Eurotrip 2019

A day in the lakes and a morning in the city, in that order, which turned out to be the right way round.

The Salzkammergut first - painted houses in the villages, water so still it was doing the mountains twice, and a lift up to a ridge where you can see three or four lakes at once from beside a chapel the size of a shed. Then the city the next morning: the old town in the rain, Mozart's birthplace, the cathedral square, and Mirabell with the fortress sitting up behind the flowerbeds. A cake counter I photographed instead of buying from, which I regret.

Every souvenir stall sells kangaroos with a line through them. Do not go all that way and skip the lakes for the city.

A night on the Rhine, and the cathedral is the entire skyline.

It is black and vertical and much bigger up close than the photographs of it suggest, and the best view of it is from the other side of the river with the cruise boats going past underneath. Went up for the view over the city first, which is worth doing early before the queue builds. Great St Martin round the corner is the quieter one and worth ten minutes.

One night is enough for the cathedral. Two or three would be enough for the city.

One of the best roads I have ever driven, and I would drive it again tomorrow.

Thirty-odd hairpins climbing out of the valley into cloud, and then above it. Every corner has somewhere to stop and every stop is worth it. At the top you walk out to the Pasterze, which is Austria's longest glacier and is visibly not what it was - grey, streaked with rock, with markers on the path showing where the ice reached in years you can remember, just like the Franz Josef Glacier we have here in NZ. The drive down finishes at Heiligenblut, where the church spire lines up with the mountains behind it as if somebody planned it.

Pay the toll and take the whole day. Doing it as a shortcut between two places is the one way to get it wrong.

Arrived at dusk, which is the best possible time to see it for the first time.

The island with its church sits in the middle, the castle is on a cliff above one end, and the whole thing is small enough to walk round in an afternoon - which makes it feel less like a sight and more like a place. Went up to the castle in the morning for the view straight down onto the water, then back to the shore where the pletna boats go out to the island.

Walk the loop rather than only doing the two viewpoints. The far side is empty and the water is clear enough to see the bottom.

An hour in the old town on the way south, which was not enough and was never meant to be.

Pastel buildings, the river, and a wall with Gangsta sprayed on it in curly pink letters, which is the least gangster thing I have ever seen. Would come back and give it a couple of days.

A castle built into the mouth of a cave, which sounds like an exaggeration until you are standing in front of it.

The front is a normal white Renaissance house and the back of it just carries on into the rock, so the corridors run into cave passages and the windows look out through the overhang at the village below.

The story is the reason to go in. A robber baron called Erazem held it against an imperial army for about a year in the 1480s, because the cave behind the castle runs up through the mountain and comes out on top of the cliff - so while the army sat at the front gate his men were walking out through the hill and coming back with supplies. He took to throwing fresh cherries down at the besiegers to make the point that nobody inside was starving. In the end a servant was bribed, and the one part of the whole building a cannon could reach was the toilet, which by the nature of a medieval toilet had to stick out over open air past the overhang. The servant put a light in a window when Erazem went to it. One shot. Died taking a poo.

Go in and walk up into the passage. The view back out from inside the cave is the photograph nobody has.

Got there at eight and had the first hour of it almost to myself, which is the only advice worth giving about Plitvice.

Mist still on the water, boardwalks a few centimetres above it, and the whole system stepping down from one lake into the next over rock the water has built itself. By noon the paths are one continuous queue. The colour is real, by the way - a green that looks wrong in photographs and looks the same in person.

Start at the top and walk down, go early, and take more water than you think.

A stop on the drive down the coast, for the view rather than the town.

The Krka comes out through a green channel here and you can see it from the road above, which is where these were taken. Šibenik itself I did not get into, and it looked like it deserved better than we gave it.

Ten hours on a speedboat and the best day of the whole trip.

Out of Split early, across to Biševo for the Blue Cave, which you enter through a gap barely bigger than the boat and which is lit from underneath by sunlight coming in below the waterline. It is the strongest blue I have ever seen and photographs do not get near it. Then a cove on Vis for a swim, a beach with a donkey standing on it, lunch, and a couple of hours in Hvar town - stepped alleys full of bougainvillea, a square with the cathedral at the end of it, and a climb to the fortress for the view out over the Pakleni islands.

Book the small boat rather than the big one, sit at the back, and get the earliest departure - the Blue Cave has a queue by mid-morning and the light inside it is best before noon.

Back off the water at seven in the evening, straight into the palace walls with the light going gold on them.

Not much of a stop - a meal and a bed - but walking into a Roman palace on the way to dinner is a reasonable way to end a day.

An afternoon in Trogir, most of it inside the Kamerlengo.

The fortress is a square of high stone walls with an empty courtyard in the middle and a walkway round the top, and at five in the afternoon there was nobody in it. Climb up for the harbour on one side and the old town roofs on the other. The whole island is about ten minutes across, which is part of the appeal.

A morning in the palace before leaving, and the underneath of it is the part I would go back for.

The substructures are vast, cool, empty vaulted halls that survived because they were used as a rubbish dump for centuries, and they are directly under the streets everyone is walking about on. Upstairs, the vestibule is a round room with its dome gone, so you stand in a stone drum looking up at a circle of sky. Then out onto the Riva for coffee.

Go down into the cellars first, before the cruise groups.

Came into Ancona at half past six in the morning off the overnight boat from Split, which is a fine way to arrive anywhere.

The sun was just up over the breakwater and we were straight into the car and away. Italy started here and I saw almost none of it.

Sixteen minutes of photographs, which is an honest record of how long we stopped.

A whole country on top of a rock, with the plain going out flat and hazy in every direction underneath it and three towers along the ridge. Worth the detour off the motorway for the view alone. Give it longer than we did.

A night and a morning in Genoa, and it is a better city than its reputation.

Arrived at dusk along the water. In the morning: the sea front, then in to Piazza De Ferrari where the fountain sits in the middle of a ring of palazzi, and San Lorenzo, which is striped black and white all the way up like something out of a much older world. Ducked into a church off the square and found the whole ceiling painted.

The old town is a maze of alleys barely wide enough for two people. Walk it without a plan.

An evening in Milan, and I spent most of it walking round the outside of one building.

The Duomo is absurd in the best way - thousands of spires and statues, more of them the longer you look, and it rewards going round the back where nobody stands. Then the Castello Sforzesco with its round brick tower, and the big coloured knot sculpture outside Cadorna station on the way past.

A night is enough to see the Duomo. It is not enough for Milan, but the Duomo is what I came for.

Two days based in the valley with the Dolomites in every direction, and I have never taken so many photographs of one thing in my life.

A lift up to a ridge in the late afternoon and then a walk along the top of it, with the Sassolungo on one side, the Sella opposite and the valley dropping away thousands of feet on the other. Rock that stands up in vertical slabs out of green meadow, which is what makes these mountains look unlike anywhere else. Down through the villages afterwards, and then Lago di Carezza at the end of the day - a small emerald lake that reflects the Latemar back at you almost perfectly - and stayed for the enrosadira, the half hour where the rock goes pink and then red as the sun drops.

Go up in the afternoon rather than the middle of the day: the light comes across the ridges instead of flattening them, and everyone else has already come down.

Two hours walking the loop round Lago di Braies, which is exactly how long it takes and exactly what it deserves.

The postcard is the boathouse with the rowing boats and the Seekofel standing straight up behind it, and it does look like that. The better part is the far end, where the path narrows into the trees and everyone with a tripod has given up and turned round. Water somewhere between turquoise and green depending on the cloud.

Go early or late - the car park fills and there is a shuttle in high season. Do the whole circuit rather than the first two hundred metres.