But at least the weather in Sacramento has been more or less phenomenal since we’ve gotten back — a few hot days, but overall it’s been unseasonably mild, and, I hate to say it, definitely nicer than most of the weather on our trip. So I’ve been enjoying being outside, and soaking up the last of the golden rays that bathe everything in the most amazing late-afternoon light. I don’t want to hurry through this time — I’m not ready for it to be autumn and winter. But since it’s inevitable, I’ll make the most of what summer that’s left.

Feet running across the Tower Bridge in downtown Sacramento.

Anyway, in the meantime, I had the privilege last Saturday of going down to Old Sac to meet up with a former student (he’s attending a different school for his senior year) to take his senior pictures. I think we spent most of the time making fun of each other, but all in all, it went pretty well. I’m not done with the post-processing yet, but I wanted to toss up a couple that I liked from towards the end of the shoot.

I had so much fun with the light — I couldn’t have asked for better portrait-taking conditions. :-)

On Wednesday we headed up to Prague Castle to check out St. Vitus Cathedral, a HUGE Gothic cathedral. Now, I’ve known since my freshman year of high school in Spanish class, when we learned about Santiago de Compostela in Spain, that I’ve been fascinated by cathedral architecture. But if I’ve learned one thing about the dozens of churches I’ve seen in the past three years since I got my last passport, it’s that not only do I have a thing for Gothic architecture, but I don’t really care all that much about Renaissance, I like Romanesque, and I can’t stand Baroque.  Sorry, but there it is. As I commented to John a couple of days ago, if it ain’t Baroque… DON’T. Just don’t. Unfortunately, some really really neat churches got Baroqued over time. Fortunately, in the late 19th century there was a huge classical architecture revival all over Europe, and so some dilapidated and Baroqued churches got restored to their Gothic glory (and in some cases, completed. Heh.)

Ok, so back in an entry about Budapest, I mentioned that Matyas Church (on Buda Castle hill) is one of my all-time favorite churches. Well, I’ve decided that St. Vitus Cathedral is now in my top five. It’s absolutely flipping AMAZING. I honestly think that, no matter how many Gothic churches I’m fortunate to see in my lifetime, I’ll never get sick of them. Ever.

Cathedral from the outside. This thing is at the absolute tip of the hill that Prague Castle is on, so an already huge church looks even bigger. It's just AMAZING.

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Be still, my Gothic-architecture-loving heart...

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St. Albrecht!

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St. Wenceslas chapel in St. Vitus Cathedral. The walls are inlaid with semiprecious stones, and the whole thing dates back to the mid-1300s. It's INCREDIBLE.

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The rose window.

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Front of the cathedral.

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John, being the wonderful man that he is, didn’t drag me out of the cathedral, but after almost an hour, he started strongly hinting that maybe we should let the other tourists enjoy it too, so we left, but not until after I’d found out when the daily church service times were so that I could come back and go to a service here. :-)

On our way out of the castle hill area, we decided to walk through the castle gardens. This was a GREAT idea, because we got to see BIRDS! LARGE ONES! And we got to HOLD THEM!!

If I thought the church was going to be the highlight of my day, I was sorely mistaken. I think this was the highlight of my WEEK. Can you tell by the grin on my face? That's a peregrine falcon, by the way. And why the heck am I wearing the same shirt in every picture?

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John holding an eagle owl. He really was thrilled about this, we were just having a hard time getting Mr. E. Owl to look at the camera. :-)

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Apparently it’s a tradition at Czech castles to keep birds of prey, so Prague Castle has turned theirs into a demonstration kind of thing. For about $5, you get to hold the bird of your choice. AWESOME.

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After John pulled me off the ceiling, we headed down to the National Museum of Natural History to see what there was to see.

Main hall at the museum.

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Being the nerd that I am, I made a beeline for their geology exhibit when I saw the sign. I can’t help it — I like rocks. Maybe it’s because I have plenty in my head. Anyway, since I’m a bit of a geology nerd, I generally judge a museum’s geology exhibit (however fair/unfair this may be) by if they have a sample of benitoite, California’s state gemstone, which is found only in San Benito County in central California. Picky, I know. Usually when a museum has a sample of benitoite, it’s a very small sample, and it’s usually polished to look like the lovely blue gemstone it is. Prague’s Natural History Museum didn’t have a very pretty, polished sample, but darned if it isn’t the LARGEST sample I’ve seen… it’s just a trip to see it all the way over here. So cool!!! And to be fair, they did have quite a nice display of other rocks too, including some really neat meteors.

California's state gemstone.

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We closed down the museum and headed across the street to McDonald’s for dinner. I know I know… McDonald’s. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here on my blog or just on Facebook, but we’ve been going to McDonald’s on this trip for several reasons. #1, McDonald’s in Europe almost ALWAYS have free wifi and free bathrooms. If we have time to kill while waiting for a train, it sure as heck beats waiting at the train station, and there’s almost always a McDonald’s near a train station. Second, their local menu is somewhat interesting. In  Krakow, I had a chicken curry burger, and I swear I’m starting a petition to bring these to the US. Who’s in? I promise they’re really good! I mean, it’s not like having real chicken curry, but to me it was quite an acceptable substitute!

So anyway, I’d been seeing ads in the metro stations for a tzatziki beef burger. I had no idea what this was, but the picture looked interesting, so I figured I’d give it a whirl. And it had these really interesting seasoned potatoes that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

The potatoes were good, but the burger… not so much. The burger had feta cheese and fresh cucumbers in it, as well as some sort of pinkish sauce that wasn’t Thousand Island, and I think that’s dried dill as the seasoning on the bun. I kind of liked the feta and the sauce, but the cucumbers and the dill… notsomuch. To be fair, I’m not a cucumber fan anyway, but even after I took them off the burger, it was still really cucumber-y. I couldn’t finish it, and neither could John. Oh well, I tried. I’m now 1 for 3 in liking foreign McD’s burgers (the chicken curry was great, but I had a McCountry in Zagreb that I couldn’t finish either. Oh well — you win some, you lose some. Even at McDonald’s.)

Seriously. Fresh cucumbers. The fries in the background are John's, by the way. He's not quite as adventurous when it comes to McDonald's as I am... which makes sense given that he's always been happy with and able to finish his meal. :-)

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After dinner, we headed to a DVD store to amuse ourselves with the cheap Czech offerings (I still think they’re pirated, but John doesn’t think so) and then we headed home. It was the perfect relaxed day. :-)

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Where we are now:

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We got into Prague around 7:30 AM, got our bearings, and hopped a tram to our night’s lodgings, a guest house about a mile from the train station. We knew we wouldn’t be able to check in until that afternoon, but we were hoping to at least drop our bags there. We rang the bell, but even though it was after 8 at that point, no one answered, so we lugged our stuff to a coffee shop down the hill and hung out there drinking tea and reading for an hour. I left John there with the luggage and hiked back up the hill to try ringing the bell again. Not only did the owner answer this time, but she said the room was ready and that we could check in right then. FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. OMG. We hadn’t showered since the previous morning, so we were both sweaty and sticky from spending the previous day in the sun and in an un-airconditioned bus and train. And, even though it was barely 9AM, it was already 90+F in Prague.

I went back and got John, and we checked in, took the aforementioned GREATEST SHOWERS EVER, and crashed for a nap in the most comfortable bed we’ve slept in the entire trip so far. OMG HEAVEN. Neither of us had slept much or well on the train, so the nap was absolutely wonderful.

After a few hours, we woke up and headed out to see what there was to see. Mostly this consisted of trying to figure out how to get places and instead getting lost, despite both a map and a GPS. Street signage here is like it was in the Balkans — fairly non-existent. I found out yesterday that during the Prague Spring uprising of 1968, when the citizens tried to replace the Communist government and the Soviets came in to quash the rebellion, one of the ways the people of Prague tried to mess with the Soviets was to take down all the street signs. I think they still haven’t put them back up, or something. Gah.

But at least in our wandering we figured out where things were and what we wanted to see. We wandered down to Charles Bridge and watched the view for a while.

John on Charles Bridge, with the Vltava (Moldau) River in the background.

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Then we hung out cooling our heels in a fountain with a lot of other people. Aaaahhhhhh. Relief from the heat.

As evening turned to night, we headed back to our guest house, stopping by a grocery store to get some food for dinner, breakfast, and lunch the next day. Easy, relaxed day. :-)

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Sunday July 11th, we got up early and got our bags packed, then took them to the train station and stuffed them in a locker so that we could pick up our train reservation and tickets for Prague, and then hop a train to Oscwiecim (the town where Auschwitz is) before taking the night train to Prague.

We hadn’t looked at the train schedules in advance, because we’d looked before, and there was always a train an hour to Oscwiecim. Well, for some reason there wasn’t today (maybe because it was Sunday?) so we ended up at the bus station behind the train station, to take a bus. While the bus was on the highway, we encountered a very recent traffic accident blocking the road (and “highway” is being generous–there wasn’t even a single line dividing the two halves of the road.) The bus couldn’t squeeze by, and the cops on the scene didn’t have any word as to when it’d be cleared, so the bus driver decided to backtrack and take a different route. And I discovered something. The frustrating part about having GPS is that when the bus driver is going THE WRONG WAY and he doesn’t speak English and you don’t speak Polish, there’s really nothing you can do except for sit and watch him go the wrong way. At one point we were going down a farm road in the middle of a bunch of fields and NOTHING ELSE, and the road was so narrow that branches from trees were hitting us on both sides as well as the top of the bus. The driver pulled over four different times to ask for directions (including one time on that farm road, much to the farmer’s bemusement from which the driver got directions.)

So we ended up getting to Auschwitz over an hour late. This kind of screwed our schedule up, unfortunately, as we had to leave by 6 to catch our train to Prague, and we ended up cutting our visit short, which I was kind of bummed about. But at the same time, we kind of saw enough, you know?

I took almost no pictures. Two with my phone, and maybe four or five more with my regular camera (I’ll post those later, of course.)

Auschwitz is actually three sites–Auschwitz I (the original camp that was mostly used for political prisoners), Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau) which is the most notorious one where most of the atrocities occurred, and Auschwitz III, a labor camp that we didn’t see (and I don’t think is on display.) We actually went to Auschwitz II first, since between the hours of 10AM and 3PM the only way you can access Auschwitz I is via a guided tour, which is not only expensive, but not something either of us was interested in. Seriously, who wants to be rushed through something like that?

Auschwitz II is outside the town a couple of miles, so we had to take a free shuttle bus over there. There’s really not much left–the main building where the main gates were, a few of the barracks, and the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria (ruins because the Nazis blew them up when it became clear that the Soviets were going to come in and liberate the camps.)

I had a really hard time grasping things at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I think partly it’s because so little remains, but also partly because we’re so used to seeing everything as black-and-white pictures, and here we were in full-color on a 90+ degree summer day, with everything around us green and leafy. In my head, concentration camps are always in black and white and it’s always winter, because that seems to be how it is in the pictures I’ve seen. Heck, even in the pictures where there’s no snow, since they’re in black and white, it’s hard to get a sense of the vibrancy and reality of things.

So I decided to turn the two pictures I took into black and white shots… maybe you can see what I mean.

Remains of barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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Same picture, turned grayscale and some other tinkering done to it. This is how I picture it, ya know?

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The blue sky, puffy white clouds, and green trees just don't jive with this infamous sign over the gate at Auschwitz I.

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Yeah, this picture is about how it should look. Incidentally, did you know that some indescribably stupid people stole this sign last winter with the intention of selling it to a collector? When it was recovered, they'd cut it into three pieces, ostensibly to smuggle it out of the country. Wow. Just... yeah.

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After Auschwitz-Birkenau, it was after 3, so we headed back to Auschwitz I. That camp is MUCH better-preserved. The majority of the buildings were brick rather than wood, and they’d turned a lot of them into museums on different topics, so we wandered through them with the time we had remaining. Again, looking at the buildings themselves, I had a really hard time grasping what went on there… but looking at some of the exhibits made some things come alive. They have one room that’s full of nothing but hair the Nazis cut off of the women. It’s dusty and all looks gray and clumped and matted together, but here and there you can see braids, and that caught me. It was hard to look at the buildings and see what’d happened there, but for some reason, all I had to do was look at a braid and envision the woman braiding it for the last time. There was another room just full of shoes, including a large display of just thousands of children’s shoes. That was another really really difficult one for me. There was another one full of clothes. One full of brushes — hair brushes, toothbrushes, clothing brushes, shaving brushes. One of suitcases, suitcases plastered with the name and address label of the owner, and in many cases also covered in stickers from exotic locations to which the owner had traveled. New York City. Paris. Istanbul.

Ya know, I’ve been to the Holcaust Museums in LA and Washington DC. I’ve seen similar displays of personal artifacts, and those definitely affected me. But there was something about seeing the ones at Auschwitz and knowing that this was where they were brought originally — that they were brought there for their intended purposes, and not shipped there after the fact for the purpose of a museum exhibit… something about that hit me pretty hard.

We saw other places where horrible atrocities occurred (the camp prison, the excecution yard) but nothing came to life like room after room of personal belongings. That’s what resonated with me, and is lodged in my brain.

Like I said earlier, we had to leave an hour before the museum closed, so we didn’t have time to see everything I wanted to see… but at the same time it was enough.

***HERE ENDS THE SERIOUS PART OF THE POST. ENOUGH ALREADY.***

We hopped a (very very crowded) bus home (we got the last two seats on the bus — the 15 or so people who boarded after us ended up standing for the almost two-hour ride back.) Once we got back, we retrieved our bags from the locker and headed to the mall next to the train station so we could eat dinner and I could finish postcards. It was here that I discovered something quite amazing.

McDonald’s in Poland serves CHICKEN CURRY BURGERS.

DUDE. WHY DON’T WE HAVE THESE AT HOME. SERIOUSLY.

Ok, granted it’s not as good as actual chicken curry, but for a chicken burger, it was PRETTY GOOD. Just spicy enough without being so spicy that it’d scare people off, and that lovely curry flavor… mmmmmm. Where can I start a petition to get these at home???

Oh, and I can’t remember if I’ve talked about McDonald’s here or just on Facebook, so I’ll explain here for posterity. While I’m all about eating local food while traveling, McD’s in foreign countries are good for two reasons. First, as you saw with my previous example, it’s fun to see what the local menu contains that the American menu doesn’t. So far I’ve had a raspberry “summer shake” (quite good!) and a burger that I tried in Zagreb called a McCountry, which was like a Big Mac only with this very mustardy dijon sauce. I didn’t realize what it was before I bought it, I just wanted to try it. I like mustard, but this was too much mustard for me. I couldn’t finish it, and neither could John. Oh well. I’ve seen this same burger in Poland and in Hungary (where it was called the McFarm… I’m not sure why, but then again, I’m not sure why it’d be called the “McCountry” either.)

The second reason McDonald’s in foreign countries are great? They ALL have FREE WIFI. And they’re huge — much bigger (more seating) than pretty much any American McD’s I’ve seen. So they’ve become, for John and I on this trip, a meeting spot for when we split up to do our own thing, and also a waiting room when we’re waiting for a train. Heck, it’s a lot nicer than the train station, and you can get a soda and sit there for two hours and no one will hassle you (unlike at a cafe.)

We headed to the train about 20 minutes before it was supposed to leave and found our train car. Have I mentioned yet how night trains work in Europe? It’s really very cool! You board a car that’s going to your destination, but the other cars on the train may be going to different destinations. In the middle of the night, you make one or more stops where your car (or the other cars) is unlinked from the train and hooked to a different train that’s going where you want to go. It’s really nifty!

Anyway, so I hand the conductor our reservation, tickets, and rail passes. Let me explain how that works. We have railpasses, but for some trains (including overnight trains) you also have to purchase a reservation (fairly cheap on day trains, more expensive on night trains) so that you’re guaranteed somewhere to sit. Also, our rail passes weren’t valid for Poland, so we had to purchase tickets from Krakow to the Polish border, and then our passes would be good once we crossed into the Czech Republic. So we had four pieces of paper total — the reservation slip, two tickets, and the railpass. I hand all of this over to the conductor for our car, and he shakes his head and says no, that the reservation and tickets aren’t valid until the NEXT night.

WHAT.THE.HECK.

I looked closely at them for the first time, and sure enough, he was right — they were printed for July 12th. I thought back to that morning, and how the woman who’d printed them had JUST gotten to work — we were her first customers of the day, in fact.

I looked at John, and looked at the time. We had less than 15 minutes before the train was going to leave, and the international ticket counter was on the far opposite end of the station (pretty much as far opposite from where we were standing as we could get) and down and up a couple of sets of stairs (since you have to go underneath the tracks to get to the platforms.) I’m glad I chose to wear my shoes that day rather than my sandals! I left John with all of the bags and took off running, clutching the tickets and the passes.

I got to the counter, completely winded, and was shocked to see that, almost 12 hours later, it was the same woman who’d sold me the passes that morning!! I managed to gasp out our dilemma, and her response was, “Yes, I remember you. Did I really put that as the date? I know you wanted them for tonight.” No apology. She got a new reservation printed out, but handed me back cash and told me we’d need to buy the tickets on board the train. I didn’t quite understand it, but I took it and ran, literally. I sprinted back to the train and we grabbed our bags and got back in line and handed everything to the conductor outside the train door with less than five minutes to spare.

Right before the train left, the conductor came into our compartment looking for us — he wanted our rail passes, and he needed 5 more Euros, since it costs more to buy tickets on the train than in the station (which seemed really unfair to me, since the ticket woman was the one who screwed up in the first place anyway!) He said he’d take payment in Euro or Zloty (Polish currency.) We were out of both currencies — we haven’t been anywhere on the Euro since Montenegro (FIVE COUNTRIES AGO) and we’d tried to use up all of our Zloty so we didn’t have extra left. After dumping out all the small pockets of John’s and my backpacks, we located a 5 Euro bill that had somehow escaped detection. This, however, left our rail passes. The problem was that I’d already given them to him, and he insisted I hadn’t.

At this point I was TOTALLY freaking out. I’d already sprinted across the train station and back to get the reservation changed, it was hotter than hell outside and inside the station, and now he was telling me we never gave him our rail passes (which I KNOW we did, and which are NOT replaceable if we lose them.) John’s yelling at me to calm down and think about where I might have put the passes, I’m yelling back that I know I gave them to him, he’s yelling back that the conductor doesn’t have them, and our compartment companions are watching this in bewilderment.

Finally I go into the conductor’s berth and refuse to leave until he goes through the pile of tickets and railpasses. Lo and behold, there are our passes!!! AAARRRGGGGHHHHH.

I go back into our compartment and want to just curl into a little ball and cry out of sheer relief. We’re on the train, and I didn’t lose our passes. As I go to empty my pockets so that I can stretch out on the bed, I realize that the postcards are still in them. I’d meant to put them in the mailbox on the platform, and in the chaos, I TOTALLY forgot. GAH. Every time we stop for the rest of Poland, I hang my head out the train window to look at the platform and see if I see a mailbox… Nope. Sigh.

So some of you will be getting postcards from Poland when I get home and can stuff them into envelopes. Oh well, at least they have stamps on them. :-p

The other two guys in our compartment were pretty cool. They were two Swedish architecture students who were spending a couple of weeks traveling around Europe, and we talked for several hours, until the Spanish gals in the compartment next door banged on our wall for the third or fourth time (since it was around 1:30 AM and they probably wanted us to go to sleep, even though we were talking fairly quietly.)

Sonne and their traveling mascot. Apparently they put him into pictures at random. I SOOO love that idea -- I wish I'd done something similar on this trip!

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I was miserably hot, and of course at this point our train was stopped in a station waiting for another train for something like 45 minutes, so there was no airflow and no lovely white noise to put me to sleep, so I didn’t fall asleep until well after 2. Ugh. I still like night trains, though, even though it was A THOUSAND DEGREES IN THERE.

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I’m posting early because we’re leaving for Zagreb this evening and I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to get to wifi between now and then. This morning we hit up the National Museum and the History Museum. They were both good, but the National Museum was very stark and depressing: half of it dealt solely with the war. Very well-done and eye-opening.

After that, we sat in a cafe and took refuge from the rain, then John headed home and I went wandering. Found several more of those Sarajevo Roses — I’ll post them when I get a chance.

Anyway, on a side area of the main walking street is a giant chess board, and the guys playing were so hilarious that I had to take a video — pictures just didn’t do it justice. Sorry for the camera shake — I was trying not to visibly laugh, but I wasn’t having much success. :-) The look the one guy gives the other one at the end… OMG, DYING laughing. :-D

We slept in a bit today, had a leisurely breakfast, and then decided to rent bikes and head out to explore the island a bit. However, we somehow took a wrong turn, and ended riding 3 kilometers up a REALLY BIG HILL. I know, only 3 km — cry me a river, right? Well, it was 90F+ and humid as heck, and there was NO SHADE the whole way up, and because we have more good intentions than brains apparently, we went smack dab in the middle of the day.

3 km into the ride, we realized we were in the wrong place, and headed back down, stopping by an interesting-looking cemetery that dates back to the mid-1800s. Something I thought was neat — the graves from the Communist period still had crosses on them.Huh!

Old crypts.

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Anyway, we wandered around a bit, but it was so hot with the sun reflecting off of the crypts that we ended up just sitting in the shade and panting for a bit before riding back downhill. We were both fairly miserable by the end of the ride — let me tell you. Ugh.

Once we got back to our hostel, we decided a swim was in order, and headed down to the beach. It was PERFECT. OMG.

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This guy tried to get us to share our lunch with him. Ha.

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Me, right before my day took kind of a crappy turn.

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Shortly after the above picture was taken, I stepped on a sea urchin and ended up with a whole bunch of spines in my foot. It was, to say the least, less than fun. I didn’t realize quite the extent of the damage until I got out of the water and looked at my foot… it was ugly.

After hanging out a bit more, my foot really started to hurt, so we walked (well, John walked — I limped) back to our hostel (which was really really close, thankfully) and I spent almost TWO HOURS pulling spines out of my foot. Ok, it didn’t take all two hours — I kept having to take breaks since it hurt, and the way I had to sit with my neck bent to get them out gave me a big crick in my neck and back, and my foot kept falling asleep. Bleh. After that time, I’d gotten most of them, but there were a few stubborn straight-in, deep ones that I just couldn’t get to. So I hit Google for a solution, and found an old diver’s trick — soak the foot in vinegar and they’ll dissolve. Apparently it’s the same process by which you make a turkey wishbone rubbery (ever done that?) Something about the acetic acid in the vinegar reacting to the calcium in the bones, or in the sea urchin spines.

Well, we didn’t have any regular vinegar, so I decided to use some basalmic vinegar (which we’ve been eating with our bread and cheese for lunch) on gauze and taped to my foot to soak it that way. We only had an hour left on our bike rental at this point, and I didn’t want to waste it! So I taped up my foot, shoved it into a shoe, and away we went, sticking to the coast this time. All things considered, it was a lovely ride.

Flowers outside a convent.

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We had to return the rental bikes, so we did, then came back to our hostel and showered and did laundry (whee!) before going to eat dinner. The hostel we’re staying in is pretty empty right now (high season doesn’t really start for another couple of weeks) so the owner offered us a discount on a fourth night… Heck yeah!! So we’re here through Thursday.

Oh, the vinegar managed to dissolve all but one or two of the deepest spines–it’s hard to tell, since it kind of stained my foot. :-p So it still hurts, but at least I got most of them out. Depending on how it feels tomorrow, I may give it another vinegar soak tomorrow evening.

During the day tomorrow we’re going to rent a kayak and go cruise around… hopefully it’ll be a nice day, and not the comedy of errors that today was. Sigh. :-)

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Where we are now:

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So today I discovered one of the little problems with traveling and not really having a set schedule… one forgets what day it is fairly easily. This morning I woke up gradually shortly after 8, as the sound of jackhammers infiltrated my consciousness. As I came slowly awake, I tried to figure out what the sound was and from where it was coming, and then my next thought in the as of yet groggy, dimly-lit recesses of my brain was, “Dude, it’s Sunday — can’t they take a break from work for one stinking day?”

And then ZING!, the lightbulb went off and I came wide awake and reached for my phone, where I’d saved the bus schedule for the bus we were going to take to Orebic, where we’d catch the ferry to Korčula.

I looked at the schedule and reread the words I’d read before and somehow glossed over: “Departs 14:15 every day except Sunday.”

SUNDAY.

At this point the adrenaline kicked in, and I kicked off the sheet and grabbed my clothes to change out of my pajamas so that I could grab my laptop and run down two flights of stairs (outside stairs — the hostel we were in is built on a hill, so even though it’s three stories, it’s more like three terraces on the hill) to the patio where the wifi was. Fortunately, I’d saved some links with a couple different transit options from Dubrovnik to Korcula, so I was able to relatively quickly find alternate transportation. The bad news was that it was a more expensive ferry direct to the island, and that it left from the ferry terminal (a 15-minute hike down the hill and a ten-minute bus ride away) at 10AM.

I ran back up the two flights of stairs. At this point, John, having heard me exit the room in a rush, was awake and wanting to know what was amiss. When I told him, he sprang out of bed about as fast as I had, and much packing chaos ensued. The bus that we’d planned to take didn’t leave until 2:15 PM, so we were under the impression that we had plenty of time, and hadn’t even begun to pack… whoops.

We got everything packed as quickly as we could, checked out of the hostel, ran down all 514 steps as fast as we safely could with all of our luggage, and caught the bus to the ferry port just as it pulled into the bus stop. We got to the ferry terminal, and after accidentally getting into the wrong ticket line once, got our tickets and were seated in the ferry lounge with about 30 minutes to spare. WHEW.

Big ol' ferry.

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John managed to put his head down and go back to sleep for a few minutes, but I was wide awake and the adrenaline was still going, so there was no way I was going to fall back asleep. Heh.

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In retrospect, both John and I were glad that we were forced to take the earlier, somewhat more expensive transportation option. It ended up not being as expensive as a travel website had led us to believe, and it sure beat the heck out of a bus ride. First and foremost though, we got to spend several more daytime hours than we would have originally had exploring and enjoying an absolutely smashingly gorgeous place. Neither of us can get over how beautiful it is here.

When the ferry got in, we were met by the owner of our hostel, who was there to give us both a ride and some bad news. The bad news was that he’d inadvertently overbooked, and we weren’t going to be able to stay at his hostel. The good news is that his mother runs a hostel as well, and she had a room, and he’d arranged to get us a room there for the duration of our stay at the same rate we would have paid at the other place.

This was good. Very good. Excellent, in fact. Why? Well, first of all, his mother’s hostel cost 20 Euro more per night than his. Second, it has air conditioning in the room (although the weather has been so pleasant we haven’t needed it yet.) Third, it has an in-room bathroom (rather than a shared one… I don’t mind a shared bathroom, but it is pretty nice to have our own!) Finally, his is a 15-minute walk from the old town… hers is RIGHT IN THE CENTER OF TOWN. I mean, RIGHT there. 50 yards from the ocean, 100 yards from a nice low, flat, broad rock that people use to sunbathe on and to swim in the ocean from (there’s even a metal pool ladder bolted to the rock to aid in getting out.)

We SERIOUSLY lucked out here. He kept apologizing for the inconvenience, and we were both like, “Uhhh, ok man… apology accepted.”

But it gets better… ok, not better, but at least more hilarious. While we were checking in and he was going over the hostel’s policies, he asked us where we were from, and John answered, “The US — California.” The guy’s eyes LIT UP, and the next thing out of his mouth (I kid you not) was, “So, California? Do you know anyone in the film industry? Because I have written these two screenplays…”

It was all I could do to stifle a snort. Seriously. Clearly because we live in California, we must be somehow connected to the film industry, right? The poor guy seemed so let down when we told him that we were in northern CA and had absolutely nothing to do with the film industry whatsoever. If there’s a “Native Californian Bingo”, I’m pretty sure I just crossed off a square there.

After we got settled in our room, we tossed on our swimsuits and headed for the beach. It was a pebbly beach, and I stepped on a sea urchin while wading in (I didn’t have my glasses on, so I can’t see anything, even though the water is really, REALLY clear) but it was still unbelievably beautiful. We hung out until John was toasted a lovely shade of pink, and then we headed back for showers and laundry (which has to be my least favorite thing about traveling thus far.) After that, I grabbed my camera and we wandered around our end of the island a bit. This island was once part of the Venetian Empire, and that’s quite represented in the architecture of the old city, which is walled and doesn’t have any vehicle traffic within its walls. The main church in the center of town is even called Sveti Marko, or St. Mark’s, just like in Venice. It’s SO BEAUTIFUL.

It occurred to me when I was uploading it that I've only posted two pictures of me, and I'm wearing the same shirt in both of them. Get used to it--I have four shirts that aren't long-sleeved.

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We looped around once, then stopped at a pizza place right around the corner from our hostel for dinner when we both realized that we hadn’t eaten lunch, and come to think of it, we really hadn’t eaten breakfast either, owing to our mad rush to the ferry. We’d had a couple of granola bars and an apple, but that’s not much for a the day. The pizza place was right in front of Sveti Marco Church, and while we were sitting there, the church bells rang, so I took a short video so y’all could hear them. I love church bells so much.

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Another view of the church.

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After dinner, we went back to wander a bit more and enjoy the gorgeous sunset, picking up ice cream cones along the way.

I think when I get home I'm going to take all of the door pictures I've taken on this trip and put them together in a collage frame, or something. So many neat doors! And yes, I know I'm odd.

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Old city of Korcula near sunset.

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Y'all have NO CLUE how many takes I had to do of this on a cameraphone (difficulty -- HUGE lag between pressing the shutter and it actually taking the picture, and can only do one picture at a time) so that I could get a swallow in the foreground (they were out hunting at the time.) I love this shot, though.

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Tomorrow we have no plans other than to go to the beach, and to wander around town seeing what else there is to see. We’re debating pushing back Montenegro a day or so and staying here instead… not sure yet though. We’ll see on Tuesday what our thoughts are on that. :-)

This is definitely my favorite place thus far, though.

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And our general feelings of malaise weren’t helped by our door lock. It’s been rather temperamental the entire time we’ve been at this hostel, but this morning it decided to lock me in (you need a key to open it from both sides) and I spent several minutes fiddling with it, and John got out of bed and spent another few minutes fiddling with it while I did the peepee dance (I know, y’all needed to know this. This was SERIOUS, people!!) So this didn’t help my already cranky mood.

Another one for the "how I really feel" file...

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Because of the way we both felt, we opted to take our time this morning getting ready to get out the door, and we decided to only run a few essential errands: going to the bus station to figure out how to get to Korčula tomorrow and Budva/Sveti Stefan on Wednesday, get stuff for John’s stomach, and get a pair of swim trunks for John (who forgot his) and a new tank top for me (since I brought two and somehow managed to rip a hole in one. It’s repairable, but it’s nice to have a third one, and in any case, it’s too freaking hot for me to only have brought two tank tops… I have t-shirts too, but I haven’t even wanted to wear those.

Since we were just running errands, I decided to leave my camera in our room (which has seemed very secure — the hostel is small and on the second and third floors of a family’s residence, so I really wasn’t worried.) And I have to admit… it was pretty nice being so unencumbered for a change.

Figuring out the bus schedules was easy. What turned out to be the difficult part was, surprisingly, trying to find reasonably-priced swim trunks for John that weren’t of a more European style, read: short. The ones he ended up with are still above the knee (much to his dismay) but were still longer than most of the other ones.

After that expedition, we opted to go back home and relax in the shade and read and nap for a bit. I slept for over an hour, and felt almost human when I woke up… it was great!

Once we got rolling again, we headed down into the old city to find a bar I’d read about called Buza. I had enjoyed the feeling of being unencumbered so much this morning that I decided to leave my camera behind again, figuring, really, what am I going to see that I haven’t already seen? HEH. Well, part of me is kicking myself for this, but part of me isn’t — I really liked how the pictures I took came out, and honestly, sometimes I like the limitations of just using my cameraphone.

The other day I posted a picture (on Flickr -- can't remember if I posted it here on my blog) of the stairs we have to go up and down to get to our hostel -- all 514 of them. Anyway, the picture I posted was looking up the stairs, so I thought today I'd post a picture looking down the stairs, since the view is a thousand times nicer that direction. :-)

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On our way to the bar, a funny thing happened… we stumbled upon a wedding. Two of them, actually. They were apparently scheduled back-to-back in St. Blaise Church (which is in the center of the old city) so there was actually one bride and wedding party waiting outside for the other wedding to finish. The church doors were open, and I have no shame (as did apparently other tourists as well) so I peeked my head in for a moment. The service looked to be almost over, so I scampered back down the steps to watch. The whole thing was RIDICULOUSLY COOL. WOW.

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Want to know what was REALLY cool?? Everyone around me started singing along with the song… even the people who were obviously tourists and not part of the wedding. So so so neat!!

Bride #1 leaving the church

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A nun sweeping up rose petals between weddings.

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The second wedding party entering the church. Rose petals are left over from the first wedding.

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The second bride getting ready to enter the church with her mother.

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Finally everyone was either in a Mercedes and gone (wedding #1) or inside the church, with the doors shut this time (wedding #2) so we continued on to Buza.  From everything I’ve read and heard about it, it’s supposed to be difficult to find but have incredible views, and it didn’t disappoint on either item. In fact, I took a bunch of pictures of its location, and at some point I’m going to make a separate blog post with how to get there, because a bunch of people have really vague directions posted online, but nothing really complete.

And honestly, to call it a bar is a bit on the charitable side — it’s a bunch of drink refrigerators clinging to some rocks against the city wall. I’ve also heard that the place is usually packed, but when we got there, it was only about half full. I’m CERTAINLY not complaining. Trust me.

We're cheap, and neither of us are really drinkers -- what can I say? Besides, I can get beer at home -- how often can I get Sprite with real sugar? Oh, and right behind our table was about a 10-foot drop to some rocks, then another 10 feet to the ocean. No fence. Don't slip.

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That's the entire bar on the left there. It's run by two kids who look like they're about 19, dressed in t-shirts and board shorts. Hey, honestly? I don't care. The views rocked.

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The little jerk of the camera at the end of the video is me almost falling out of my chair as I tried to turn around. Given the drop to the rocks and then ocean below, it would have not been pretty. So go ahead and laugh–we did. :-)

After spending a lovely hour (or more? I lost track of time… we were busy relaxing!) we headed back through the city in search of a cheap meal. Apparently we weren’t the only ones.

Opportunist.

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On our way to dinner (we ended up at a cheap sandwich shop) we got sidetracked by a bookstore, where I almost bought a book I already have (but it’s all the way at home, darn it!) called Balkan Ghosts. Seems like good reading for the region. Cheapness won out though, as did it with the Croatian-English dictionary I wanted to buy, so I settled for some postcards and we moved on… after I took this picture.

That's a bookstore window poster for what appears to be a new Stephanie Meyer book. And that's John in the reflection looking aghast. Thanks, America, for exporting the finest that your culture has to offer. :-)

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After sandwiches, we wandered for a bit and then hung out and people-watched for a bit, then got ice cream and people-watched some more, while enjoying our last night in Dubrovnik. Off to Korcula tomorrow!! :-)

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Trip Day 1 – Philadelphia: Liberty Bell in Legos. Win., originally uploaded by Kari_Marie.

Since today is one long travel day, I figured that for my picture of the day, I’d find something at one of our airports worthy of adding to my small yet growing collection of airport public art. As we have a three-hour layover in Philadelphia, I thought I’d stretch my legs a bit and wander. I’m good at wandering.

There’s a bunch of random art around here, but it’s all behind glass. I like art that’s out and accessible. Then I saw this. So cool. :-) I got a better (non-annoyingly backlit) shot of this, but I love the kid in this one… he was just so fascinated by the whole thing. I hope he plays with Legos at home. :-)

Oh, and worth a mention just because it made me smile — there’s a guy who works here and drives one of those there’s a guy who works here and drives one of those ubiquitous carts around the terminal. Either that annoying beeper that they all use to clear their path is broken on his cart, or he opts not to use it… I saw him three different times on my walk, whistling to alert people of his presence. So much less annoying — I wanted to thank him for his creativity. :-)

Tomorrow’s pic will be from Dublin!! :-D

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