Week 8: Places

1 September – 6 September: Italy - Croatia
This is the day we decide to take the vaporetto number 1 and take a Grand Canal ride from the Piazzale di Roma all the way to San Marco Piazza. It’s breathtaking, even though the Americans we are crammed next to are irritating and one even falls asleep on the ride (okay, they flew in from New York that morning, but still – this is Venice!)

The Dolomites are like cranky old men with a serious balding problem. They are barren of any verdant colour on top and are quite pointy and jagged. They change colour depending on the time of day and sometimes can be spotted sporting a damp tiara of clouds, as from time to time befits such majestic wonders. The air there is crisp and walking up a mountainside takes barely any toll on your body, so enthralled you become by all this astounding, necessary beauty.

In the Dolomites, in Italy, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, there is no shortage of things to do. We decided against the hair-raising bike rides as we’d already tried that in Slovenia and were grateful to escape with our skin intact (that is, not grated away by gravel and asphalt from inevitable spills). We walked to two lakes (Pianozes and Ajal) which were in the end rather disappointingly small, but it didn’t matter. The walk was what we were after – a steep climb up for a few hours and a ramble all the way back (the downhill was much shorter!).

Edwin is pretending here that he´s been walking for 4 or 5 hours. We are about 200m from the campsite. Ar-har-har. Busted!

In this shot, we have actually walked for 2 hours up an incline of what feels like a right angle, or maybe a bit less than 90 degrees.

Nice lake this Pianozes. Just tiny.

Aside from the fact that we sort of did and didn´t want to see bears in this National Park of Plitvice Jezera (as bears´re endemic to the area), we were totally spun out by the miraculous like wonder of these lakes and waterfalls, a series of 15 lakes that trickle down in a step like formation. We walked there for 2 ½ hous the first day, and then 4 hours the next. We marveled at the electric blues of the waters and the brilliant green of the surrounding vegetation. Edwin, me, and about 10,000 other people. Egh. But you get that.

Such incredibly clear waters.

The white curvey line on the right of the photo is the boardwalk.

One of the numerous waterfalls. There were hundreds of these, all breathtaking, and as Edwin found out, worth photographing.

The backdrop of this shot of Ed is just two of the lakes that make up the chain of 15 lakes in total.