Christmastime in New York

Since Philip and I aren't long for this coast, we thought we should take advantage of our (probably) last chance to see the Christmas displays in New York City.  We drove up in the morning last Saturday and got there just in time to grab lunch at Shake Shack.  Quite the line (out the door, despite the freeeeeezing weather), but one killer shake.

We walked off a french fry or two in Central Park.

After that, we wandered over to Grand Central to check out the holiday market.  On the way, Phil snapped this picture just for Max:

You can also see the ca-razy crowds in that picture—I've been to New York more than a few times, in all seasons, and I've never seen it as packed as the Saturday we went.  I felt bad for all the people who actually live in the city, but not bad enough to leave.


The window displays are gorgeous and made me wonder how one gets a job putting them together.  I want that job.  And those silver pants.

We got out of the cold for a bit in America's First Pizzeria.  Seriously delicious.

We took a stroll through Times Square... 

Peeked inside Radio City Music Hall just as the Christmas Spectacular was ending...

And fought the crowds for this photo with the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

Awesome day.

Hrvatska, Part 2

We pulled into Zadar after dark, struggled for a while with the map Misho had drawn for us and the invisible street signs, and then pulled up to the Ostarcevices' apartment.  Ankica had explained how she lost some of her property while in the US trying to figure out her citizenship status during the Yugoslav Wars, and, as a result, two very loud cafe bars had moved in right below her apartment.  We dodged the waitstaff and hauled our stuff up the stairs to an absolutely gorgeous space (Ankica would settle for nothing less, I'm sure).  

It was so nice of the Ostarcevices to let us stay there—it was way fancier than anything we could have managed on our own.  It wasn't quite bed time, so we headed out for a stroll.  There was plenty to see—a cool market full of trinkets, lots of tiny alleyways with laundry strung up overhead, several street performers, and this very cool thing, called the Sun Salutation: 

It's a large disc representing the sun, plus nine smaller ones representing the planets (from an era when Pluto still counted), covered with solar panels that collect power all day and then use it to power the waterfront lighting system and put on a beautiful display all through the night.  It gave Phil a bit of a fever:

Right next to this is Zadar's Sea Organ, a unique and very neat musical instrument that's played by the wind and waves.  It has a lovely, haunting sound that I could have listened to for hours.  Wandering through Zadar, we saw a jumble of new and old—bright lights and high-end stores like Coach crowd the crumbling churches and Roman ruins.

On the left is the ninth-century (ninth?!) Church of St. Donatus.  There was some seriously old stuff in Zadar just lying around all over the place, mostly inhabited by feral cats.  It was weird, being allowed to walk all over these ruins; seems like someone should put up a fence or something.

Every single ice cream place in Croatia looks like this.

As we shuffled home, tired from the day's hike and drive, Zadar's nightlife was just warming up.  Incredibly, the shutters blocked out the techno thumping in the bars downstairs, and we slept like babies, only if babies slept a lot.

When we walked out of the apartment the next morning and turned right, this is what we saw:

Not too shabby.  We wandered for a long while, looking at pretty things and lunching.

Croatian favorites: octopus risotto and Marasca cherry juice.

We spent the rest of the day lazing on the beach at Ninska Laguna and returned to Zadar just in time for its famous sunset.

We got up early the next morning to take a boat trip around the Kornati Islands.

No; not on that boat.  

We set out on the trusty "Fažanka."  Phil and I thought that sounded like a generically rude word and have been using it as a euphemism—for everything—ever since.

Beautiful day. 

Beautiful water.

Despite all the beauty, the boat ride was sort of odd.  We were packed in a little bit like cattle and made to listen to very loud and terrible music.  Every announcement was made in Croatian, English, Italian, and German, and all were unintelligible.

We were instructed to take pictures of these cliffs.

We enjoyed our lunch to the soothing strains of "The Final Countdown."

Jealous of our food.

Thanks, Fažanka, for bringing us safely back to land!

Another incredible sunset, another fantastic meal, and off to bed.

We got up early on our last full day in Croatia to hike in Paklenica (Gorges) National Park.  We wanted a light hike—hence the Chacos—that would take us about four hours, so we wouldn't be too late heading back to Zagreb.  "Hey," I said, "Let's take before and after pictures!"  A little foreshadowing there. 

Before: happy, clean, hydrated, not bleeding.  Rarin' to go.

The gorges were beautiful and reminded us very much of Rock Canyon in Provo.

Wildlife.

We made it to a cave that looked like the halfway point with no problems.  The cave was a popular destination, and that probably explains why the trail up to it was so nice and easy.  


The park service doesn't have any free trail maps (which strikes me as irresponsible, since irresponsible cheapskates like us will just do without and then almost get lost in the mountains).  At the cave, however, there's a large map of the whole trail system, and I thought, maybe we should take a picture of this, you know, just in case—not that we could possibly get lost or anything.  This photo saved the day.

Our planned hike to the top of one of the peaks required hiking past the cave.  We noticed the trail leading away from the cave up the mountain wasn't quite as smooth, but we decided to press on.

The mountain man takes one last look around before we head on up the trail. 

The trail was quickly replaced by these bright markers that told us where to go but gave no clue as to how.

 Not fazed a bit (but should have been).

Visible to the right of Phil's head in this photo is a steel cable bolted into the rock wall for pulling oneself up the "trail," without which it would have been impossible to go any farther.  That maybe should have been a hint not to go any farther.

Where we came from.


We scrambled on all fours for over an hour to reach the peak.

During our well-deserved water break, we determined that going back down the way we had come was undesirable and decided to keep going the way we had planned, in a large circle that would dump us back out in the parking lot.  We were willing to bet that the way down couldn't possibly be worse than what we had just come up. 

We were wrong.  There are very few pictures from this leg of our journey, because we were busy cursing.  We ran out of water, our feet were rubbed raw by our Chacos, and we were often pretty sure we were lost.  We had too many close calls, almost twisting ankles or being crushed by rocks or falling off the mountain.  When we got back to the parking lot (several hours after we had planned to leave), I looked down at the pavement and just saw it bubbling and morphing because my vision was so messed up from looking at the rocks under my feet.

After: dead.

It was definitely the worst hike either of us has ever experienced.  And to make matters worse, we couldn't relax at all afterward; we had to rush to pack up our things and get to Zagreb to return the rental car that night.  

We pulled into Zagreb much later than we had planned—around 10:00—and had a lot of trouble finding our hostel (surprise, surprise).  We finally made it to the rental car place around 11:30 and rang the doorbell (Zlatan lives in the apartment above his rental shop and instructed us to ring him if we brought the car back after hours).  Zlatan was in bed already and asked if we could bring the car back in the morning, but that was impossible, since we needed to be at the airport by 7:00.  In a bit of luck that made up somewhat for that awful hike, Zlatan said we could just return it to the airport, solving our other problem of how to get there (since our hostel manager informed us that the only way to reserve a cab is to flag one down and try to get the driver to promise to show up when you need a ride—not the best strategy for catching an international flight, we thought).

We slept far too little after such a grueling day and had some difficulty the next morning when I locked us out of our room at 5:00 am, but we made our flight.  

Phil and I loved experiencing the different cultures and languages along the way, but we were both grateful to hear so much English as we entered the Philadelphia airport and happy to hand over our US passports.  Europe is awesome, but there's no getting around it: we love 'merca.  

Hrvatska, Part 1

The last and longest leg of our trip was Croatia. It was so long, in fact, that I have to put it in two posts so you guys don't get bored and stop reading.  Our train ride from Vienna to Zagreb was also the longest of our trip, because every time the train stopped at a station, we sat there for up to an hour. This was especially frustrating after having been spoiled by German punctuality—those trains are never late. We took advantage of an unexpected stop in Hungary by getting off the train for a minute to snap a picture. Check that one off the list.

When we arrived in Zagreb, the first order of business was to rent a car. Experts are divided on whether you should book a rental car ahead of time on the internet from the states or try to find a small, independently-owned rental agency once you get to where you're going. We checked out prices before we left—all around $300 for five days—but opted to look for a car once we got there in case our travel plans changed along the way. We checked with the only rental agency in the train station, and they quoted us... $800. Uh, no thanks. We figured the train station prices would be higher because travelers are a little bit stuck there and would pay whatever was demanded. So we set off to find an internet cafe where we could either book online or look for other rental places around the city.

Browsing through Hertz, Budget, Avis, etc., I learned that everything was completely booked. No cars. I did finally find one car—an enormous SUV for $1000. Our panic increasing, we decided to go to the nearest agency anyway to see if they maybe reserved any cars for walk-ins. Maybe? The address turned out to be a hotel. We asked the desk clerk where the rental place was, and he said it had moved out of town. Desperate, Phil asked if he could think of any other rental agency in Zagreb. The clerk marked the location of a small place on our map. It happened to be right around the corner.

The rental agency was a hole in the wall—a small, independent outfit run by a man named Zlatan, which means "gold." We told him what we were looking for, anxiously asked how much such a thing might cost, and held our breath. "Economy car, five days... I can do that for... $300." We steeled our faces against the waves of relief and tried very hard not to high-five right there. Zlatan must have taken whatever bizarre facial expressions we had managed for dissatisfaction, because he launched into an apologetic explanation about how prices were lower if you booked ahead and this was really the best he could do for us. We did our best to feign reluctance as we discussed the details. Still mistaking our stunned silence for disappointment, Zlatan said he would cover a second driver for free. We were a little incredulous and held our breath until we slid into our lovely red Škoda and took off. Crisis averted.

The second order of business was actually finding our way out of Zagreb. Sadly, this turned out to be quite as much of an ordeal as the first order of business had been. We had gotten a detailed city map from the train station and a road map of Croatia from Zlatan, but both were basically useless, for several reasons: 1) the maps really were terrible (detail where you don't need it and none where you do, spotty notation of one-way streets, and even inclusion of non-existent streets); 2) there is almost no such thing as a street sign in Croatia, so there's no point in having a map anyway; and 3) the handful of street names we did see on signs were in a different grammatical case than those on the map, leaving me scrambling to decipher them as they flew past. We eventually gave up on the maps entirely and tried to follow signs and/or traffic toward the freeway. It took us a good hour, but we finally escaped from Zagreb's death grip. Philip made this Terminator face to celebrate:

Then there was the small matter of actually finding the Ostarcevices' house. Before leaving the states, Phil had corresponded with Kristina Ostarcevic to find out about staying with her parents. Kristina had given us their address and directions, and we figured that would be enough. When we actually looked at the directions, though, our confidence waned a bit. All we had was a house number in a town. No street names, no zip code, no nothing. With no way to contact Misho or Ankica, our only choice was to head toward the town and hope to find it. This was our first glimpse of their little valley:

It reminded me very much of Oregon. Our worry about finding the correct street turned out to be for nothing, because there is only one street that goes through any of these little towns. There was a moment of confusion when we noticed the house numbers were in no particular order and included letters and fractions. We saw a man standing in his driveway and pulled over to ask him where the Ostarcevices could be hiding.

-English?

-No.

-Czech?

-No.

-Russian?

-No.

-German?

-No.

-Spanish?

-No.

-Ostarcevic?

-Ohhhh, Misho! (Holds hand way above head to mime Misho's 6'8"-ish frame)

This friendly neighbor led us back up the road to Misho and Ankica's beautiful cabin. Ankica fed us and fussed over us, and we talked and laughed late into the night. Misho had assured us that the stars put on quite a show out there in the middle of nowhere, and he was absolutely right. It had been a long time since Phil or I had seen the Milky Way, so the sky in Vrelo was especially stunning for us. It was a bit chilly out at night, so I put on all the jackets I could find, resulting in the following stargazing ensemble:

We warmed up by the wood stove and then crawled into bed. We woke up to this:

Literally. I didn't move at all; I just grabbed the camera and snapped this picture. It was perfectly quiet—the most peaceful we've felt since before we moved to Philadelphia.  I got up and took a turn about the yard.

Just over those mountains is Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Hammock.  Yes, please.

There's our beautiful little rental car.  After breakfast, Ankica loaded us down with food and sent us out to Plitvice Lakes National Park.  The lakes are known for their brilliant blue-green  water, caused by the unique combination of minerals in the rocks they flow through.  Thanks, science!


First, we took a boat ride across the largest of the lakes.

Then we hiked up and up so we could see how beautiful the lakes were.  They were so beautiful I couldn't stand it.

No Photoshop here; that's what color the water is.

Since we had Phil's headlamp with us, we were able to explore one of the large caves in the park.  It was sort of gross, actually—it appeared to have been used as a toilet by several generations of incontinent park-goers.  Once inside, though, we were distracted by a sleeping bat!  We fumbled for the camera, but we were so noisy and clumsy with the light that, just as Phil got ready to snap a photo, the bat woke up and flew out over our heads.  All we ended up with was a picture of where the bat was: 

Just trust me; it was exciting.

Those rail-less walkways run all through the park, criss-crossing the lakes.  There are thousands of tourists crowding them every day, with their backpacks and tripods and lack of spatial awareness; I was shocked we didn't see anyone fall in.

The park was just incredible.  We spent almost five hours wandering around and then headed back to the cabin.  


Ankica had a mouthwatering wild mushroom risotto waiting for us.  We hadn't planned this part of our trip in much detail, because we weren't sure where else in Croatia we wanted to go.  Ankica and Misho suggested we drive south to Zadar, where they have an apartment we could use.  We accepted their very generous offer and, after Ankica loaded us down once more with enough food to feed all of Croatia, we hit the road.  We loved spending time with the Ostarcevices, and we're extremely grateful for their kindness. 

On the road to Zadar...