On the boat ride back from Delos to Mykonos I thought it would be fun to recall all of the other ancient sites that I have visited and assemble a near perfect virtual ancient city.
Posted in Croatia, dubrovnik, Europe, France, History, Literature, Morocco, Spain, Travel, United Kingdom, World Heritage
Tagged Arles, Athens, Colosseum, Didyma Turkey, Ephesus, Hierapolis, Mérida, Rome, Volubilis
It was our last day in Croatia and we were driving north from Dubrovnik to the airport at Zadar.
Travelling north-west with the Dinaric Alps soaring above us inland and catching a few clouds as they rushed in from the sea we spied orange roofs, blue sea, white beaches – the idyllically typical Central Dalmatian village of Primošten which occupies an especially pretty little promontory jutting out from the mainland into the sea.
In the past Primošten was situated on an islet close to the mainland and was protected by walls and towers and it was connected to the mainland by a draw bridge.
When these protective arrangements were no longer required the draw bridge was replaced by a causeway and in 1564 the settlement was named Primošten after the Croatian verb primostiti which means to span. This old part of the town is built on a hill and is dominated by the parish church of St. George which was built in 1485 next to the local graveyard from which there is a stunning view over the sea and the surrounding mountains.
This was probably the most picturesque of all of the Adriatic towns that we passed by or visited on our journey and it was lovely here today but I imagine that it can get a bit overcrowded in high summer.
We only made a very short stop because time was moving on but we found time to sit on the side of the harbour and have a drink in the sun next to some expensive looking charter boats that were moored up nearby and a table full of racing push bikers all looking ridiculous in brightly coloured skin tight lycra and insect shaped helmets.
We carried on along one of the best parts of the journey and the old old main road took a scenic route that was never more than a few metres from the sea and the shingle beaches and with good views over the Adriatic Sea and the inviting looking islands.
Except for the fact that the road wasn’t at a high elevation with imminent danger of crashing over the side of a mountain this did remind me a great deal of the Amalfi drive in Italy. The road snaked along the coast with its inlets, yacht harbours and picturesque coastal villages and always running directly underneath the limestone mountains that rose dramatically just a few hundred yards or so inland.
Apart from the location and the view Primošten is quite unremarkable, no famous people were born there or lived there, nothing notable happened there in history and according to Wikipedia the only thing that seems to happen there these days is an annual donkey race.
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Beaches, Croatia, dubrovnik, Europe, History, Literature, Natural Environment, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Dalmatia, Life, Photography, Primosten, Travel, Šibenik, Šukosan
I have never been a fan of ‘Game Of Thrones’, I didn’t get past episode 1, series 1 but more and more I get the feeling that I know a great deal about it because there are so many places that I have been that have by coincidence been used as filming locations for the programme.
I took all of these photographs completely oblivious to this fact and without a glimmer of interest in the series. The picture above is the Alcazar de Sevilla which for GOT became the Water Palaces of Dorne.
There are a lot of Roman bridges in Spain, they could have used those in Merida or Salamanca but they chose this one in Córdoba in Andalusia…
This is Þingvellir National Park, one of several locations used for filming in the photogenic country of Iceland…
A lot of the filming for the early series was done on location on the tiny Mediterranean country of Malta, this is the Azure Window on the island of Gozo, it also appeared in films such as Clash of the Titans and The Count of Monte Cristo, as well as the television mini-series The Odyssey.
Also on Malta they used the medieval walled city of Mdina…
After exhausting the filming location opportunities on Malta the filming moved a few miles east to the Balkan country of Croatia. This is the Krka National Park or for GOT The Landscapes of The West…
Dubrovnik featured prominently as The Red Keep and the site of the Battle of Blackwater…
And the Roman Palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian was a certainty to be used…
Next time I go travelling I will pay more attention to more possible GOT film location sitings.
Has anyone else come across these or other GOT locations? Send me your pictures and I will see if I can make a post!
Posted in Croatia, dubrovnik, Europe, History, Ireland, Malta, Natural Environment, Travel, United Kingdom, World Heritage
Tagged Azure Window Gozo, Þingvellir National Park, Cordoba, Diocletian's Palace, Film Set Locations, Game of Thrones, Gozo, Krka National Park, Northern Ireland, Seville Alcazar, The Dark Hedges
Abandoned Hotel, Dubrovnik, Croatia
The water taxi left from the little harbour in the village and we waited in the already hot sunshine until it arrived at ten o’clock and then selected seats on the upper deck and sat and sweltered while we waited for it to leave.
Eventually the crew cast off and followed the coast towards the city and then we saw something unexpected and nothing like we had seen before on previous visits to Croatia, a string of war damaged bombed out hotels at regular intervals all the way to Dubrovnik. This we learned later was the legacy of an invasion by Montenegro during the secessionist wars of the 1990s.
Posted in Croatia, dubrovnik, Europe, History, Hotels, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged dubrovnik, Montenegro, postaday, Serbia JNA, Siege of Dubrovnik, Slobodan Milosevic, UNESCO, Weekly Photo Challenge, Yugoslavia
Trogir, Croatia and the Tower of Terror!
The first third of the climb was straightforward and uneventful up the sort of staircase that we have negotiated many times but then the stone staircase stopped abruptly at a first level and the next part of the climb was up a set of precarious wooden steps that had a handrail but nothing else to prevent a careless visitor falling through and ending up in a tangle of broken bones on the stone floor at the bottom of the tower.
Worse than that was the prospect of slipping and falling the other way which would have involved a fall through an open stone window and onto the court yard below with little real prospect of survival. During the fatal fall however there would have been some excellent views because the higher the steps climbed the view over the roof tops towards the sea on one side and the mountains on the other got better and better.
This was more like the Tower of Terror than the Tower of Trogir. At the top of the hazardous wooden stairs was a second level where the bells were and then some even more dangerous iron stairs to negotiate to complete the climb to the very top of the tower which involved a struggle through a small opening without any handrails at all and which opened out into the final level where there was time to enjoy the spectacular views and to contemplate and reflect on just how perilous this climb was and to worry about getting back down again.
Posted in Cathedrals, Croatia, dubrovnik, Europe, History, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Life, Photography, Podstrana, Split, Travel, Trogir, UNESCO
WordPress seem to go to a lot of trouble to convince users that ‘Freshly Pressed’ is fair, impartial and based on critical selection.
Consider this then from a blog page I chanced upon…
“It has been interesting to look back over 2012 to see which posts were the most popular. Bagni di Lucca and Beyond has been Freshly Pressed twice this year, which has been great fun. Thank you WordPress for choosing.”
It is a nice blog but it isn’t brilliant (sorry).
I say no more…
Posted in Africa, Arts and Crafts, Athens, Austria, back packing, backpacking, Beaches, Bratislava, Budapest, Cantabria, Cathedrals, Childhood, Croatia, Cyclades, Czech Republic, dubrovnik, El Cid, Estonia, Europe, Food, France, Galicia, Germany, Grand Canyon, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, Hotels, Hungary, Iceland, island hopping, Italy, Krakow, Latvia, Literature, Malta, Marrakech, Morocco, Natural Environment, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Prague, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sorrento, Spain, Suez Canal, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Travel, Turkey, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, USA, Vikings, Wales, World Heritage
Tagged blogging, Culture, Favouritism, Freshly Pressed, Life
Croatia Sunset over Split
If you have ever wondered why the sky is blue this is the reason:
Light travels through space in a straight line for as long as nothing disturbs it and as it moves through the atmosphere it continues on its journey until it collides with a bit of dust or a gas molecule. Dust particles and water droplets are much larger than the wavelength of visible light and when light hits these large particles, it gets reflected in different directions. Gas molecules however are smaller than the wavelength of visible light and when light hits them, some of it gets absorbed and then the molecule radiates the light in a different direction. The colour that is radiated is the same colour that was absorbed but the different colours are affected differently because blues are absorbed more easily than reds. It’s as simple as that!
This process is called Rayleigh scattering and is named after Lord John Rayleigh, an English physicist, who first explained it a hundred and thirty years ago.
So what about sunsets? Well, as the sun begins to set, the light must travel farther through the atmosphere before it gets to us and more of the light is reflected and scattered. As less reaches us directly, the sun appears less bright and the colour of the sun appears to change, first to orange and then to red and this is because even more of the short wavelength blues and greens are now scattered and only the longer wavelengths are left in the direct beam that we can see.
After the squares we climbed a stairway of worn shiny steps to get to the entrance of the fortress which stands at the top of the town overlooking the harbour below. Inside there were walls to walk and views to admire, nothing like Dubrovnik of course, but pleasant all the same and worth the small admission fee. It didn’t take long to complete the visit to the fortress so we walked back down and had a welcome cold drink in a bar in the main square next to the town’s old drinking fountain and the Serbian Orthodox Church in the centre.
Posted in Cathedrals, Croatia, dubrovnik, Europe, Hotels, Travel
Tagged Croatia, dubrovnik, Hercig Novi, Kamaria, Mlini, Montenegro
The pine fringed white beach was even busier today (school must have finished early) and we had to squeeze ourselves in on a vacant patch right at the sea’s edge. This was a beach of stones all carefully graduated by size as though someone had carefully arranged it that way. At the back of the beach there were rocks, then stones giving way to pebbles and finally shingle disappearing into the sea.
The water taxi took about thirty minutes to make the short journey from Mlini to Dubrovnik and even though large cruisers anchored up outside the harbour spoiled the approach the old town fortifications looked spectacular as we sailed into the harbour and once off the boat we transported into an alternative world of narrow medieval streets, magnificent buildings constructed of white Dalmatian stone and a riot of red tiled roofs. We knew that we had all day to explore the city but we were impatient so purchased our tickets and climbed to the top of the walls for the two-kilometre walk around the magnificent tenth century guard’s walkway.
Posted in Cathedrals, Croatia, dubrovnik, Europe, History, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Adriatic Sea, Croatia, Dubrovnic reconstruction, dubrovnik, George Bernard Shaw, Mlini, Montenegro, Siege of Dubrovnik, UNESCO
Have Bag, Will Travel 