Tag: travel blog

Croatia 2023: Starigrad Paklenica, Mirila hike

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Monday 3 July

Following the stress of preparing for our last minute holiday, it was blissful to wake up in our peaceful Croatian apartment with no urgent responsibilities. I did battle with the window blind and the coffee machine, two of my arch-nemeses (objects that I always struggle to operate, no matter the make/model), and ate cereal while Ryan worked on getting up.

Starigrad town

Our plan was to walk into central Starigrad on a reconnaissance mission – a term I used to help justify a relaxing day in this wild, exciting country – to gather information on the area and obtain a local map. We left the apartment at 9am and headed down the road towards the sea, drinking in everything about the place: the constant croaky hum of cicadas, the generously spaced out buildings, the variety of shrubs and trees, the clean streets and the hot sun. Most houses were painted white or cream, with red tiled rooves, verandas and shuttered windows. The gardens contained large, stone-chimneyed outdoor ovens, seating areas and abundant vegetable patches filled with all kinds of produce, and several residents had set up little stalls selling homemade jams, liqueurs, oils and home-grown fruit and veg. I was instantly sold on the place.

We walked past houses, campsites, cafes, supermarkets, restaurants and a petrol station, all lined up along the main E65 road through the long, narrow town, which is sandwiched between the Velebit mountains and a large inlet of the Adriatic Sea. On reaching the town centre we were drawn straight to the water, which was calm and impossibly clear. Little boats were moored in little quays and a small tourist market spread along the wide waterfront walkway, but – unlike other places we’ve visited – nobody tried to draw us in, despite our apparently obvious Englishness (throughout the week lots of people greeted us with “hello” rather than the Croatian “dobar dan”).

Remembering our mission, we peeled away from the inviting water and headed for the tourist information centre across the road. We picked up some leaflets and free maps, which we perused on a little wall outside. One of them described a 3-mile circular hike from Starigrad to the Mirila, a series of stone monuments in the Velebit foothills dedicated to the departed relatives of local people. I pitched the idea to Ryan, who must have inwardly rolled his eyes before agreeing.

Starigrad-Mirila hiking trail

We returned to the little market to buy a much-needed pair of sunglasses each, then headed up a peaceful, residential street to the start of the hike, examining the sun-drenched, productive, leafy gardens along the way. We followed a quiet road which climbed above the town, tried some not-quite-ripe fruit from a wild fig tree, and stopped at a viewpoint to gaze contentedly at the view. Orange rooves sprawled among lush trees, and we looked across the flat, blue water to the stretch of semi-arid mainland on the other side of the inlet. In, that moment, we knew that the hassle of travelling was well worthwhile.

We left the road and took a narrow gravel trail into the Velebit foothills and Paklenica National Park. It didn’t take long for me to regret – for once – wearing flip flops, as they became quite greasy under my hot feet and much of the route involved balancing across large, uneven boulders, but the karst limestone was too sharp to go barefoot. This, however, wasn’t my main concern: I was busy concentrating on not being bitten, having glimpsed a sandy brown snake (which I retrospectively identified as probably a balkan whip or aesculapian – both non-venomous) slither into a crevice a few metres away.

I struggled along, holding Ryan up for once, but I was far too happy to turn back. The way was marked by intermittent red paint on the rocks and required some careful route-finding – at one point we lost it in a boulderfield, so Ryan acted as scout while I examined a snakeskin and fended off a large hornet. We were keen not to stray as I’d read of unexploded land mines off the trails within Paklenica, but thankfully we regained the path and continued up the hill. I developed a snake-scaring tactic, which involved picking up handfuls of stones and tossing them onto the path a short way ahead to frighten off any lurking creatures prior to the arrival of my feet – this seemed to work, as apart from a few scratches I remained unscathed and unbitten.

After about a mile of this precarious fun we reached the mirila stones, which are set in a kind of basin between the hills of Mali Vitrenik and Veliki Vitrenik. This was our first taste of Paklenica’s beautiful wilderness: high, rounded hills of pale grey rock and dark green shrub dominated the landscape and the valley ahead of us brimmed with lush vegetation, filled with the ever-present buzz of cicadas. The bare, 350m vertical face of Anica Kuk instantly drew our attention, rising prominently above the valley and looking – from a climber’s point of view – both ominous and irresistible. We perceived (correctly, as we’d find out that coming Thursday) that Paklenica would become a very special place.

The stones themselves are small and so in-fitting that they could almost be missed among the textured, busy scenery. They were placed by the people of the mountain hamlets in the 17th to 20th centuries in memory of their loved ones, and the tradition was that the bodies must be carried there without stopping – a strenuous task – to greet the sun for the last time. Stone tablets were laid at the head and feet (the people must have been quite short), carved with various symbols, then the bodies were returned to local graveyards. It was believed that the souls of the deceased would remain at the site of the mirila, which the families visited more often than the actual graves.

There were several of these stones dotted around a small area, and I found the markings – mostly circles and crosses, some celtic-looking – mysterious and very interesting. It felt serene, poignant and strangely humbling, and I informed Ryan of my desire for a similar ritual in the event of my inevitable snake-induced demise.

After a thorough and respectful poke around we headed back down another rocky path towards Starigrad. I was interrupted during a “wild wee” (as my mum calls it) by the jingling of a large, multicoloured goatherd passing across the valley above us, led by a tanned, bare-chested man wielding a crook, the first person we’d seen since setting out on the mountain trail. The way down was otherwise uneventful and very pleasant, save for my continued struggle across rocks in sweaty flip flops, which I had to fix a few times after pulling the strap through the sole – this was very frustrating.

We were back on tarmac after about a mile, and as we walked through quiet streets we observed yet more thriving vegetable gardens thick with tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, grapevines and – strangely, I thought – cabbages. I was delighted to find a scarce swallowtail butterfly, retrospectively identified, basking on the street, with large, zebra-striped wings and two long tail points. We returned to the town centre and went straight to the sea for a dip.

First swim

The waterfront at Starigrad was unlike any I’ve seen. A wall stretched along the length of the perfect little town, with a 4-5 foot drop down to the clear, blue water, and the walkways were peppered with trees, flowers, benches and bins. Small, square concrete sections jutted into the sea at regular intervals, providing moorings for several boats, separated by slipways and little grey pebble beaches. Because the front was broken up in this way, it never felt too busy despite lots of people – mostly Croatians on holiday, it seemed – having set up inflatable mats (there was no sand) and towels.

We followed a wide walkway from the little tourist market to a small, empty beach between two mooring blocks and settled on the wall. Houses, a small restaurant and a pretty cream church were set back from the water on the other side of a quiet road, and I watched a young man on a moped cross himself as he rode past – the majority of Croatian people are Catholic.

I was in the sea within minutes and wore flip flops until it was deep enough to swim, as I’d read of painful sea urchins and noticed that children, paddleboarders and bobbers-around were all wearing water shoes. Once treading water I awkwardly fastened them to my bikini, then went exploring. The water was mild – a great relief in the 30 degree heat – and incredibly clear. Little fish shoaled and sniffed around, avoiding me, and I could see spiky urchins and squishy anemones among the pebbles at the bottom. Warm and cool currents came and went as I swam about, and I didn’t get far from the shore before it got too deep to see the bottom.

A balmy afternoon/evening

After my dip I munched crisps on the wall while Ryan bobbed around, then we headed back to the apartment via a little climbing shop, where I bought a map of Paklenica. We drank fruity cider and had an early dinner of sheep cheese ravioli (delicious), then sat out on the veranda and did our first real bit of holiday planning. We sprawled maps, leaflets and books across the table, ate slices of melon and came up with a rough itinerary for the rest of the trip.

In the evening we walked up the road towards the official entrance to Paklenica, which was just 15 minutes from our apartment. Its towering, lumpy rock faces loomed invitingly above the large houses on the outskirts of the town, where locals lounged on verandas as they watched the world go by and enjoyed the balmy air. A series of old stone buildings sat quaintly below the vast backdrop of the national park, the town’s final outpost before the great, rocky canyon that cleaves southern Paklenica in two, and people drank on a square of decking under a leafy tree. There was a lovely, quiet buzz of community where everybody seemed to spend the evening casually socialising outdoors, rather than tucked up in their homes.

We turned left onto a quiet, leafy road and returned to the seafront along attractive residential streets, noting again how spaced out the houses were – no greedy developers rubbed their hands together for a few square feet in this undefiled place. We stood on the sea wall and watched the sun dip behind smooth lilac clouds, then fall into the flat sea at the toe of a long, jagged mountain ridge that rose up high behind the town. In finding Starigrad, we’d stumbled across a little slice of paradise.

Girona, Spain: Exploring the City

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7 July 2022

We decided to spend our first full day exploring the city after the fiasco we’d been through to get into Spain (read here). We left the room quite late, about 10.30am, and walked through the beautiful, quiet, cobbled streets of Old Town to the cathedral, which was barely 10 minutes from our apartment.

Cathedral

We wound through medieval stone streets, past a large round turret, under a huge arch and into a castle-like courtyard. Girona Cathedral loomed above us up a flight of about a hundred wide steps, a vast, majestic building with a clean-lined, simple shape but incredible intricacy in the stone details and carved figures that watch over the city. I could see why it was chosen as a set for Game of Thrones, with its perfectly preserved, timeless grandeur.

We climbed the stairs and paid for entry (€7 each), which included a free recorded audio tour – this turned out to be well worth doing. We entered the enormous, striking Gothic nave and learnt how it was the widest of its kind in the world: the architects had decided to forego the two columned aisles usually found on either side of a cathedral. An enormous wooden organ stood in the middle behind models of the cathedral’s development, and the edges were lined with 28 different chapels dedicated to saints. They all had unique stories and contained varying styles of carving, painting and sculpture, some dramatically ornate and some strikingly simple.

After about 45 minutes walking around the nave listening to the audio tour, we went through to the cloisters, the columned walk that encloses a grassy outdoor courtyard on all four sides. My favourite part was the several wide columns pointed out by the audio guide, each of which were engraved with 360 degree carvings telling biblical stories. We went up some stone stairs into a room featuring pieces of stained glass from different periods, then back down and out of the cloisters into the tapestried, chandeliered Chapel of Hope, where the lavish, gold-gilded “bed of the Assumption of Mary” sat under a high-ceilinged tower.

The last bit took us into the cathedral treasury museum, which contained various religious artefacts – sculptures, paintings, silverware, chests and manuscripts – and notably the fascinating 12th century Creation Tapestry, depicting the months and seasons. It was all so interesting that I almost wish I’d taken notes to remember it all. We left through a corridor back onto the façade overlooking the medieval square and the red-tiled city rooves, nearly two hours after we’d entered, and went off to find some lunch.

Lunch

We walked through the pretty, cool stone streets of Old Town, crossed the river and went to Placa de la Independencia, the large, restaurant-lined square we’d found the previous night. We sat down for lunch at Konig, a reasonably priced restaurant (we decided it was possibly the Wetherspoons of Girona, but no complaints), and I had a smoked salmon, avocado and ricotta bagel while Ryan had some kind of rice, pepper and calamari salad. A couple of glasses of sangria made me quite tipsy – I blame the heat – and we relaxed (to my initial agitation) there for a while before heading off to find the city wall walk.

Medieval Walls

We went back across the river, through the old streets and behind the cathedral, where incredibly tall, thin cypress trees stood over high stone walls, little public gardens and criss-crossing footpaths. On our way up some steps we bumped into a friendly local who told us his favourite spot in Girona to get a good view of the city, so we followed his directions down the hill and up some steep steps onto a high, narrow wall near the John Lennon gardens. We walked along this wall to the highest point, where we stopped to look over the city. The cathedral sat on a hill, the highest point in Girona, and dominated the foreground, along with the high stone tower of the San Felix Basilica. Tiled rooves sprawled between swathes of bright green trees, and the horizon was shaped by distant, hazy blue mountains. It was as stunning as the heat was stifling.

We backtracked along the wall and through the peaceful John Lennon gardens, then headed east along a path set between tall, lush trees towards the main medieval wall, pausing to look at a pair of striking green monk parakeets perched on a branch above us. We got to a large stone tower by the Jardins dels Alemanys and climbed the stairs inside to the top. We stood on the tower and stared across the terracotta rooves of Old Town, large modern blocks beyond the stone buildings, and layers of rolling mountains spanning the skyline, all interspersed with leafy vegetation.

The wall ran in a long, straight line with several towers spread along it, almost all of which we climbed. The views of the city were incredible, a mix of old and new, and somehow – despite the sprawling streets and mass of buildings – it seemed small set beneath the thickly forested hills. We bimbled along the length of the medieval walk, which took about half an hour with the tower stops, and climbed down the stairs at the other end, returning to the southern part of old town.

Old Town & Tapas

We took a rambling route back to the apartment through narrow, cobbled, litter-free streets, admiring the pretty, balconied, shuttered five-storey buildings of pastel orange, beige and bare stone that sat above a diverse array of little shops and restaurants. We got back about 5pm and went for a late siesta, exhausted by the heat. We headed back out around 8pm having realised the previous evening that the Spanish eat very late.

We crossed the carp-filled river and returned to the Konig bar on Placa de la Independencia for tapas. We shared potatoes with truffle cheese sauce, squid and scallop croquettes, beef strips with peppers, prawns in coconut, ginger and lime sauce, iberian ham croquettes, grilled octopus and a little bread basket, which seemed to come free with meals as standard. I wouldn’t normally order as much meat but I was desperate to try the local dishes. It was all very nice for only €40, including half a litre of Sangria and two pints of San Miguel. We ate, drank and people watched, charmed by the social, relaxed atmosphere – people of all ages were out until late and there was a nice, quiet buzz around the square.

We crossed back to Old Town over the bridge by the Basilica and walked through castle-like streets to see the cathedral at night. A bright, warm light accentuated its geometrical edges, detailed carvings and hundred steps, making it look even more striking than in daylight. It was lovely walking through the narrow stone back roads – although the bars and restaurants were bustling, particularly in the evening, there were plenty of quiet, timeless, totally empty little alleys and streets that we could dive down, where it felt as if we had the city to ourselves.

We shared a delicious vegan ice cream (one scoop each of passionfruit, snickers and caramel) on our way back to the apartment and found ourselves in a little square listening to a Catalonian three-man band, who sang and played guitar in that distinctive twangy, lively Spanish style. The music was lovely and we sat on a little wall behind the tables that spilled across the square, where people sat, sang and waved napkins to some well-known song. I was amusedly watching a chocolate labrador hoover the floor and be retrieved by its owner for the third or fourth time when a lady suddenly appeared in front of us offering a tray of small disposable cups, so we took one each and thanked her. It was some kind of hot, thin, strong, coffee flavoured alcohol, and after one sip I donated it to Ryan.

We went back to the apartment as the band packed up, amazed by the friendliness of people – the local who stopped to tell us his favourite spot in the city, an English-speaking man we befriended in the ice cream queue who recommended the Indian restaurant where we had our last meal of the trip and the lady who’d given us a free drink, despite us obviously only stopping in the square to listen to the music. I was quite taken with Girona.

Girona, Spain: First impressions

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5 – 6 July 2022

Poor planning

I had an extremely stressful evening on Tuesday 5 July. We went indoor climbing as normal and on the way back I decided it’d be a good idea to check the covid requirements for our flight to Spain at 12:25 the following day. It turned out that although we were double vaccinated, we could only enter Spain if our second vaccine had been received within 270 days of the flight, we’d had the booster (which takes up to 5 days to register on covid records), or we had a negative test result. Negative (by about 25 days), negative, and negative, respectively.

After hours of googling, despair at realising most test centres (including the one at Bournemouth airport) had 24-hour turnaround times, and a small degree of extremely sceptical relief at having found a centre in Southampton offering £22.50 lateral flows with 2-hour results and an 8am appointment slot, we packed at 1am, hoping that we weren’t tempting fate. We went to bed at 2am and were up by 6.

Ryan’s dad rushed us into Southampton for 7.30, we had our lateral flows at the test centre – surprisingly busy for 8am – and we went to a nearby walk-in vaccination centre to get our boosters at 9am, just in case the covid app updated on time. Miraculously our negative test results were emailed through as we were queuing, to our immense relief, but we were still slightly anxious that they wouldn’t be accepted at the airport.

On the way to Bournemouth airport I filled out our Spanish government issue entry forms, uploaded our test result documents to our boarding passes, and breathed for the first time in 12 hours. We went through security, had a drink in the bar, bought a phrase book from the shop and boarded our busy flight without any hassle.

Arrival in Girona

We stepped off the plane to that intense, slightly stifling wave of heat that marks the beginning of a hot summer holiday. We left the airport, slightly incredulous that Spain had let us in without batting an eyelid, and waited half an hour for a bus in the searing heat. I was delighted to find a vending machine at the bus stop selling impossibly processed ham and cheese sandwiches and paprika crisps, which kept us going until the bus came.

The 30-minute trip to Girona bus station took us past dry, golden fields, dusty buildings and the industrial southern end of the city, which seemed to be full of car and motorbike dealerships. We left the large, air conditioned station building and were once again hit by the heat of a Spanish summer as we walked out onto a large, open, very clean plaza. We headed east through intermittent, warm rain towards our airbnb past slightly tired-looking offices and flats, then along a long, straight, smooth-cobbled street flanked by tall, six-storeyed buildings with a variety of narrow shops underneath.

Then we reached the river Onyar and realised what Girona was all about. We stopped on the wide stone Pedra bridge to admire the river, which consisted of a barely flowing channel of clear water between two lush green strips of grasses, reeds and wetland plants, set about 15 feet below street level. It was incredibly clean, and large carp swam lazily around the weeds directly below us, to Ryan’s delight. The river was lined on both sides by pretty, flat-fronted buildings two to six storeys high, painted in a striking array of oranges, yellows, reds and creams, and the elegant grey towers of the cathedral and basilica soared above the flat rooves on the right bank. This was the view that came up when we’d google imaged Girona, but it was even more beautiful.

We crossed the bridge and wandered down the cobbled, tree-lined Rambla de la Libertat, which was bustling with pretty shops and little restaurants with tables spilling across one side of the street. We turned right at the end onto a narrower street squeezed between attractive, five storey high buildings, some painted pastel oranges and some bare-stoned, all with pretty balconies and shutters or blinds to keep out the heat. The streets brimmed with all kinds of little shops and restaurants and it was remarkably clean and tidy – not a speck of litter. Old town had delighted us already.

Accommodation

Our airbnb was in a third floor apartment right in the middle of old town, down a narrow alley on the Placa dels Raims, the smallest square in Europe. It took a little bit of finding but we were delighted with it. Our host – despite barely speaking a word of English – was extremely welcoming and our room was along a corridor in a separate part of the apartment to the main bit where she lived with her family. It was high-ceilinged and timeless, with whitewashed walls and a lovely stone feature wall, shelves full of books, towels and trinkets, a tall shuttered window opening out onto a narrow gap between the tall buildings, and our own large, clean private bathroom. It was lovely to be spending the trip in a Catalonian home, rather than a common-or-garden hotel room.

Paella & Chill

We took some time to settle and relax in the room following the stress of our poor-planning-related near miss, then got changed and went to explore a little. We had a little walk around the picture-postcard narrow, cobbled streets, enjoying that distinctive summer smell of warm, fat raindrops (none of that nasty British drizzle) hitting the stone floor. My flip flops were slippery on the smooth slabs so I walked around barefoot with my silky trousers rolled up. We went back to the tree-lined Rambla de la Libertat for dinner and found a reasonably priced (we later found out that most restaurants were reasonable) Catalonian restaurant with street seating under large stone arches and grappled – probably quite poorly – with ordering our dinner in Spanish.

We shared a lovely seafood paella and “fideua”, a similar dish but with noodles and a different sauce. I enjoyed my first ever (!) sangria and we sat people watching, drinking in the unfamiliar and refreshing lack of English-ness. The rain subsided and we went for an evening walk. We crossed back over the Onya, which was equally beautiful under a fading, grey-pink sky, and wandered around the clean, more modern, slightly wider streets on the west side of the river, intrigued by the randomly situated but bustling small eat-and-drinkeries. We found the large, buzzing Placa de la Independencia square, lined on all four sides by long, tall, balconied apartment buildings above a multitude of bars and restaurants, and decided to return for lunch the following day.

We crossed back over a bridge further down the river and returned to our little flat in the middle of old town. We were extremely pleasantly surprised by Girona’s charm and atmosphere and planned to spend the next day exploring the city more thoroughly. My biggest qualm was my aching left arm from the booster jab that morning and the warm temperature, which made getting to sleep difficult, particularly as I was concerned about jab side effects. After some tossing and turning I drifted off, probably thanks to the air con unit in the room and the thin sheet instead of a duvet, excited for the rest of the holiday.