Istanbul is gigantic ancient city with a truly unbelievably complex history. Today it is probably the most diverse city on the planet with whole communities of differing ethnic peoples. All with their own traditional customs, and food.
Consequently, on this trip, accompanied by the courageous CAMarchand, we have taken wonderful tours of historic sites and had the finest food tour I have ever taken.
I have posted a description of Istanbul from a previous visit and so for an overview of the city you might want to look here:
This is one of my recommended “really should visit” cities. One time. It is culturally fascinating and historically magnificent. It is also so big as to be overwhelming and crowded beyond belief.
I know that it is tedious to page through too many of other people’s vacation photographs, but there are endless ones in this city and I could not help but post a fair number. Hopefully you will find them interesting.
We are heading south now to Izmir and I will check in from there.
Florence. The “must visit” Italian renaissance city of history and art.
A unique destination containing all of the seeds that have become the modern western world.
Certainly, one of my favorite cities. I have been here many times over the decades. Even spent a summer here studying Italian cooking at the culinary Institiute.
Also, if you ask her to see it, CAMarchand has made up a printed booklet of her photos and descriptions of all of the famous Churches of the city.
I recommend everyone I know to come here. Soon. Every time I come back it is harder to visit with the ever-increasing crowds, congestion and upscale shopping replacing real life.
But on the other hand, I never get tired of the Italian food, wine and the Italian character. It is hard to stay out of Italy.
This visit we had an apartment with an OK kitchen strategically located between an excellent local market and a fine supermarket and we shopped for ingredients every morning and cooked every evening.
Not much more to say. Here are a few photos of our climb up the ancient road to the 2,500-year-old Etruscan settlement of Fiesole, which overlooks and predates the Roman settlement of Florence.
We are travelling tomorrow, west to London to see some plays on our way home for the holidays. Will check in from there.
And little. The size of New Jersey with a population of 2 million.
We have worked our way south through wine country to stay a week in their lovely pint-sized capital: Ljubljana. The city of the castle and the dragon.
This is a major tourist city, but it is geared up to handle them. The downtown has the largest pedestrian-only area of any city in Europe. The river that runs through the city is lined on both sides with endless bars and cafes and restaurants.
The whole area is lit up in the evening making it excellent for walking or sitting or dining along the river and enjoying life.
The old town is on a horseshoe bend of the river and so the castle on the hill looms over the city from almost any vantage point.
Some beautiful local buildings.
There are plenty of opportunities for walkers, through the pedestrian areas, along the river and in a large city park. There is even a trail circling the city through the suburbs.
This is a beautiful and lively city and I would recommend it to any visitor.
Beyond the ambiance, the quality of the food and wine is very high. The entire country seems bent on expressing themselves through their cuisine and viniculture using their local ingredients. They have their own breed of pig and the pork products, in particular the charcuterie, are superb.
How about this dish. Trout from the hills. Marinated in Beet Juice. Served over a local soft cheese with beet shavings and trout caviar.
Should you wish to visit Ljubljana, as I hope you will, here is a previous post of mine with much more information about the city.
We are leaving Slovenia tomorrow and travelling over to Florence for a break from hotel living. We have an apartment in the vicinity of two markets so we can cook and stay at home every night.
In the first few centuries that we call CE, Ptuj was a comparatively important Roman Military Stronghold. You could get across the river Drava here and two important roads converged on the crossing. So you could go from Northern Italy further East, or from the alps down to the Balkans or the Adratic coast. At that time the population of the city was maybe 40,000. It was never higher at any later time.
It would probably be easier to list the armies who did not sack the town than those that did.
But from the earliest times the wine produced in the surrounding areas has been exceptional. Plenty of sun, misty heavy condensation in the mornings, steep well drained slopes of Marl soil … combine to produce white wines of surprisingly high alcohol content (13 to 15 %) that retain their upfront fruitiness even when aged. They have white wines here bottled over a hundred years ago. We didn’t taste anything like that, but the aged ones we did try were wonderfully complex with a beautiful mouth feel.
Here we are tasting in a thousand-year-old cellar.
Again, the town is tiny, but with a few interesting buildings and a big castle on the hill. Here are some postcard photos:
We have found the Slovenian countryside to be quiet and very picturesque and we had some fine walks around Ptuj.
And that ends our foray into Slovenian wine country. It has been a nice introduction to some surprisingly good white wines. I would like to come back some time to taste the red wines they produce on the Adriatic south of Trieste.
But now we are going west to their big capital city: Ljubljana for some city living.
Maribor is the second largest city in Slovenia, but you would not believe it. It is small, sitting in a narrow valley on the Drava river and backing directly into the vineyards.
I was here pre- covid, found Slovenia to be a delightful country to visit and so I have returned this time with CAMarchand to take another look. There is a wonderful Unesco recognized train ride down from Vienna to Maribor that I suggest to you. I planned to take it but found that it had stopped for the season before we arrived.
The countryside around Maribor is beautiful.
We have had a fine visit. Nice restaurants. Nice old town. Walks along the river and in their beautiful city park and in the hills around town. A few days is enough though, the town is small. Some photos.
This is wine country. For a start they have the certified oldest vine in the world, somewhere over 400 years old.
The hills around Maribor mainly to the North toward the Austrian border are full of wineries. Mainly very small ones set in villages in the countryside. They are concentrated on making small quantities of excellent quality white wines.
We have been touring and tasting. One day 18 wines. Someone has to do this.
At one winery we sat with the vintner in his family dining room and talked about how he made the wines and tasted them. The amazingly low prices you see in the second picture are in Euros which at the moment is almost equal to dollars.
Tomorrow we are off to the oldest town in Slovenia to see some Roman ruins. It just happens to be in another important Slovenian wine region.
Vienna. On the Danube. Voted by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the most livable city in the world three out of the last five years based on stability, infrastructure, healthcare, culture and entertainments.
For 650 years home of the Habsburg dynasty and the Capital city of their various Empires.
Today a big city of about 3 million people covering a large area. But the Old Town is quite small and manageable.
The city is so rich in attractions because the Habsburgs were inclusive of other cultures, staunch supporters of the arts, and collectors.
There are about 100 museums here, many set up to display articles collected by the royal family over centuries.
We visited one of the “other” museums, the collection of artifacts (mainly statues) from Ephesus, which the Austrians have been excavating for 150 years.
The downtown is monumental. Here are some “postcard” photos to give you an idea.
Some notes on Vienna:
o This is an expensive city. Full of tourists, especially in the summer. Here in October the weather is still warm and the press of the tourists way down.
o The city has the most comprehensive public transport system of any city I know. Buses, trains, light rail, metro system.
o The roast pork in Austria is wonderful. Otherwise I am not a fan of German/Austrian food: pounded breaded and fried meat, sausages, goulash, noodles and dumplings and sauerkraut.
o The first (last) time we were here we toured around the city more. Here are some more comprehensive photos and comments about Vienna: Vienna | Lew’s Walkabout (lewswalkabout.com)
This time we stopped here for CAMarchand (who just joined me for some winter travels) to get over the jet lag. Our plan is to soon leave Vienna and go down through the alps and look around Slovenia.
Perhaps indicative of how the Venetians held this coast for so long against the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs. They bought the coast from the Neapolitans around 1400 and held it until the early 1800s when the Hapsburgs, in an unholy alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte, teamed up and took the Venetian Republic out of the game.
All of the historic Venetian towns I have visited along the coast: Split, Trogir, Sibenik, Zadar .. are similar in their construction: local stone buildings and narrow medieval streets.
Of course there is more city here than the old town. But not much. Maybe 40,000 people in the area. The hills rise straight out of the sea and so the city is a narrow strip of houses stacked on top of one another.
Without any real data except looking I think that these coastal areas were de-forested centuries ago and the topsoil lost to erosion. Certainly, they are now just rocky coastal hills of fractured limestone with only scrubby vegetation. The trees do seem to be coming back, but that is of course a very slow process. There are not any fields of “crops” growing beyond some olives and grapes. But they do have the sea.
This city sits on a large river fed bay with a gap in the hills through to the sea.
Just off the coast in this area there are something like 150 islands. Sitting in a warm sunny California type climate this is a yachtie’s dream destination. The main industry of the town looks like repairing, outfitting, provisioning, cleaning, renting, buying and selling boats. And wining and dining the Yachties.
There are boats everywhere, parked and moving about. Little boats.
Big boats.
And ginormous boats. By the hundreds.
This is a nice lively little town right on the water and I have enjoyed my stay. 75 degrees and sunny every day.
There are top quality restaurants where I am living on my usual diet of grilled whole fish and occasional lamb chops. Which, with the weather, is why I travel so much around the Mediterranean. If you travel through Croatia I recommend to you their fine white wines that many producers make from a grape called Debit. I found it to be delicious.
And that ends my quiet holidays on the coast in Croatia. I will soon fly up to Vienna to meet up with CAMarchand who will be travelling with me for some weeks. We will be on roller skates because she likes her travel to be “event filled”.
Split is one of my favorite cities. Flowing with tourists to be sure. Chilly in the winter. But lively and “right sized” for visits in the shoulder seasons. Always seems to have plenty of sunshine.
I recommend passing through Split on your travels. You can fly directly there. But flights to Zagreb from the US are usually great value and from there it is easy to get down to the coast or hop off to some other European destination.
If you consider a visit you might want to check out these links to plenty of photos and comments about Split.
I did not stay in the city this trip, but a short distance south down the coast.
I was ready for a travel breather and so I booked myself a nice apartment out of the bustle of the city. But I missed. The distances on Google Maps proved to be much further than they looked, and I was too far out. I really needed a car to stay there comfortably.
The nice little neighborhood I wish I had found was a 40-minute walk around the bay. So it goes.
The walk was worth it because I found perhaps the best fresh fish market / grilled fish restaurant I have ever found. And I don’t say this lightly because I track them down all over the Mediterranean.
When I left they gave me this little keepsake to remember them by.
The weather stayed beautiful all week. 75 high. 60 low. Lots of sun. And (mainly just) hanging around gave me the chance to do some real hiking in the hills along the coast. Here are some photos.
Thanks for coming along. I will soon be moving up the coast to a city North of Split to have a look around. Will check in from there.
It is a comfortable and quite scenic train ride through the mountains south from Sarajevo. The stations are grotty but the coach is fine. Seven dollars. If you take it sit on the left side.
The town of Mostar strings along both sides of a little fast moving river just to the south of the high mountains. CAMarchand tells me that the word “Balkan” comes from the Ottoman word for mountain.
The old town is 100 percent of why someone would come here. It covers a surprisingly large pedestrian only area and it is clean and attractive. The closer you get to the famous old Ottoman bridge the more it is given over to tourist trinkets and venues.
There is not much charm outside of the old town. Plenty of dreary communist housing, crumble and grit. Everyone smokes cigarettes constantly and so the populace look old and weather beaten and tired.
Mostar, like Sarajevo was besieged and seriously damaged during the Bosnian war of the 1990’s. The old bridge dating from the early 1500’s was destroyed but has been rebuilt with international money. Unfortunately, after the war Mostar fell into a political/administrative limbo delaying their recovery. There are still plenty of war damaged buildings.
Besides the damaged buildings still sitting around there is something else wrong with this city. There are many sites where the construction of some building has been started and then abandoned. Including a very large Marriott hotel, half-finished and derelict.
If for some reason you would ever come here, like me you might be surprised to find that there are some (very few) high-quality hotels and restaurants that are amazingly cheap.
One of the hardest things I have to do travelling around as I do is to stay beyond arm’s length of things like this.
Well, this and my last few posts concludes my look into the war and the recovery in Bosinia. Overall, this is still a poor, fragmented country. And the deep divisions and the ongoing animosities look like they may take decades more to fade away.
My next destination is for a real vacation down on the Adriatic coast just south of Split. I’ll check in from there.
Sarajevo is compressed into a narrow river valley in the Dinaric Alps in the south of Bosnia. It creeps up into the steep hills with a maze of lanes through old and nice new houses. But the city itself stretches along the banks of the river.
This is a major tourist destination, because of the old town, which is quite extraordinary. It is a very large, completely pedestrian district. There are churches and numerous mosques, but it is mainly comprised of low wood and stone buildings along narrow alleyways. I presume these are old Ottoman structures. The entire area is given over to shops and so many restaurants and cafes that they can seat thousands. And it is swarming with tourists.
This is not like any city I could name. Probably because the old town is so unusual, but also the blending of Muslim and Christian, modern western and old time Balkan. There is almost no Cyrillic used here, and although Mosques are everywhere, head coverings are far less than I expected, and I saw one burka all week.
I have had a very nice visit. Sarajevo is a fine, lively, bustling city. The food is good.
Mr. Marriott treated me handsomely which made it even nicer. A funny thing: by the vagaries of happenstance, the conversion rate of the dollar to the Bosnian NK at the moment is very close to two to one …. so every time I look at a price I think: Hey, I get a 50% discount. Fun.
Here are some random photos from around the city.
Sarajevo was subjected to a lengthy siege during the Bosnian war of the 1990’s, and severely damaged. You can still see renovation and damage side by side. But it is remarkable how much rebuilding and new construction they have accomplished.
I am going to conclude this post briefly talking about the war, and if you exit now I will certainly not be offended.
Yugoslavia was always difficult to govern because of the extreme diversity of cultures within the state. And entering the 1990’s this heavily Muslim area declared their secession from the country. They were promptly attacked by the Yugoslavian army, but with the state collapsing elsewhere they could not continue the fight.
As Yugoslavia dissolved, the Serbians took the opportunity to try to build a Yugoslavia II, which they intended to dominate. They set up a proxy state, the Republic of Srpska, in the north or Bosnia, raised an army there and attacked the Muslim south under the guise of a civil war.
Sarajevo was besieged by this army for roughly 1500 days. An extraordinary length of time. The Serbs occupied the hills and bombarded the city with artillery much like the Russians are doing today in the Ukraine. Indiscriminate bombardment of whatever they could. But they were not strong enough to enter the city. And the Bosnics were not strong enough to take the hills.
Eventually the Serbian actions in Bosnia were so repugnant that NATO entered and ended the war. Up to 70,000 Serbs migrated out of Serajevo and into the Republic of Srpska. And the tensions between these two areas are still very much alive.
This is a very simple summary that I thought might be interesting. There is of course a much bigger story, but I leave it to you to satisfy any further interest you might have.
I will soon head down to Mostar and probably conclude my own interest in these affairs.
