Trains and Automobiles

We flew into Gatwick when we came back from Croatia. That airport is located basically south of London and can be about an hour by car. You can take a cab and pay a lot, or a bus and have some space issues lugging your suitcase, but for ease of travel, catch the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station. It leaves the Gatwick South Terminal (there is a tram or bus service between the terminals) every hour and costs about $15.








For those of us who generally do not use train service in the US, service like this are pretty amazing. Here in the US, the Northeast Corridor between Washington, DC and Boston has some pretty regular and often service, but the BritRail system is amazing.



London has five rail stations, each providing service out from London in a spoke-like system. Victoria Station is located in the southern section of the center of London and provides access to areas to the (duh) south. Graham used the St. Pancras station to catch his train to Nottingham to the north.





















How many of you ever read the Paddington Bear stories...about a poor little orphaned bear who is sent by himself on the train to his new home.....anyway, you can see a small statue there.

Each station has an underground access, so all you need to do is go down down down to be able to access the local transportation service.
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Entrances to the Underground stations vary in terms of construction styles. This one is pretty busy so it has a lot of space. There are also some shops right inside the entrance.
Automated ticket booths enable you to quickly purchase tickets. The machines use paper currency as well as credit cards. We discovered there, once again, that the US credit cards do not work because they do not have a chip embedded (yet). Fortunately, each station also had at least one window with a person to give directions as well as sell tickets. We found that buying a daily pass for each of the 3 full days we were in London saved us considerable money. When I was there 10 years ago and was in London for a full week, I bought a week's pass.




Some stations had escalators but most still have steps and most are not handicapped accessible, although I noticed more this time than 10 years ago.









Mind the Gap = Watch your step... a simple warning but it just sounds so nice with a British accent.





















Maps in the station as well as in each underground train car make it easy to know where to change lines and which train to board, if there are several lines at the same station.



























This was for a cell phone plan.




I was amused to see an ad for Jack Daniels in several underground stations.

















Some signs referred people to check the Underground's website for weekend line closures for maintenance. The Saturday we were there one of the main central lines was shut for maintenance and we still could get everywhere we needed to go, although the routing was more out of the way and it took a bit longer.

















Crowds varied by time of day as well as which line and the areas of service. The trains run very often, in fact this seems like an amazingly effective people mover.
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UPS advertises its delivery service is worldwide. We saw this truck parked for his delivery along the Embankment in London and yes, he was wearing his brown uniform shorts.











We rode the buses in Dubrovnik quite a bit. Some were air conditioned.....many were not. We could buy our ticket on the bus but if we went to a small roadside kiosk that also sold candy, soft drinks and magazines, we could buy a discounted ticket. The tickets were fed into a small machine when you entered and returned to you. That stamped the ticket and if you needed to change buses or even wanted to return back on the same route within an hour, the ticket was still honored.







The classic double decker London buses are still very much in use although we did see some of what I call an accordion bus...basically a double bus with a flexible section connecting the two hard bodies, to aid in corner turning.














Cars for hire everywhere. Some of the London cabs were painted, advertising some tour or travel consideration. Many cabs, like the pink one, advertised travel to other countries in Europe.


























When we stopped at the woolen mill in Scotland, so Graham could order a kilt, the town was having an antique car rally.




















As you can imagine, what with the small roads and the tight parking spaces, motorcycles and scooters are very popular.


















So many car models in Great Britain and Croatia are not commonly seen here in the US. And some that are considered to be quite high end here are pretty common there.
















This Ferrari, parked outside our hotel in the Kensington area in London, was our favorite to spot.

Waiting for the ferry from the Isle of Mull back to Oban, we were amused to see both newer and older models of VW buses.

The Peljesac Peninsula

We rented a car and I drove up the "highway" to the Peljesac Peninsula...where we planned to visit friends both human and grape. The highway reminded me of California 101...it hugged the mountains high above the water, following the curves and causing some white knuckles depending on which way we were
headed.

Ston was a great surprise. I had read about the salt fields...the place for millenia the people had prepared salt from the sea water for culinary use. What surprised me was the walls..oh my, it looked like the Great Wall of China!!!




Unlike the walled city of Dubrovnik, this area had a huge, undeveloped area protected by walls to keep invaders away from capturing the salt fields. Think about it....eons ago, salt was the medium of pay...hence the word salary from the same root word as salt. Being "worth your salt" meant you would be paid (in salt) the value of your work efforts.



















The town showed more evidence of the Homeland War than we saw in Dubrovnik..more abandoned structures and more signs of walls pockmarked with bullets and mortar shells. However, there was a strong tourist trade with many restaurants. We ate in one where the owner had returned home after years on the seas, as a captain, and we enjoyed, once again, some wonderfully albeit simply prepared seafood.

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So why did we travel to Orebic? (Pronounced Ore-bich) It is a love story........

Both of Carol's parents were from Croatia...and she traveled here several times as a kid and young adult, meeting her extended family and falling in love with the region. She treasures Orebic.

Her dad was the first to go to the US....I am foggy if she told me when he emigrated, but suffice it to say, as he grew older, he wanted to marry and he arranged, through a marriage broker, to meet a young woman in Orebic to become his bride.

He traveled there, met her, and in dismay within a few minutes, realized it would never work and thank goodness, he apologized and started walking back along the seaside back to his friend's house. He chanced upon a young woman, who came to fill her family's water jars at the town fountain. They chatted for a short while...10 minutes, 30 minutes, it really was short so the specifics may be fuzzy to me...but suffice it to say, he eventually asked her "Come to America with me".

She thought about what was known to be her future....her father had promised her to an old man whose house was halfway up the mountain. (Old, was he 30 to her late teenage years??? or 50?? Regardless, with him came his aged mother.) She thought about what her life would entail....twice daily walks down the mountain with climbs back up, winter and summer, cold and hot weather, rain or shine, to get water, to buy food, and to work, until she was old and decrepit, in the same routine faced by women for millenia. She said YES!!! She went home and her mother told her to get moving, as her father would return from his sea voyage sometime soon. So a few weeks later, they married and made their way to Ohio, where first Carol's sister and then Carol were born.
This is THE fountain, where Carol's mother was collecting water for her family...and will forever be a special place in the Sosa family legend.
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In Orebic we stayed with a dear friend of Carol's, Brazo (pronounced Brat-zo) who was a ship's captain for many years and circumnavigated the globe 3 or 4 times. He had souvenirs from his journeys displayed throughout his house.



















His garden was complete with vegetables and trees, such as lemons, oranges, and olives.

This is a good time to tell you how close knit many Croatian families are. Someone builds a house, as Brazo did, with a full apartment on the first floor. Sometimes, this is all that can be built until more money is saved. Then the second floor is built, and sometimes a 3rd or a 4th. Each floor provides a separate apartment, a complete living space, for the next generation to live in once they are adults. There are many houses that contain 2 or 3 or 4 generations of the same family, each in their own apartment, but all under one roof. Brazo built the second floor for his daughter and her husband, but circumstances lead them to remain with his family, a few blocks away. However, Brazo takes care of his granddaughter, Lilly, named after his wife who died years ago. And so it goes.
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We did go swimming...actually we got into the waters of the Adriatic 4 times. It was cool at first but very refreshing. This was a mostly sand beach, but you still needed water shoes as there were stones on the beach and rocks in the water, and sea urchins where there were rocks.

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Kortula is the small walled city (sometimes compared to Dubrovnik because of the wall) across from Orebic. Kortula is also the name of the island where the small city is located. It boasts a ship yard where in times past there was much industry building boats and ships to ply the waters of the Adriatic and the world.

We did not have the time to take the ferry across, but it is there to be enjoyed by tourists for an hour or two, before returning by ferry to Orebic.

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High up the mountain above Orebic, the view from the church is impressive. The coastline ship traffic shows how frequent ferries provide access to nearby communities. The kayaking photo shows the color of the pristine waters.














So, this kind of cemetery was a new concept for me. Consider, please, that I grew up in the New York metropolitan area where sometimes the only HUMONGOUS green area (think driving north on the Garden State Parkway through the Oranges or in some areas along the BQE in Brooklyn or Queens) is a cemetery. Here in the US we take acres and acres to plant our dead in coffins buried 6 feet down. Where families tend to think this way, adjacent plots are purchased for sometimes ridiculously high prices. Regardless, think of the normal course of action and really, this Old World concept makes a lot of sense.

Consider instead this church high above the town of Orbevic, where a family plot means one, maybe up to three burial plots. Where the newly dead is interred inside the same vault as prior loved ones, unless the most recent departed happened less than a year ago, and then the newly deceased person is interred in a temporary crypt until which time there is room in the family crypt. Those families that can afford a small structure instead of interment in the ground, do so. In many ways, it seems that the town moved up the mountainside, and neighbors are near neighbors, once again and for eternity.























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Grapes grow in many areas of Croatia and the Dalmatian Coast. In fact, there are over 300 identified wine regions in Croatia. Grape growing, harvesting and wine making have been a practice for millennia, but the Peljasic Peninsula in particular is well known for its Postup wines from the Plavac Mali grape. Studies have shown that California's zinfandel grape is definitely related to the plavac mali grape from this region.

Brazo's daughter works at one of the wineries and was happy to meet us and help us through some tastings. The wine was superb.....we were particularly blown away by the white wine we liked, especially when we calculated its price to be $8 USD. Admirable drinkable table wine in Europe is so much more accessible than here.