October 2nd: A much less busy day. We mainly wanted to go up First. (On the first day, we didn’t do First. But on the second day, we did First first.)
Base station for the First cable car.Near the top. First has four rides you can pay to do. This is the upper end of the zip line and glider rides. You can also take a go-kart partway down, and then a scooter the rest of the way. I wasn’t very interested in that sort of thing.The glider ride.I did, however, regret not looking into the parasailing. There were some awesome updrafts and it looked like you could stay up all day if you wanted to. Maybe next time.Carol and I parted ways; she hiked out to the Bachalpsee, while I stayed closer to home and did the cliff walk.Bachalpsee (courtesey of Carol)The cliff was seriously under-cut.The cliff walk ends at the restaurant, with a jutting platform for taking selfies.I hiked up to the top of the cliff to get this view.And then went back to get a selfie on the platform.
Carol was still hiking, so I grabbed lunch at the Bergrestaurant.
Salad bar, bread, and a slice of apple pie.
When Carol got close to back, I told her to take the cliff walk, and climbed back up on top of the cliff to catch her on it.
Carol on the suspension bridge section of the cliff walk.Almost to the restaurant.
There was nothing noteworthy about the descent, since we just took the same cable car. Dinner was at Da Salvi, an Italian restaurant in a hotel.
September 18th: Mostly a rest day. For lunch, we headed for a Curry Bowl restaurant only to find that it had apparently been abandoned years ago and its patio overgrown. (Online photos of the place showed tables where those bushes are now.)
So we went to a nearby sushi restaurant instead. The fish was very fresh.
I went for nigiri plus a roll.Carol chose 3 rolls. Probably a better deal.
September 19th: Breakfast at the bakery by the bus station. I went (uncharacteristically) for pizza while Carol grabbed a slice of cheese pie.
Then we took an Uber up to the Gornji Grad (“Upper Town”) section of old Zagreb. And I do mean “up”.
It’s higher than the rooftops of most of the rest of the city, and has great views.
It’s such a steep drop that there’s a cog railway spanning it.
Then we just cruised around the neighborhood for a bit.
I thought I saw a tiny hummingbird in a flower bed, and spent several minutes trying to catch a photo of it. This blurry image is about the best I could do. But I now think that it was probably a hummingbird hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum).
September 7th: In the morning we headed for the ferry out to the island of Vis.
The plan was to relax and unwind after two busy and physically hard weeks touring Iceland. But when we arrived, we had to drag more weight each than a Marine carries into combat, nearly a mile, slightly uphill, to reach our apartment.
At least parts of the hike were shady.The apartment was spacious and very white.
Vis is probably most famous in America as the filming site of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018). I’ll probably have to rewatch it now to see what locations I can recognize.
For dinner we went to Restoran Val on the waterfront. The catch of the day included monkfish, which I had first sampled as sushi in Iceland.
The catch-of-the day selection. The two flat brownish fish in the center with wide gaping mouths are monkfish. I chose the smaller one (underneath on the left).Carol had wild boar stew with gnocchi; we shared a side of roasted vegetables.
Cooked monkfish was nearly as good as the sushi. If you get the chance to try it, you should.
September 8th: A lazy morning. We split a pizza for lunch.
anchovies, capers, zucchini, and cherry tomatoes
September 9th: Another ćevapi for lunch.
In the afternoon we had refresher scuba dives. I hadn’t dived in about 7 years. I didn’t take the GoPro because my instructor didn’t want me distracted, which was probably a good idea, but we did see two octopi that I can’t show you. 😦 On the way back we stopped at a boat bunker from the Tito era. Vis has a lot of military installations from the cold war.
September 10th: Sandwiches at Kavana Riva for lunch. (“kava” means coffee, “kavana” means cafe or coffee shop.)
I had a club sandwich, which came with a balsamic drizzle, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
Then two scuba dives. Vis harbor is one of 4 places in the Mediterranean where you can legally dive to see amphorae from old Greek and Roman shipwrecks.
Diving is easy. Dragging all your gear to and from the dive is a pain in the butt.There were lots of small fish.I saw my first polychaete worm, probably a Bearded Fireworm (Hermodice carunculata).Carol sees her first broken amphorae.Me, thinking up some bad pun about “jugs”.Buoyancy control is hard, but I can “handle” it. 🙂Perhaps a crackpot. A mishaps’ cracked pots. Can you tell the difference?Carol sees her last broken amphorae.
At dinner I tried a lemongrass-flavored sparkling mineral water, Römerquelle Emotion Limunska Trava, and really liked it. It became my go-to drink on hot days. Römerquelle is bottled in Austria, sold only in Europe, and part of the Coca Cola family.
The harbor in the evening.
September 11th: Our day to drive around the island (counterclockwise). We rented a tiny car that surprisingly had plenty of legroom on the passenger side.
First stop was the 2nd-largest town on the island, Komiža (population about 1400). We considered staying there.
Komiža has a nice little beach.The rest of the harbor isn’t too bad either.
A bit further around the island, and higher up in the hills, we found the entrance to the “Tito Cave”, where Yugoslav partizans hid out during WWII. It’s actually a series of different caves, with overlook posts guarding the approaches.
It looks innocent enough, but it’s 206 stairs up to the LOWEST cave.The lowest cave isn’t very large, just one room. We didn’t continue on to the others.Probably a Dalmatian Wall Lizard (Podarcis melisellensis). Maybe subtype gigas since that’s native to Vis.
Then we drove as high as we could get by car, without entering the restricted military base on top of the mountain.
From near the summit we could see most of the island. The south side (to the right) has good sun and is mostly agricultural, with many vineyards. There’s a large solar power installation.We had lunch at Aerodrom Gostionica Wine House. I had a tuna-pasta salad, Carol went for the cheese sampler plate.
Then we went looking for the local nude beach. This sign clearly wasn’t for it; FKK = Freikörperkultur (“free body culture”), a prominent German naturism/nudism movement started in the 1800s, which has become shorthand for nudism across much of Europe despite the tendency to use English for everything else.
But we couldn’t see how else to proceed, so we ended up reaching the water in the wrong place, and had to hike over wet uneven rocks.
The actual nude beach was about as far beyond that point as the point is from the camera.
Once we found it, it was rocky with almost no shade, because it’s a south-facing beach and it was early afternoon. We saw a few other couples and singles around, some swimming, some just sunbathing. There was pretty good snorkeling, with some deep pockets just offshore.
On the way back, we tried going higher, and found a better route that included a small bunker.
Carol even hiked out nude until we got close to people.
Naughty bits redacted.
In the evening we saw Shang-Chi in an outdoor theater. Half the movie was in Chinese with Croatian subtitles, which made it challenging.
September 12th: Carol went snorkeling in the morning while I rested and blogged.
This nice beach was walking distance from our apartment
Then it was time to pack up and drag our stuff back to the ferry. But we broke up the slog by having lunch at Bistro Frutarija.
The food is great, but they’re particularly renowned for their smoothies and fresh juices. I got the Avocado Toast, but here am finishing Carol’s Mango & Sea Bass Salad.
After that it was just travel. Hike to ferry, take ferry to Split, hike to bus terminal, take bus to Zadar, hike to our new apartment, eat something, and sleep.
Energy and Time 