Goodbye, Dubrovnik!

When we arrived, the main street (called the Stradun) was packed with
tourists. As we leave (at 4am), there seem to be no stragglers, and
the town looks so peaceful!

We greatly enjoyed our experiences here, which included lots of eating
(we found the best ice cream scoopers, and tried some crazy dishes
like black risoto - it is black because of the squid ink), lots of
walking in the rain (including a trip both on and within the wall),
walking through museums and churches to avoid the rain, a bocci
tournament, and, of course, some coffee drinking.

I found my new favorite beer: Lasko "dark" only to find out that this
Slovenian brewery has gone bankrupt and will no longer produce this
beer!

Jessica found a new love for pizza and the relaxed, harbor-town, cafe
culture. I think she will really miss all the cats and dogs that we
have befriended along our way (people just let their animals roam
here). On our last night, we were eating ice cream next to this cool
mutt, and it started to down pour. We high tailed it for our pad, and
the dog figured that he would join us. He hung out with us in our
hallway until the rain cleared.

Goodbye, Dubrovnik!
Goodbye, Croatia!

Jason & Jessica

Not so Instant Coffee

In Bol, we were spoiled by access to a French press coffee maker. We
bought some coffee and made ourselves our own cafe culture on our
pretty patio there. We were not given the same luxury for our single
nights in either Hvar or Korcula, but with three nights planned in
Dubrovnik, buying coffee would get expensive quickly. I became a man
with a mission.

I am not sure that JP fully understood how dedicated I became until
our second day. We had been browsing stores looking for a French
press, but on our second day in Dubrovnik, the thunderstorms started,
and coffee sounded really good (I am usually not a coffee drinker, a
fact you soon won't believe).

I began my march through the torrential rain into just about every
shop in and around the old city (where we are staying)-the store
owners were glad to have me dripping wet in their stores. I finally
got to someone who could respond in English (thanks to some studying
of Croatian, and the "lingo" device I got from the Torrano's, I could
ask in Croatian, but I couldn't understand the answer) (most of this
town speaks basic English, unlike the rest of croatia, but not complex
stuff). They told me to get on a bus and head to the closest
supermarket. I got to the bus terminal, and figured that Jess would be
pretty mad if I took a bus an hour away as she waited for this coffee.
I had to get crafty. I went to the nearby store and got paper towels.
I put the coffee in the paper towels and made a contraption to hold
the paper towel/coffee mixture above an empty cup. I poured boiling
water through the contraption, and got coffee on the other side. I
thought about just boiling the coffee with the grinds, but according
to the discovery channel, this is the worst tasting coffee possible.

In the end, it worked great! JP even called it the best coffee of the
trip. But I learned a very valuable lesson: just buy instant coffee
next time!

National Championships

While wondering the streets of Dubrovnik, we walked right into what
may have been the Croatian bocci ball national championships! If it
wasn't the national championships, then don't tell the players because
the emotions were boiling.

The game was between Cavtat and and Dubrovnik. We couldn't understand
the names of the players, so we gave them our own:

Cavtat (in white):
Superstar (an emotional roller coaster but clutch thrower; high five'd
Jess)
Loafers (all accuracy, first thrower... wore loafers)
Young one (look like he was raised by a family of bocci players)

Dubrovnik (in red):
Handle bar (great facial hair, had three clutch tosses)
Jelly (great accuracy, croud chanted "Jelli" when he was up)
Belly (largest beer belly there, which is an accomplishment!)

The game was riveting! Cavtat was up 10-3 when Dubrovnik started their
come back to win 13-11!

Entire game and all players' refreshments sponsored by karlovachko
(the local beer).

Jason & Jessica

Thank You

Dear Guardian Angel,

As Jessica stepped off the ferry in Jelsa, she must have looked like a
lost soul without a place to stay, with a backpack twice her size.
While i just stood laughing at the humorous situation, again, you sent
a lady in white.

As you know, the bus from Jelsa to Hvar town (where our friends were
and the place we needed to leave from the next day) had a driver that
took the day off (low season). So we were stuck with one option: a
$100 cab ride. But you sent us this lady offering not only a place to
stay, but a free ride. Thankfully, her small runt of a dog ate through
her iron, and the only place for her to buy a new one on the whole
island was Jelsa! So she thought she might as well try to find some
tennants: Us!

Once we got there, we cafe'd with our friends, relaxed on a beautiful
beach (picture) and navigated our way through the nameless, small,
pedestrian streets. Apparently, it is so common to get lost in this
hilly town that all hotels and hostesl give out a number to call when
you lose hope in finding your place. Part of the fun of the town was
watching people wander the streets for hours in search of their
hostel, which they swear has disappeared.

Thanks again, this was a fun town!

Jason & Jessica

Thunderstruck by the white angel with orange aspirations

As Jessica got off the ferry in Bol, on the island of Brac, we had no
planned accomodations, or any idea about where we would want to stay.
She describes the experience as an angel dressed in white decending
down upon her offering a room in broken english. The price was great,
so we checked it out... Just a short walk from town was an awesome
patio with an ocean view, that led into a massive room, which gave way
to a private bathroom and kitchen/living room.. And everything was
painted orange. As we settled in, our angel brought us some orange
juice to give us the full experience. We drank it on the patio with
the view in the picture.

We checked out the town and decided that our previously planned 1
night just wouldn't be enough, this was a great place! We stayed two.

That night, after a relaxing and a beautiful night of eating pizza and
drinking wine under the stars (no clouds), we went to bed. We were
sharply awoken by flashes of daylight, what seemed like hurricane
forced winds (though neither of us have been in a hurricane), and
ground shaking thunder. The weather changed just that fast!

The next day, it was clear again and we went mountain bike riding
through local farms, vineyards, and fkk/naturist/nudist beaches
(apparently always marked by a dot of red or blue spray paint).

To give you a better idea of where we are, this area is famous for the
zlatni rat (golden horn beach) which has earned the honor of being on
every Croatian tourist poster, and (I think) a windows background (the
operating system on your computer).

Jason & Jessica

Diocletian's palate

After our second camping adventure, it was time to head to our next
major city, Split.

Split has a giant palace as the center of it's old town where the
Roman emperor, Diocletian, built his retirement palace. Several Roman
rulers retreated to this marble road palace when things got hot and
heavy. Finally, the nearby inhabitants took over the palace for their
own protection in the 7th century. It is said that their decendents
still live here, where they now drink coffee amongst the ruins (check
out the cafe over Jessica's left shoulder).

We found the town to be full of culinary inspiration. Jessica and I
were inspired by the town market and a nearby restaurant to try our
hand at a Greek salad. The restaraunt added balsamic vinager to create
a delight that we wanted to imitate. The market provided us with a $2
brick of feta... Enough said.

We also took notice of a separate restaurant that soaked both
Jessica's chicken, my grilled tuna, and all accompanying vegetables in
a couple cups of butter for a meal fit for an emporer!

Highs of the low picture

Our beachside accomodations

High vs. Low

Have you ever walked into a hotel with lights on, stocked shelves, set
tables, but no people?

After our bus and water adventures in krka, we found our way to a
luxury camping mega resort, (croatian style) Solaris. This location
initiates a theme for the trip: high season vs. low season.

The high season starts on June 1. Right now, we reside in the
preparation stage for the high season. We get to watch the best of
Croatian construction, sculpture carving, and beach creation. Our
pensions are vacant, cheap and quite lovely. The beaches are open and
the restaraunts are happy to serve us. These luxuries put us in a
state to easily roll with the bus and ferry schedules, which are
really just loose guidelines.

After setting up in our beach side accomodations (check out the
picture to come), we went for a swim in a salt water infinite pool and
the Adriatic. We then ventured out to check out the resort that will
shortly become a highly populated and lively setting. However around
dinner time on this day, we walked into a completely deserted hotel,
passed several closed restaurants, and strolled over yet to be
completed sidewalks.

Another benefit of the low season is the people we meet. On the bus
ride over, we met some tahoe guys that bought a sailboat in Greece 9
years ago when they were in high school. Each summer, they sail around
the med. and store their boat during the off season. They were
preparing it for it's final voyage because now they want to explore
the seas in Florida. As they delighted us in their sailing and
repairing adventures, our waiter (who lived in New York for a while)
decided that a few Americans could use a free round... After all, it's
the low season!

Jason & Jessica

A small town with a big slap!

Now you may be one of those readers that looks at the image first and
thinks: didn't they already talk about waterfalls (slap in Croatian)?
But it seems that Croatia is a land full of waterfalls, and the
difference with Krka is that you can swim in It, unlike plitvice.

So we took our celebrity egos through a very small, pedestrian, hill-
side town (with what must be incredibly fit senior citizens) to get to
Krka National Park.

Our bus ride there and back was an adventure in itself. Does anyone
know if there is an F1 racing for buses? Our driver made cliff side
turns at speeds that Mario Andretti could only dream about! On a
couple turns, the driver drifted the back end (mom, that means he skid
his back tires).

But we lived on to make it to our camp site for the night... That will
be a future post.
>

Celebrities in the Adriatic

We finally reached the coast in the lovely city of Zadar... and not a moment too soon with a mini-humidity wave settling over us!

We immediately began exploring the Venetian styled city with white marble roads and a "sea organ" that makes music when waves push and pull air through the sidewalk.

We were amazed by one major cultural difference: there did not seem to be any rules. Dogs roam free, kids go relatively unsupervised as they jump off 10m diving platforms, there are no rails keeping you from falling/jumping into the ocean at anypoint around the city, and no one stops us from eating ice cream 24/7. In short, this was never never land!

We rested our tired bones on the edge of the city by the sea organ, and decided to take a splash. The water was cool and refreshing. As Jess climbed up the ladder out of the water, we heard a quiet rumble of of people running over. As Jessica peaked over the wall, she was blinded by the flashes of Japanese tourists' cameras. When she stepped back up to the city level, she found it difficult to get around the semi-circle of paparazzi. She was only saved by their new fascination with the water creature that appeared over the wall behind her (me). For that short moment, we were Celebrities vacationing on the Adriatic.

Picture This

We did not get any pictures of Zagreb on the iphone, so we couldn't post them earlier. Instead, we will go with a few pictures at once.



These are our friends from the train, two Canadians from Japan, 2 Missouri'ites from Germany... and us... two Californians from ... California.


Above is just one small section of the market in Zagreb. This is part of the fruit section. If you can believe it, this is not even the "high" season!


We indulged in the market and made ourselves some breakfast! There were no frying pans... so eggs in the microwave like what the settlers used to have to do.... right?

Actually, this market is a tradition hundreds of years old that kept two cities (both of which have now combined into Zagreb) at peace 3 times a year. They realized that it was in their economic interests even thought they were at just to draw the revenue from this huge market.

A stunning aesthetic sight... oh, and a church!

Cafe culture

As we got off the train with our new-found friends, we were pleasantly
surprised with large, beautiful parks and more cafes than we could
count!

Zagrebians are the definition of cafe culture, where a 6 hour work day
is a long one, a day with only 2 packs of cigarrettes is a light one,
and a morning without a few expressos is unheard of!

The only thing zagrebians do better than cafes is their market! On our
first morning, we walked out of our guesthouse into the middle of
Croatian capitalism! Flowers, home-made stinky cheeses, fruits,
vegetables, clothes, bread, and plenty of fish and meats were all
being sold in a years old traditional marketplace.

We indulged in the market with breakfast, explored the old town on
foot, and played soccer and rugby in the massive park. All the while
being accompanied by the Americans and canadians that we met along the
way.

It will be sad to leave, but we can't gain inertia in the beginning of
the trip!

**We just realized that this post did not make it the first time we
wrote it. The picture is not on the iphone, so hopefully we were
descriptive enough for you to imagine it. Chronologically, this post
should go after our "forced spontenaity" trip to Budapest.

Jason & Jessica

Chasing waterfalls

We left our friends in Zagreb with wonder and interest about the coast
and, more immediately, the Croatian national parks.

Our first stop was Plitvice national park... A seemingly endless
series of waterfalls. On a historic note, this was ground zero for the
Croat-Slavic war! This made us curious about the crater looking holes
here and there throughout the park. No worries though... The park has
been swept for mines and it is now a hikers paradise! There were miles
of bridges and pathways taking us over the most beautifully colored
water we have ever seen!

That night, we made it back for a night of camping before heading to
Zadar (originally not on our itinerary).

More later!

Jason & Jessica

No inertia

The theory behind the title of this blog name is that an object with
low inertia (no inertia is impossible) has an easier time changing
directions, and initiating movement from a state of rest.

As our Luton airport experience would indicate, Jess and I are
attempting to minimize our inertia so that we can roll with changes.
Unfortunately, the train to Leicester had very high inertia and
couldn't drop us off any sooner

Throughout the trip, we have Been making plans only a day ahead...
Including a places to stay. This has allowed some nice surprise
additions, which we can blog about when we get to the chronological
order of things.

Forced Spontaneity

Right train... wrong cart...

Thanks to Jessica's promptness, she had me ready to show up to a plane 2 hours early. I have never done that before in my life, and this was not going to be the first time. 

Be honest, what do you think of when you read "rear 5 carts" of a train? Now this is an important question, because carts actually separate mid-route (who knew?)

We learned that the "rear 5 carts" is up for interpretation. The furthest 5 carts are not necessarily the "rear 5 carts." The "rear 5 carts" are dependent on the direction that the train will travel. This is a difficult question to answer in a two way station. 

Point is... we missed our flight from the Luton airport (near London) to Zagreb, Croatia. So we caught the next flight to Eastern Europe, Budapest, Hungary (see pictures). With extreme flexibility, we rolled with the punches from a flight to a bus, through 2 metros, to a train and back to a tram to get to our little guesthouse in Zagreb (look for that awesome blog post to come). 

We are behind in our blogging... please forgive us... but we will catch up soon. We are sending this from Plitvice National Park (another future blog post).

Leaving on a jet plane

After a long, but extremely comfortable trip to London, we have
experienced our first non-usa culture of the trip. We made sure to
"mind the gap" as we used the "way out" to get to our flat in victoria.

The flight was staffed by JP's mom's friends/coworkers who showered us
with constant snacks, beer, wine and ice cream! By the end of the
flight, we were stuffed! I guess it shouldn't have surprised us that
we were given a row of 5 seats to ourselves in coach... Just another
perk...

We popped the bottle of bubbly that the flight attendants provided and
hit the town!

Man's Best Friend

Jess has enjoyed living with a little brother named, Lakota.

While visiting LA, I get to be a part of the joy that surrounds this
member of her family. Lakota is extremely intelligent and very
sensitive. He swims faster than me, and eats better than me. He
prefers prime rib, but trip-tip will do. He is in the attached picture.

We are about a minute away from flying to London out of LAX.

J

The first step

A long journey begins with a single step. Mine was a trip to San Diego
to meet up with JP. Tomorrow, we will drive to LA. The next day will
be a flight to London, and the following day will be the estimated day
of arrival in Croatia!

While hanging in San diego, we went to ocean beach for some Louisiana
BBQ... with a San Diego flare. We had traditional, slow cooked, pork
BBQ and added some of the vinager based BBQ sauce for which the real
"LA" is known. The interesting part of this meal was that it was put
in a burrito for true San Diego authenticity.

The picture was of the ocean beach pier. I bet that you could take all
the dredlocks in ocean beach, tie them end to end and encircle the ~10
mile loop around mission bay!

Everyone we met was friendly. Some went into a much more in depth
conversation then we expected when we asked "where is the ice cream
shop" and "can we use this chair"?

All in all, a great first step!

J

PS: I earned my first slap of the trip for the "LA" comment!

PPS: for those of you unsure what I meant by the real "LA"
Real LA = Louisiana
As opposed to
LA = Los Angeles

The small things

Although I have not started traveling yet, I have had a few adventures
recently.

While golfing with my grandma, I drove a ball and the tee flew up,
flipped over and landed exactly on it's head!

It's the small things in life!

J

Test run

Just about all of the posts that you will see on this site will come
from my iPhone. Therefore, I am trying this test run to make sure that I can send you pictures and posts.

The picture below is from my Hawaii trip with Robby, Laura and Sean.
This is a blow hole where there is a hole in the rock and waves rush
up and push water gysers many feet high. They were hard to catch on
the slow iphone.

Get It Started

I am hoping that this blog will serve as an archive to my travels. I intend to post my trip summaries here so that I do not fill up the email inboxes of my friends. To get it all kicked off, I will be leaving LAX on May 19th heading for London and then Croatia. Look for more right here.

J