Yogyakarta, Java Island

After what seemed like a ten hour train ride, we made it into Yogyakarta. Jogja is the nick name for Yogyakarta and most of the official street signs say Jogja. It is also quite interesting to note, that it is the only Indonesian city still ruled by monarchs. Also, Yogyakarta, like Jakarta is a designated special region on Java Island.
After a short taxi ride we arrived at our guesthouse in the early evening.
On our usual, ‘discovery walk’ we went out for street-side smoothies, breaded chicken on sticks, and found multiple fruit stands! Because our stay didn’t provide breakfast, we were on the hunt for a bakery and found one called ‘Essen.’ The dutch influence in Indonesia is everywhere, and Jogja was no different! We enjoyed testing out multiple delicacies at the bakery and found our breakfast spot for the remainder of the trip. For dinner, we found comfort in pizza, because who doesn’t like pizza? Like really?

On day we trekked to the royal palace in Jogja, navigating small streets, similar to Europe, and found ourselves in underground tunnels listening to live bands. After snapping some photos with some locals, we made our way to the palace. The official name of the palace is: Kraton Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat. Whew! That is a mouthful, and in Javanese script it is : ꦏꦿꦠꦺꦴꦤ꧀ꦔꦪꦺꦴꦒꦾꦏꦂꦠꦲꦢꦶꦤꦶꦔꦿꦠ꧀. The palace was built in 1755-1756 for the first Sultan of Yogyakarta. We lucked out and made it in time for a traditional Javanese dance, held in front of the royal palace. After the dance, we walked around the royal palace, while most everything was in Indonesian, there was lots of pictures and items used by the Sultan’s during their reign.Read more