlock on the bridge barriers. Well, we limited ourselves just to a kiss.








Yes, I found the sculptures a la HR Giger art a bit distracting. Anyway, we continued our walk over the city and set off to the castle. On our way we passed by many bridges, monuments and buildings. The old part of Ljubljana is well kept so we took a lot of pretty pictures and enjoyed the walk.

 We passed by a colourful street installation – I found it ingenious and very cheerful.

The castle was pretty charming. There were ongoing preparations to some concert, we climbed the tower (the view was really nice – Alps on the one side, Ljubljana on the other), visited a museum, drank a coffee and headed to the centre for a glimpse of Ljubljana’s night life.



Ljubljana at night surprised me in plus. It was amazing to see how many people went outside and chatted on the streets. All the bars, restaurants and cafes were full (we actually had problems to find a place to sit by the water). I’m not used to such situation and I like it every time I go abroad.  The city becomes vibrant, full of this specific character. It’s a pity we had to get going to reach Senj at a proper hour and to get some sleep.


Croatia Day 9: Krk Island

Krk is one of the biggest Adriatic islands and we had been recommended to go and see it on our previous Croatia trip in 2009. Krk is also well known for its vineyard – something untypical for the region we stayed in.

We visited 4 places on the island: Vrbnik, Krk, Baška, Čižići mud beach.

What Radek grabs in hand is olive oil, made locally on the island. In general, before we even reached the centre of Vrbnik, we visited a vineyard called Katunar where we supplied ourselves with Croatian wine of many sorts.

Then we continued our wine cellars trip in the town of Vrbnik. In principle, wine was sold every 2 meters, so it took us really long time to move along the streets. I particularly liked one elderly man who was very very friendly with us and made us taste everything he had in stock. He also told some stories about how wine is made and what is important in wine production. Lovely.

Our next destination was Krk – the biggest city on the island. We strolled around the place, but it was relatively deserted due to the siesta hours. Krk has a very nice marina, as well as the old part of the city, so we just strolled around, having a cup of iced cofee every now and then.

Spot number three on Krk’s map was Baška. It’s a very small town, yet very very crowded with tourists. The central point in Baškais undoubtedly beach and it’s adjacent promenade. We sunbathed and bathed in the sea. The main attraction for us was a floating wheel carried after a motorboat. Unfortunately, I didn’t take part in the ride (I didn’t have any bathing suit), but all the guys were delighted. Such a pity that no one fell down to the water…

And at last we arrived at Čižići mud beach. The sun was already low over the horizon and there were not so many people around. Maybe it’s good that few saw what guys did on that beach 🙂

Ps – If you ever wonder how the mud smells… The answer is – putrid.

Croatia Day 8: Senj Summer Festival

Once a year Senj hosts lots of people from all over Croatia (and all over the world as tourists) for the summer festival. What happens at that day is a huge costume parade. Additions to the parade comprise of: rivers of alcohol, … and I cannot think of anything more.

This year’s parade was also accompanied by a Bura winter. It’s a local wind that can be really bothersome (especially for tourists who hope for a perfect weather on their holidays). It made the street decorations fly unrulily.

When the parade started we were unprepared for the amount of participants. It was a real crowd and multitude of fancy dressed people. There was no leading theme (except for alcohol) and it was a real pleasure to have a look at all those disguise ideas. on top of that, people had real fun taking part in the parade (again – alcohol could have something to do with that) and it was fun watching it.

We didn’t stay till the end, the wind was getting really nasty and I was cold. We finished the day by having a look at a beautiful sunset over Senj.

Croatia Day 7: Muggia

Since I am absolutely in love with Italy, I just had to visit this country! 3 years earlier we had visited Triest – the biggest Italian city in the vicinity of Croatia. So this time we chose something less obvious – Muggia.

I cannot say a lot about this small city except for a statement: it’s a perfectly typical Italian town, with all the charms the country has to offer. What i mean by that? Small old town, see, shining cobblestone, espresso for 1 EUR, narrow streets, marina, pizzerias and most of all – smiling Italians having fun at every possible moment.

When we arrived we had a small tour round the place interrupted by a compulsory coffee break.

Around 5 PM we got hungry and decided to look for a typical Italian pizzeria to have pizza. We asked local people to recommend us something and they did, so we went there. What the locals didn’t tell us was that in Italy noone will serve pizza at 5 PM. It was actually pretty funny to observe the waitress’ reaction: „You want pizza now?” (hidden message: „Are you insane?”). We kindly replied that it’s OK and we will wait a bit for the oven to heat etc. and in the meantime we ordered some wine and starters. When pizza finally arrived at least we were already in good mood.

With full bellies and enhanced humour we set off to explore the town at dusk. In principle, with the sunset Muggia resurrected. From a lazy, bathed in sunlight,  a bit dormant place, it became one huge festivity scene. And the views… I really don’t know if the sunset was special that day, because if it’s ordinary, then I wanna move there when I retire!

Don’t ask me what the occasion of the fete was. Each and every time I visit Italy in summer, there is a celebration of some kind (no matter the week day, no matter the place). I find amusing. I love Italian spirit! Anyway, there was a multitude of events in Muggia that day. Parade, music orchestra concert, rock concert on the street – to name a few. We watched all of that with awe and high spirit.

Croatia Day 7: Postojna and Predjama

We decided to spend our first weekend in Croatia… not in Croatia 🙂
On Saturday we chose two locations – first of them was Postojna in Slovenia.
Postojna is well known for its cave which is of 20 km length! It’s visited by millions of tourists every year and it’s not without a reason.

Postojna caves are known also for human fish (shown below). It’s a blind amphibian living in very few places in the world. What’s interesting about this creature is that it has adpated to living in complete darkness (so cave environment). It was absolutely forbidden to take photos with the flash since human fish are photosensitive.

It’s a pity that those photos don’t give justice to what we have really seen underground. I recommend visiting this place – to me it was really extraordinary.

When we left the cave we went to the Predjama castle, which is situated just a couple of kilometeres near Postojna. Before I say a word, just have a look at this photo…

The castle was built in the rock (don’t ask me how but apparently it’s been standing there since Renaissance). The rock serves in many cases as foundation and walls. It looks amazing.

Croatia Day 6: Hiking Rossijevo sklonište 1580 m

The next day we went hiking again. We started from Alan (yep, we reached it the easier way – by car). We wanted to do a mild ascent, like 2-3 hours of walking. We looked at a map and chose one of the routes that looked suitably.

We walked and walked and walked. Up, down, up, down… No sign of the turn right we saw on the map. At some point I got pretty tired and started being a bit anxious that we lost our way. But no, we didn’t. It turned out that the route we reckoned to be for 10 km was a 20 km one.

At some point we reached a summit we were aiming for. It was actually pretty cool, with a real mountain shelter inside, equipped with food, stove, dice and rainwater.

By the shelter we met a group of spelaeologists from Bulgaria who were there on a caving expedition. Wow, that’s exciting. We talked to them for a while and went back to Alan. We wanted to reach our car before the sunset. You can find the route on my Endomondo.