Trusting your Tour Guide

Nearby Maastricht is Fort Sint Pieter.  The fort was built around 1700 and saw a lot of action, given its very strategic, central location.

Nearby are caves, which are actually mines.  A point if you can guess what was mined here!  Caves as you might think are unusual in the Netherlands, and for some reason, calling your underground labyrinth a cave rather than a mine draws more tourists.  Shrug.

Heading underground with our tourguide.

The mines have a very rich history.  The excavation of the mines started in a haphazard fashion when individual farmers or landowners would mine directly underneath what they owned.  (This is the area you can see to the right on the map below, where the tunnels look completely random.)  Later, the church, which owned more land, undertook a more systematic exploration of the tunnels, where paths met at right angles (the area on the left of the map).  Imagine getting lost in here!    

But the history of these mines gets only more interesting.  During many times over the course of history, the mines were used as places for people to hide and take shelter.  The mines hosted a chapel, bakery, and a hospital during WWII.  They were tons of charcoal drawings, and some of these date from the time of WWII, showing which areas served which purpose.

After the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the Nazis also used these caves.  They had occupied Amsterdam and the famous Rijksmuseum, which hosted hundreds of priceless pieces of art.  Because they also did not want to damage the pieces of art by moving them all back to Germany during the war, the Nazis used these tunnels as a safe storage place, somewhere they could keep the paintings and then move them to Germany at a later time.

This is the door leading into the chamber where many of these paintings were stored.  

Walking into vault.

The paintings were stored on movable wire "walls" that could be slid on tracks, keeping everything safe.  This particular portion of the cave was also climate controlled with an air conditioning system that was state of the art at the time.

You may be wondering what happened to the very famous "Night Watch" by Rembrandt during this time.  If you ever have seen this painting in person - it is huge - nearly 12 feet high and more than 14 feet long.  It was far too large to be stored on these walls, so instead, it was wrapped in oriental carpets and placed in the corner.  It was someone's job every day to turn a crank so that the painting/rug roll was rotated by 90 degrees every day, so that it was not permanently deformed.  After the Netherlands was liberated, the art was restored back to its home in the Rijksmuseum.

Paintings were not the only things on the walls - there was also graffiti, dating back to at least the 1950s...

Through the tunnels.

Our tour guide is briefing us on what we are about to do.  He's going to turn off the lights.  Ok, no big deal, I've been in caves and mines so many times and I've experienced complete darkness so I wasn't worried.  But then he said we are going to walk through the caves without light.  In the pitch blackness.

Let me tell you this - walking in the dark is completely different than just being in the dark.

He had us walk down the tunnel you see behind us with one hand on the wall.  My brain knew that he wouldn't have us walk down a tunnel that had any dropoffs, or pieces of rock hanging from the ceiling, or sharp turns.   But my brain was also causing rising panic.  Ok, I kept my cool.  Still, it was quite an experience, and a lot scarier than I thought it would be.

Into the tunnel, blind.  Notice the painting behind our tour guide.

Bram, our light carrier, checks out some of the paintings.

Hay Ride Horror

Happy Halloween!  To celebrate, here's a short film that I made (my first!)  Even better, Joey and Danelle did not know that I was going to edit this into a "film" as I recorded it.  Filmed on location in a corn maze somewhere in Maryland, Danelle leads us into the corn maze - who will make it out alive?

I present - Hay Ride Horror

On the Open Ocean and Other Tales of Peril

Heading further down the coast, we ended up in Split, where we rented kayaks and paddled out around a peninsula that is one of the big parks in the city.

Take to the sea!

Sea kayaking is one of my favorite things.  There is nothing like just a thin slab of plastic between you and the watery deep, paddling furiously to orient yourself so your boat doesn't flip in the wake of a larger and more motorized boat, and starting a friendly argument with your husband on what is the most effective paddling technique.

Our first stop was a small isolated sandy beach.

Here we stopped for a snorkeling break!  Even though the water was filled with life, few of them were photogenic enough to actually be caught on camera.  But there were a few photogenic creatures.
A sea cucumber, nestled among the rocks.  There were hundreds of them!

Some weird tubular thing.

A point if you can name it.

Next, back in the kayak and continued to paddle around the peninsula.  Our guide leads us around some steep rocky cliffs.

An old fortress on the cliffs.

A beautiful cliff... so beautiful, my husband is not happy just to look at it...

Rather, he wants to climb it!  He swims on over...

And begins to climb (even with wet tennis shoes and clothes!)

Go Bram go!  This was one of the items on Bram's bucket list - deep water soloing (climbing without a rope over water, so if you fall, you land in the water).  

Many people asked: did he fall?  Here's your answer:

splash!

But he's not easily discouraged, and he's back on the rock.

Then we got back in the kayaks and headed into the main port of Split.  It was really something to kayak next to cruise boats!  Ieee!

Our first view of downtown Split - approaching it from the water - the way it should be.  :-)

May God Have Mercy On Your Soul

Heading south along the coast of Croatia...

Our destination was Trogir.  It was established by the Greeks in the 3rd century BC.  It survived under the rule of various countries and cultures, including the Venetians.  Trogir is on a little island a short distance from the mainland (you need to cross a very short bridge to get there).

Beyond the island of Trogir is lies another island, Čiovo, a much larger island that is mostly empty.  Yet around the outskirts of Čiovo is a labyrinth of the most terrifying streets I have ever drove on.  Both Bram and I decided that these streets were more terrifying than the narrow, hedge lined roads of Wales, the maze and untranslatable signs of Naxos, and even the navigation nightmares of France. Yes, in Čiovo, the roads have names, but they are not actually marked anywhere.  Bram, using the GPS blinkie blue dot, directed me through the maze with the patience of a saint.  The roads were two directional but barely wide enough for two cars.  On either side of the roads were concrete walls. Then, of course, nothing was flat, so the roads either climbed precariously up the hill, or descended perilously down through the tunnel of concrete.  The speed limit is something like 30 km/hour, but the locals all go at least 60, appearing suddenly from behind the concrete wall.  I would have to stop, back up to where the road was wide enough to allow us both to pass, or, if they weren't patient enough, I would start praying as I drove as close as possible to the concrete wall while they barely squeezed past me on the other side, all the time thankful that I bought extra insurance for the rental car! Every time I climbed to the top of a hill, my cheap rental car began to thrum and vibrate, threatening to die.  Of course, this little island is where our hotel was located, so we needed to make this trip at least two times a day! Needless to say, it was a fun trip.

Finding the hotel in the first place was also an adventure.  Since the names of the roads aren't marked, we went to where we believed the hotel to be, and instead found a house of a local family.  Not knowing what else to do, Bram walked through the yard and knocked at the outside of the house.  A very nice local man came out.  He didn't speak English, but Bram pointed to our hotel confirmation paper trying to explain we were looking for this hotel.  Apparently we were not the first lost tourists to show up in his yard - he had the hotel on speed dial.  He called them and then the nice man walked us to the hotel which was actually about 200 meters in a different direction.

Čiovo

In this picture, you can see Čiovo behind the island of Trogir.  Everyone who wants to go from Trogir or Čiovo to the mainland has to cross a choke point - a single bridge that links both the islands of Trogir and Čiovo to the rest of the mainland.  At the end of this bridge is an intersection that doesn't have any traffic lights, or indeed any sign, save for the "stop" painted on the ground for one of the roads that leads into the intersection.  But, since it's on the ground, it's safe to ignore, right?  Needless to say, no one entering this intersection wants to stop.  Instead, everyone proceeds at once into a jumble in the middle, containing cars, bikes, tourists on foot, busses, and even an occasional donkey, and then somehow they sort themselves out on the other end.  As we approached this intersection, my amazing husband who was navigating took one look at the map, one look at the intersection, and then said to me, "Turn left.  And may God have mercy on your soul."

I've been to India, so I know scary roads when I see them.  This was like a microcosm of India, centered over a single intersection.

Adventures continued back at the hotel that night.  Of course, the internet didn't work.  I was trying to plan an excursion for later on in the week, and had been emailing the company back and forth, so I took the computer out of the hotel to another hotel down the road that let us use their internet. However, on attempting to leave our hotel, I discovered we were locked in!

The hotel room we were in shared a building with many other apartments.  Bram knocked on each of them, but no one responded, even though we could hear the TV from one of them.  I called the owners of the hotel.  Another man answered, and explained that the owners were out for the evening at a wedding.
"Could you call back tomorrow?" he asked.
"No, I'm locked in the building."
"What?" he said incredulously.
He then ran down the street to our building.  I stood on the deck and yelled down at him, explaining how the front door was locked and we were trapped inside.  He ran back, and came back with a set of about a thousand keys, and proceeded to try each of them at the door.  Of course none of them worked.  He ran back again looking for more keys, when the friendly neighbor across the street noticed the ruckus.  As he came back, she asked him what was going on.  I don't understand Croatian, but I was pretty sure that she was telling him that there was someone in the building besides us - she could hear TV.  She tried all of the doorbells for the apartments in the building while he tried additional keys.  Then the neighbor started yelling up to the apartment whose TV was blaring.  At about the same time, the guy finally found a key that worked, and the neighbor with the loud TV came down and explained that she locked the door because she thought everyone who went in this building had a key (a logical assumption).  Now that we were free, I asked the guy in charge if we could have the key so this wouldn't happen again.  He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and explained how it wasn't his key, and if it was lost on his watch it would be his fault.  The neighbor slapped him on the side of the head and said something in Croatian which I can only assume translates roughly as "You moron - just give her the key."

Needless to say, we got the key, and were able to sleep soundly knowing if there was a fire, we could escape the building.

Anyways, back to pictures.  Besides all of this excitement, Trogir is a really nice place - a tiny, pretty town with narrow cobbled streets.

The clock tower.

Near the sea is the "fish market", which was built in the 1500s and used to be a customs house.

Beautiful back alleys of Trogir.

Trogir is a very popular destination for yachts.  Many yachts lined up parking lot style to resupply.  We saw people load everything from food to a flotilla of bicycles onto these yachts.  It's interesting to see how the super rich vacation. A week on a boat like this could cost as much as $100,000!

My yacht

Oh look, my other yacht!

Actually, they are all my yachts!

That evening, on the sea, my husband, who normally doesn't like fish, decided to give fish a try once again, since he enjoyed the fish on our island cruise so much.  After all, on the edge of the sea - what a better place to try fish!  He was especially adventurous and tried a plate of mussels!

On our way to our next destination.

The road leading away from Trogir.

Frostbite and Natural Selection

The Golden Circle is a route in southern Iceland encompassing some of the more impressive geological sites that can be reached within a day trip of Iceland.  The geysers were a part of it.  Most of the Golden Circle, however, are waterfalls - impressively large cascades of water.  The first was the waterfall Faxi.

There was even a ladder for salmon to travel upstream.

A little ways up the road was the even more impressive waterfall Gullfoss.  This is one case where the pictures definetly don't do it justice - Gullfoss is the same order of magnitude of Niagra Falls and is actually two seperate waterfalls - one 11 meter high and the next 21 meter high.  The second waterfall disappears into a crevice, so the full extent of the second waterfall is hidden. 

Seeing Gullfoss in the wintertime was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.  The winter temperatures caused large sections of the waterfall to freeze, resulting in huge ice formations. 

It was so cold staring over the edge of Gullfoss, and I felt like I would soon turn into a frostbit tourist.  However, the beauty was hard to tear myself away from.

Icelanders believe in natural selection.  Therefore, there are no warning signs or similar measures to protect touists.  It also means that they don't put down any sand or salt anywhere, including the main tourist destination of Gullfoss.  If you fall, it's your own fault.  I suppose it explains why Icelanders are a tough, if small, populace.

Walking on ice

Interestingly enough, Gullfoss waterfall features in the music video of the popular song "Heaven" by Live, where two lovers are seperated by the mighty waterfall, and end up jumping into the river to be together.  This blog by no means endorces such a drastic action, especially near large bodies of potentially violent water.