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From Plitvice To The Wonders Of Šibenik
The time will soon come when we run out of superlatives for this country, such is its propensity to thrill, surprise and charm. Day 9, and we leave Mukinje, Plitvice and our host Kristina with heavy heart and head westwards towards the Adriatic and the Dalmatian coast. The lush and dramatic Lake District scenery soon gives way to a spectacular mountainside drive as our road perches on a ledge way above the land below, dropping eventually to the outskirts of Zadar. From here the E8 turns south, now hugging the beautiful coastline for a different type of incredible scenery. We pause for lunch at the ridiculously quaint seaside town of…
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Plitvice: Deep Gorges and Gorgeous Villages
About a 40 minute drive north of Mukinje is the incredibly picturesque village of Rastoke, which is so utterly charming that it’s difficult to know where to start to describe it in words. But we’ll give it a go…. Two rivers converge in the village, but one, the Slunjcica, enters at high level from the mountains; the other, the Korana, flows in from the bottom of the deep gorge and therefore at a much lower level. Consequently, the waters of the Slunjcica cascade down a series of waterfalls and rapids, flowing into the larger Korana in multiple places throughout the village. In fact, much of Rastoke is effectively built on…
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From The Sea To The Lakes
Saturday morning’s rainstorm has just about cleared by the time we pick up the hire car and head off on the road trip section of this adventure. With the Adriatic on all sides of the city bar one, the only way out by road is the steep climb up and over the mountains which form such a dramatic backdrop to this part of the Dalmatian coastline. For our journey northwards from Split, we ignore the motorways and head along smaller roads through great plateaux of green between the rolling hills, passing through quaint towns and sweeping valleys as we make our way towards Plitvicka Jezera, the Lake District of Croatia.…
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Our Split Shift
Red tiled rooftops descend the slopes down towards the sun soaked bay of deep blue waters, restaurants and bars line the well heeled seafront promenade, ancient characterful buildings speak of troubled pasts and fierce pride in equal measure. The labyrinthine old town, nestling between the mostly still standing walls of the ancient palace which form a perfect square around its perimeter, oozes spirit and character from its every stone. Tiny cramped streets lead you to inviting piazzas, the crumbling stone gates of the old city open out on to the waterfront esplanade known by locals as the Riva, swifts fill the warm air feeding their young nesting in holes in…
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Split Decision
It’s four months now since we escaped Vietnam as the world closed its doors and our dream year of travelling fell apart after just 49 days and 3 countries. For the most part we have spent the intervening 123 days keeping ourselves safe and watching developments, always with one eye on borders reopening and controls loosening. And at last things are moving. The UK now finds itself at the pinch point of weighing up a virus which has not yet gone away against a pressing need to reboot the economy, with the travel industry at the forefront of that reboot. This has seen the creation of so called “travel corridors”,…
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Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These…
……strange days indeed…. It seems impossible that it was only a week ago today that matters really started to unravel and it became more and more obvious that we needed to get out of Vietnam. Such is the unique nature of life in the UK just now that it seems a lot more than five days since we arrived home. There’s not really much point dwelling on our lost dream, difficult as it may be for us, when the scale of what the world is dealing with right now is so immense. At the end of the day, when all this is history, we will, hopefully, be ready to pack…
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A-Z of Travel Preparation- Last Bit
And so as we enter the final weeks of work before retirement and with more than one eye on the start of our travels, we conclude our alphabet of all of those things to remember and to put into place before we go. U is for the Unknown. We are pretty organised people and consider ourselves to be pretty thorough, but there’s bound to be something we’ve forgotten. Something will crop up: either something we haven’t covered at home, something we haven’t organised for the trip, some little, or maybe big, detail we’ve omitted. It’s almost interesting to see what that something turns out to be. V is for Visas,…
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A-Z of Travel Preparation: Part 5
Continuing our summary of all the things to remember, and put in place, before we set off on our epic journeys in January. Q is for Quitting The Job. In our circumstances this has not been straightforward and far from just a matter of handing in a resignation, especially for me, Phil. Having launched a business back in 1995, I then partially sold the company into a larger Group in 2007 but stayed on as Managing Director right through to current times. So, such issues as a notice period in excess of 12 months, co-Directors, investors, shareholding etc all had to be sorted. It’s been a long road but we’re…
