Walled Cities

From the first day in Lisboa, to the last day in Dubrovnik we were confronted with Walled Cities. The purpose, of course was protection and some were used as forts, while others used to keep people safe. They were all pretty much the same design - square towers joined by high walls with gates, many of which are now missing as they were made of wood. Generally when you climb  the wall of the city you got a splendid view of the terracotta roofs of the newer towns (Usually called The New Town!) below.
Our first one was St Jorge Castle in Lisbon.
Built in 1147 when the Moors dominated the region, and added to, repaired and rebuilt over the centuries, with many of its towers still standing.

You can see the grey walls with trees growing on the top of the hill and the fortress part to the left. It seemed a little daunting that we would be walking up there after a four hour exploration walking tour in the morning.

But walk up there we did, and this is the view.

Excavations for an archaeological dig at St Jorge

This sphinx like creature was supposed to scare something away!

Inside St Jorges Castle. A castle has fortifications - a Palace does not.

Here is the Castle of Guimaraes next to the Palace of the Dukes of Braganza near Porto. This must have worked as a form of defense as Porto claimes itself to be "The Undefeated City"

In Morocco most of the old cities are walled for protection. They had , being in Africa, lions and tigers and jaguars roaming in the Atlas Mountains. They were Barbary Lions - very big but sadly almost certainly extinct as co-lateral damage in the fight to kill all the wild rabid dogs in the mountains using poison.

As we start to rise into the Atlas Mountains (where all the Moroccan runners do their training) there is a monument to the demise of the Barbary Lion. There are some hybrids still living in zoos.

This is a google shot. Haha.

Town planning was not a great strength of the early Moroccans and as the population expanded so the medinas became incredibly crowded and disorganised. We were warned not to go in alone. With the narrow streets and tall windowless buildings it is very disorientating. Also any age can ride a motorbike with no license.

Street in a medina in Marrakech

Not uncommon to see a terrified 2 yearold sitting on the handlebars.

On the Island of Hvar we started off in the Old town of Stari Grad. There is a model of the walled city. Then we went over the hill to the Hvar Town. This is when we decided not to climb up to the fort, but have tapas and wine-tasting.

A bit worried this might fall down on us

Bruschetta and white wine to start with. Mmmmm

Finally, no selection of walled cities would be complete without the Old Town of Dubrovnik. Of course it is not all that old as most of the roofs had to be replaced after the 91-95 war. We had planned to walk it in the morning when it was cooler, but one of the ladies on our tour collapsed through dehydration. Fortunately there are First Aid stops all the way along and she was OK - but it was VERY hot and crowded. Some of the people on the boat went up in the cablecar and looked down on the old city. At the top of the hill was a museum set in the actual building that the Serb occupied and we were keener to see this than to walk the wall.

Top of the hill, showing the old town and port

The outer walls as seen from the start of the cablecar.

So thats it - walled cities everywhere in all three countries. Forts, Castles, Towns, Cities, Medinas Kasbahs (for royal and military). I've missed some beautiful ones out too.

Toilets on Tour

I am wondering if you are expecting a day by day account of our travels, but I have decided to group things together as there are so many similarities throughout Portugal (P), Morocco (M), and Croatia (C).  Incidentally, on this trip we also visited Singapore, Britain, Germany and Bosnia. But just to kick things off, a short post on the necessities of life. Beds, sheets and pillows seem very different to NZ. And of course toilets! these three are from our toilets in Morocco. They are generally about 2 dirham to go to (about 14c), and if you are lucky you get some toilet paper for this price, but the quality of the toilet paper leads something to be desired.

 This is the wash room at the Mosque of Hassan II. Diana is a GP in Melbourne with a special interest in Palliative care and was very helpful to me if I needed a hand up or down. I knew in this case that the toilet would be a squat toilet - and worried about how I would get up and down, however my tramping etiquette made it a successful mission without Diana's help! On Fridays and feast days this fountain would be working and many women at a time would carry out their ritualised washing before going upstairs to pray - not with the men as their raised bottoms as they knelt forward might inflame the passions of the men.

 This little cute toilet was on our first day in Morocco, where we stopped for lunch. On of our tour party insisted that we have lunch - seemingly unaware that we wouldn't get served for a while - as lunch is not until at least one. He seemed to think he would get a beer at this restaurant. Poor George. The silly thing was that he was married to an Egyptian woman - you'd think he might have been a little more aware of these customs. George sells caravans.

This is in our riad (hotel) in Marrakech. Now thats what I call a real throne!

Moments in May

You will have seen some of these photos but here is a selection from May.

Planters dinner at the Marina. Sandie, Dave, Duncan, Gwen and Heather

Heather and I had a bit of a bake-up in case we were too tired after planting to cook a meal.

Heather spreads the hay around the base of the tree

Heather concentrating hard on the ties.

45th wedding anniversary. Just went out for an Indian, then came home and had champagne.

Millie gets ready for school

Duncan and I go out for lunch on the Esplanade in Dunedin

Alex tidies his room - now this is worth a photo!!

Handover day - we leave the kids on their own for the weekend.

Millie's pretty excited about that!!!

One silly macadamia has decided to start flowering.

Golfers lunch/morning tea

Not much left over - but they seemed to wolf that down over a few drinks after their games of golf.

Lets go Lego

Up early on Thursday and  used our HOP cards to take the Link bus. First of all we checked out 3 Cowie Street where Duncan used to live - just a huge wall with a key pad gate. Then we proceeded on foot to the Museum. First up was the Lego exhibition.
My pick was St Basil's in Moscow and Duncan's was the Mona Lisa mosaic and A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Seurat.

This took the longest time to create owing to all the irregular circular shapes. St Basil's took 320hours to complete

She captured the same enigmatic smile, but many times the size of the original in the Louvre

The builders love these tall repetitive strures like Big Ben

Around many of the displays were pits of Lego pieces - the kids couldn't help them selves, but play. We were by Michelangelo's David, and I asked this child of about 3 what he was going to build and he replied he was going to build his head. I whispered to the Dad "I admire his ambition"

The Taj Mahal was another spectacular display. It is white not rose as they can only use traditional lego pieces rather than have them specially made.

This was a controversial piece as it showed people doomed to perish in the water.

Then we went to another special exhibition on Anne Frank and finally went to the War Memorial exhibition up on the third floor.

Duncan in front of a Spitfire

Since it was just after the Anzac Ceremony this memorial was festooned with flowers.

After lunch at the Museum Cafe it was time to accept The HOP challenge and take the ferry to Devonport for a cup  of coffee. It was a beautiful fine afternoon and downtown Auckland  started to look rather charming!

Leaving Devonport

In the evening we meet up with Christine and Alan Marino and their son Ben, who is about Jill's age. We went around a few places on the viaduct and finally settled on Lulu's Inn for a nice relaxed meal where there wasn't too much music blaring. Lots of old stories from the past. Christine still loves her job as manager at Ronald Mac Donald House, where they also live, and Alan mans the desk on 3 nights

And they talked, and talked and talked..

HOP to it, HOP on it.

Wednesday morning we walked to the Britomart to get our HOP cards which give Gold Card Pensioners free train, bus and ferry transport in Auckland any time after 9am. We walked back along the viaduct. They are having "The Big Hoot" which is a series of large fibreglass owls decorated by different artists. I like the Meowl which combined elements of cats (meow) and owls.

Meowl

and the bright Beach T'owl. There was also a series of plaques telling of the Marine History and all those gorgeous boats to ogle at.
Hugh and Cathy Douglas picked us up and took us to the Mission Bay Pavilion for lunch and then we went to look at their new home by the Remuera Golf Course - Duncan correctly identified the hole as the 9th!.

Caught up with families

Did a little bit of optometry talk.

Between the 4 of us we had quite a string of ailments. It was late afternoon and Hugh was getting concerned about the traffic - "No worries we said, we'll take the train." Easy peasy with our HOP cards.

We had a little nap before heading out to one of the viaduct restaurants for a light meal.

Taking the prize

We set off on our Leaderbrand "Land Feud" prize with some trepidation as their did not seem to be much paperwork. At the last possible minute she emailed through our tickets to the show and miraculously our names appeared "on the list" at Air NZ, the airport shuttle and the Hotel register. The Sebel is very well appointed - except for a most uncomfortable square loo seat!!

We went out and bought eggs and toast so that we could have breakfast in our room - what an absolute mess Downtown Auckland is!
"Vital" the display of corpses was on the viaduct Obviously their was a limit to what you can do with a plasticised corpse, but there were also other interesting displays on dementia, clots, obescity and diabetes which were of particular interest to me, while Duncan lingered over the knee exhibits!

This is a reference to the shroud. In olden days they believed that the corpse ate the shroud because they didn't know about about decomposition.

You can see the clot on the brain as a dark mass

The photo frames are starting to empty out

What a lot of intestine!!

An obese person

An underweight person.

After a wee nap and a cup of tea we set out for the comedy show with Paul Chowdhry. Hwe worked the audience very well with the general theme of discrimination. His family came to London in 1910, but he still gets the migrant tag. He obviously enjoyed the audience interaction so much that he ran overtime - and so it was a very late Italian Dinner on the way back to the Sebel.

No photos at Paul Chowdhry, so I tried a selfie while we waited.