West Coast Italy to West Coast Croatia

Tuesday 1st September

Bog (Croatian for hello)

We drove from San Felice Circeo through Naples to Pompeii…never in our entire lives have we seen as much rubbish on the sides of the roads or as much graffiti – just amazing. Southern Italy is very like Southern Spain with lots of market gardens in desert like conditions and very poor. Pompeii itself is very similar – although around the ruins was very well kept. We went into the ruins first thing in the morning as it opened, when it was slightly cooler and much fewer people – it is hard to believe that Pompeii was a resort town for the wealthy when it was built before Mt Vesuvius erupted and covered the town with 6m of ash in 79AD. It is very very hard to describe how people lived within the town walls and the terror that the eruption caused and the huge loss of life – the only way for us to share this with you will be the photos. We were also surprised how big an area it is – it covers 66 hectares of which only 45 have been excavated. As I mentioned we were there at opening time so our first photos we feel privileged to have as there really was hardly any people there at all – when we left 3 hours later it was hard to move with all the tourists.

From Pompeii we travelled south to Salerno where we had a couple of nights which enabled us to visit the Amalfi Coast which is 50km of sheer rock cliff that has been used to create villages. We took the ferry to Amalfi which was great day trip for us – whilst the Amalfi was similar to Cinque Terre, it was great to see it all from the sea.

Friday saw us travelling from east coast of Italy (Salerno) to the west coast Bari and boarding an 11.30pm ferry sailing for Dubrovnik (Croatia). We arrived in Dubrovnik at 9.00am – so a 9 ½ hour trip of which we slept most of it. We had a night out on the town Saturday which was spent in the Old City which is a fortified city and was a great place to sit and sip the local beer/wine and people watch. Sunday we climbed one of the forts and were rewarded with some spectacular views over the Adriatic Seas and the Old Town. Brent then walked around the city walls whilst Rae went to look at the shops which were closed on the Saturday night. Some great photos from this old town. This time being in a different country we are also using different currency – so grocery shopping is taking a while again.

From Dubrovnik we headed north to Zaostrog, a quaint little village with great beaches, restaurants and cafes – we spent a couple of nights here just relaxing.

I am writing this from a really little village called Sparadici, just north of Split – we are staying right across the road from the small beach with a beautiful sunset. The drive up the coast has been spectacular – the clean turquoise waters and blue skies with lots of islands. We will only stay here 1 night and move on as there are so many little villages, coves and islands along the west coast of Croatia yet to explore.

Dovidenja (Croatian for Goodbye)