Leading Rant
 
Long has that been lost.  Many say that it was destroyed, or never made, save in legend.

Well, sunnuvagun - it was not destroyed - just shipped round the world, and reassembled stone by every last stone step in Split, Croatia.  The long-lost Endless Stair of Moria (aka Kazhad Dûm) now climbs Marjan Hill, a beautiful park - complete with a zoo - overlooking Split.  They unwound some  of the coils, so the stair snakes rather than spirals up from the city center, but my sore feet will vouch  that they did not lose a single stone step.

I didn't have my camera with me.  I went up unplanned on a whim this lovely Sunday afternoon.  So no photos of the stair itself, the city, the sea, islands etc, or the back-lit flora, a zany liminal mixture - exuberant stands of agave, huge stalks soaring skyward, prickly pear, hemlock, some kind of pine, also skinny little trees with sumac-like leaves.  And I ain't climbing back up there again tomorrow, nor any time until my feet and hip-muscles are both unsore.  Hey, I'm not even going any further back down from this mid-way cafe terrace.  Just sip a mineralna voda and savor the view of water, mountains, and city.  And unladen feet.

A Day Trip to an Island

stack of freshly washed tshirts and jeans
Friday, mind at ease from having a freshly-laundered stack of clothes, I decided to take a day trip to one of the many offshore islands here.  I chose Brač Island, and its ferry port town Supetar, which nobody but me seems to have thought of calling Supe-dupe-tar, which is surely just as well.

large dark-wood upholstered bar and lounge
The  ferry that plies the run to Supetar looks ordinary enough from the outside.  But the inside lounge actually looks kind of old-fashioned classy.
gulls with ship's wake belowsea gull, more or less at eye level

Isn't it great when sea gulls ride the wind-wake of your boat?  You'll never get an easier photo of a sea gull.  


sea gull, nearly straight overhead
"It's Spring, it's Spring.  The bird is on the wing!"
"Don't be absoid!  Da wing is on da boid!"


"My favorite bird is the tree frog
 It’s a harbinger branger of spring
It’s a bird with hardly no feathers
 and a big songer sanger of sing."
shore town backed by rocky ridges
Strangely, for most of the way to Brač island, the mainland actually gets closer.  

This ridge system is in - or maybe just near - a national bio-preserve that includes the highest point in Croatia.  My faithful companion The Rough Guide has a sidebar about it, but that would be straying from today's subject.

Anyway, if the mainland is this near, we are almost at our island destintion.
small shop-lined harbor with boats woman climbing stone steps in front of Venetian bell-tower
I thought it was just that I had arrived during siesta, but I looked it up afterward - Supetar is a sleepy little town.   It sez so right here in the Rough Guide, which would hardly lie about something like that.  

From the look of that bell tower,
I'll bet it used to belong to Venice.
ferry unloading cars against sunset couple silhouetted against harbor sunset
And so, as the world sinks slowly into the red, we leave our sleepy island paradise, and return to our bustling Croatian metropolis, secure in the knowledge that even though the TV swears that Zagreb and Frankfurt are deep into winter, it is shirt-sleeve weather on the Adriatic. And that's the way it is, November second, two thousand eight.

 Ferevvinssake get that endless campaign over with!
   

Contents Copyright 2012 Jeff Bulf