Ston

Greetings from Croatia again.


Finally, a week after it happened, I'll write about our little trip to Ston. View full image to read about Ston.


Waiting for the van to pick us up.

Ston is a small town 60km north of Dubrovnik, also on the Croatian coast. They are known for their oysters, and salt production and city walls.

You can see the salt fields in the background. This was taken from on top of the city walls.

This is the salt fields. Reminds me of a Donkey Kong Country level - Mine Cart Madness!

Or something...

Salt fields again

Lets talk about the city walls. They are pretty huge, biggest in Europe from what I hear. They were built when Dubrovnik was an independent country, The Dubrovnik Republic. Ston was part of Dubrovnik and the walls were built to protect the salt production. The Dubrovnik Republic remained until it was conquered by Napoleon in 1808. There's your history lesson for today.


The part to the right was damaged by an earthquake in the 90's, so you can't walk on them. We walked on the wall part to the left though. It was almost like climbing a mountain. Most exercise I've gotten in a long time. It was just a big incline...

The wall offered a wonderful view though!

Stairs on the wall.

At the top of the wall Ian, Leah and I decided to lay down and look at cloud formations for like an hour. It was so relaxing, I felt really calm, I didn't have a care in the world. It was interesting what sort of things people see in clouds, I kept seeing Europe.


After our wall adventures we meet up with most of the rest of the crew drinking coffee outside. Since we got to Ston really early and it was a small town, there wasn't too much else to do until dark than sit around and drink coffee. Zoran tells us that sitting around at a cafe is an important part of Croatian culture.

So basically the day was exploring, coffee, exploring, coffee.


The Adriatic sea as seen from Ston.

Axel's dogs taking a dip.

The floor of the church.


Some misc. pictures from the day.

Ever since I got to Croatia I've been trying to get a good picture of the Croatian flag flying. This is the best I got out of like 10 tries. *sigh* Stupid wind.

The whole reason we came to Ston was so the photo students could take pictures of the Good Friday festival which took place around 8pm. They had a precession with what seemed like everyone in the town where on the way they lit bags full of gas and sawdust so the streets on fire. They also went up on the city walls and lit that on fire. The precession was pretty amazing, It seemed like it went on forever, I didn't even think that many people lived in the town. The batteries in my camera ran out at about dark, so I didn't get any pictures of the fire. Chris took some good video though so here it is, I hope he doesn't mind me linking to to it.