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Marco Polo House Traditional Geocache

This cache has been archived.

ArizonaSmith: The Marco Polo house has been completely renovated, and the house across (previously abandoned) was transformed into Marco Polo Center. The plan was to arrange with this center to have a special cachebox placed with them but did not have time to arrange this during my stay in Korčula, and I won't be back here until next summer. So, sadly, I have no other choice than to archive it. I hope to manage to do something with it next year, and hopefully, the reviewer will unarchive it, as it would be sad that a cache this old and with many FPs disappears from the map.

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Hidden : 9/8/2011
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   small (small)

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Geocache Description:




EN: Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant and traveller. According to some documents, he was born in Korcula (which was part of Venetian empire at the time), althought Venetians claim he was born in their city. He spent 24 years travelling through Asia, visited today's territories of Burma and Vietnam, reached China, came to Mongolia and stayed in the service of Kublai-Khan for 17 years. In 1292 he started to travel back to Europe, where he finally arrived in 1295. In 1298, one of the biggest naval battles in the Middle ages took place just in front of the Korcula town, between fleets of Genoa and Venice. The Genovese fleet consisted of 85 galleys while the Venetian fleet was the biggest war fleet the Venetians had ever sent to sea: 96 galleys and three big ships. Nevertheless, Venetians lost, and Marco Polo was captured, taken as a prisoner to Genoa and put in a dungeon. There he dictated his Asian adventures to his cellmate Rustichello, who wrote down everything. This later become the world famous book"Il Millione" (Million), the third translated book in the world, after Bible and Kur'an.



Understandably, there are plenty of references to Marco Polo all over the town of Korcula. Recently, a series of very authentic-looking souvenir shops (called, surprisingly, Marco Polo Shop) appeared. Highly recommended, they payed attention to every little detail. There's one just meters away from the cache.
The cache is placed in front of what today represents Marco Polo birth house. Although the house itself is much newer, this area in the Old Town is believed to be the spot where Polo family house was situated at the time.
Due to the entrance to Marco Polo house just in front of the cache (therefore NO NEED to pay for the entrance for logging the cache), the area can be quite crowded. Use your best stealth techniques to remain unseen, and replace the cache exactly where you find it.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Ubyr va gur jnyy, 1.7z uvtu. CYRNFR HFR FGRNYGU, ybgf bs phevbhf rlrf ner hfhnyyl nebhaq. Ehcn h mvqh, 1.7z ivfvar. OHQVGR ARHCNQYWVIV, zwrfgb bovpab ieiv bq mangvžrywavu bpvwh.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)