Dubrovnicking It

Author’s note:  This post covers the day of July 28^th.  I wrote it while on the airplane flying to Cologne, Germany on the 29^th.

Yesterday was an early start, getting back to our tradition of previous days.  We got up at 6:30 so that we could catch a ride with Vincent, the son of owner of the house, into town.  He works as a beverages sales rep to hotels and bars in the area.  He dropped us off in front of the Pile Gate at around 8.

We went straight to buy tickets for the walk around the city walls, which was a good choice, because by the time we finished at 10, the line for tickets was close to 100 people long.

The city is beautiful, all construction is in the same style because an earthquake destroyed the city in the 16^th century (I think, don’t quote me on that date).  The city is incredibly fortified, belying centuries of trying to exist peacefully on the coast while larger empires sought to include them in a territorial expansion.

After walking around the city’s walls, we walked through the city streets, which was nice because it was getting quite hot, and the shade was far more plentiful in the narrow streets.  There are no motor vehicles allowed inside the old town, so it makes for a very enjoyable place to walk around, even though it’s quite obvious that this is a part of town that exists solely for tourist dollars and euros.

We then went into the War Photo Limited museum, which has a permanent exhibition on the killings in Bosnia, and a rotating exhibition, which at the moment happened to be about Srebernica (spelling?).  So, we certainly learned quite a bit about the war in the Balkans and the tragedies that occurred.

After the museum we snagged a quick lunch.  Prosciutto-type ham and cheese sandwiches on some really great homemade bread.

After lunch we went to ride the cable car up to the top of Mount Srd, which overlooks the city.  The ride wasn’t that great as we got stuck in the middle and had no views, but the vistas from the top were amazing.  We hung out there, finding new viewing points, and just admiring the scenery for a long time.

Then we headed back down in the cable car and walked around the city for a bit more.  We went to the tourist office to figure out what bus to take to get back in the evening.  We grabbed ice cream.  Then we took a rest in an Irish bar to watch some Olympics, women’s team handball Croatia-Brazil and the cycling road race.

We then went to have dinner at the top-recommended restaurant in Lonely Planet.  It was very good.  I’m not sure if it beat that lunch in Porec, but it was close.  This restaurant is run by two women, one chef and one waitress.  And its kitchen is completely open and looks just like a kitchen you would have in your house.  No fancy appliances, no crazy chef secrets here.  We chose to just get a bunch of different small dishes: ceviche; lamb in honey and lavender; squids filled with ham, wine, and lemon; salmon carpaccio; beef tartar; and monkfish wrapped in bacon.  All good.  And a wine called a Posin, I think, from the island of Corcula nearby.  We ended with dessert.  Smith chose the crème Dubrovnik style and I opted for the chocolate soufflé.  Smith’s was good, but I think I chose correctly there.

We left dinner at 7 and found our way to two recommended bars that sit on the rocks just outside the city walls overlooking the Adriatic.  We chose the one that had more space and sat there drinking beers as the light dimmed.  We couldn’t see the sun set because it was hidden behind a tower on the city wall, but it was a nice way to end the day nonetheless.

As darkness was falling we walked to the bus station and took a pair of busses to get back to the house we stayed at in Zaton.  I then had to pack up, while Smith caught a ride with the owner of the house to go to an ATM because they wouldn’t take Visa.  By 11 I’d finished packing and we ran down to the water to go swimming one last time.

And so the day ended.  It feels like it was the end of the trip because everything else is finding my way home.  But we do have a little epilogue in Cologne to look forward to…

Finally on Vacation

Author’s note:  This post covers the day of July 27^th.  I wrote it while on the plane flying to Cologne, Germany on July 29^th.

Friday was a beautiful day.  We could sleep as late as we wanted.  We had nowhere to get to by sundown.  But of course I woke up early because my body was used to it.  I went to use the bathroom, came back, and my watch alarm started going off.  I had forgot to turn it off, but I was waking up automatically at 7 anyways.

I grabbed my computer and enjoyed the fastest and most consistent internet connection I’ve had since I left home.  I wanted to go outside, but my laptop battery was dead, so I was tethered to the outlet.  I did admire the view out of our window and snapped a few pictures.  We went to breakfast at around 9:30.  Then I sat down to write, write, write.  I posted a couple days on the blog before heading down to the beach to join Smith.  The water is cool and clear.  You can see the bottom even though it takes quite an effort to touch the bottom.  The scenery is beautiful.  We had our own private area for guests of the house we were staying in.  The only complaint is the rocky beach makes walking around a little uncomfortable.  But all in all it’s a paradise.  I have a very strong feeling that I will be back to that exact spot again.  The house is beautiful, the owners are nice, it’s one bus stop away from Dubrovnik, it’s amazing.

After a while, I went back to the hotel.  I was just about to leave to meet Smith at one of the two beachside restaurants for lunch when the owner of our house brought me a huge plate of bread and cheese with olive oil.  I couldn’t say no, and it was delicious besides, so I ate it, then met Smith for lunch.  I couldn’t finish my seafood pizza, but Smith had no trouble with his array of seafood.  The mussels were especially good.  Very fresh, still bursting with juices, not the dried up tiny piece of meat in a big shell you usually get.

After lunch, I did a little more blogging on the terrace, then went down to our private beach area for more swimming and sun.  I remember being the most relaxed I’ve been in a long time while stretched out under the late afternoon sun.  Smith joined later.  Then we went to dinner at the other beachside restaurant.  We ate squid risotto and some grilled meats (pork and a Croatian dish called cevapcici).  We finished off two 1 liter bottles of wine and had a couple shots of rakija, a homebrewed liquor, while the sun set.

We went back to the hotel after dark and drank some more rakija that we had bought at the grocery store in Split and watched a bit of the Olympic opening ceremony.  It seemed an expected disappointment to me.

Then, drunk, happy, and relaxed, we went to bed.  I’ve had so much fun on my adventure, but this was the first day that I really felt like I was on vacation.

The Tenth Country of the Trip

Author’s note:  This post cover the day of July 26^th.  I wrote it while in the airport waiting to fly to Cologne, Germany on July 29^th.

Thursday was another early start for us.  We woke up at 7, checked out, dropped off our bags in the car, and fed the parking machine.  The hotel staff didn’t have correct change for us, and we refused to give up what change we had because we needed it for parking.  I swear, the Croatian government just needs to mint more coins because nobody has them, and when they get them they hoard them.

We then walked to the morning market.  We looked around for a bit, but mostly saw just fruit stands.  We bought some pastries for breakfast, a couple peaches, and I got the most amazing blackberries I’ve ever eaten.  They were so plump and perfect, and you didn’t even have to bite down on them, just press it between your tongue and the roof of your mouth and they just burst into a hundred little capsules of sweetsourtartness.  Amazing.

We then walked back to the car and started our drive to Krka National Park.  Around 10 AM, as we were getting close to the park, we saw signs for free parking, so we started to pull in, only to see the fine print on the sign that it was free only for patrons of some restaurant.  Well, we were already in the parking lot, so we figured, screw it, I guess they swindled another pair of tourists.  So we paid our 30 kuna (5 bucks) and walked down into the town and caught a bus across the lake to get the park.

This park is every bit as big as Plitvice, but we didn’t feel like walking around taking a ton of pictures.  Instead, we stopped at the first waterfall we came too and jumped in the water.  No swimming is allowed at Plitvice, and this is the only waterfall where you’re allowed to swim at Krka, so as the day went on it started to get a little crowded.  But it was still a lot of fun.  You can’t go under the big waterfall, but we did play in the smaller ones.  Smith explored some cave, I read and relaxed in the sun.  It was a lot of fun.

Around noon we ate lunch at a café there and then got back on the boat to head out.  Getting back to the car around 1, we drove to Split.  We arrived there sometime around 2:30, parked and with a little confusion, managed to navigate our way to Diocletian’s Palace.

Diocletian’s Palace is not really a palace, but rather the old monarchy complex of housing, religious, and official buildings that over the centuries was slowly morphed into just the center of town.  Very tiny alleys everywhere.  You never can tell what will be in the next building.  a tourist attraction?  a small market?  an apartment?  bank offices?

So we tooled around there for a bit.  Explored alleyways.  Browsed the market.  Saw the old buildings.  Didn’t pay the fees to go inside.

We figured we had finished there and looked in the guide book to see if there was anything else to do in Split, but couldn’t find anything else that really looked interesting.  So, we grabbed some ice cream, mine tasted exactly like a cappuccino, it was awesome.  Then we walked back to the car and found a café with internet so we could find directions to get to the place we would be staying at near Dubrovnik.

We left the café at around 5:30.  Then the trouble started.  We were headed to the highway, but tried to make a stop at a supermarket.  We took one wrong turn and suddenly couldn’t get back there.  We got stuck in a neighborhood with only one way in, and one way out and had to turn around to go back.  Then it happened again.  Finally, sometime around 6:30 we managed to make it to a supermarket, but not the one we had originally intended to go to.  Finally, thankfully, we were allowed by the gods to leave Split.We were told the drive would take between 2 and 3 hours, but it ended up taking just over 4.  Apparently, by following Google’s directions it added a lot of time to the drive because it kept us on the 8, their highway along the coast.  It was incredibly beautiful, rivaling the coast of California and doing its best to try to compete with the Great Ocean Road in Australia.  I remember that we were driving through so many beautiful beachside towns when we cut over the mountains on our left and away from the sea.  I figured that was the end of the scenery, but then we emerged above some deep blue lakes that seemed almost more heavenly.  But the traffic was slow, and when darkness fell, the trip became a lot less scenic.

Then we passed through Bosnia.  It was the 10^th country I’ve been in on this trip.  Brazil, US, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia.  We saw very little, there’s just a strip of land that belongs to Bosnia in between the main portion of Croatia and southern Dalmatia, where Dubrovnik sits.

Even with our directions, it was still very difficult to find the house where we were staying, because they had no signs,  and it was just on a nameless road that touched the highway.  The only reason we found it was because I had spent so much time on their website looking at the pictures and dreaming about going there.  We knew we were in Zaton and we passed by a small cove that looked really familiar.  So we stopped and parked our car there.  Then we walked up and down the street until I saw a house that looked familiar.  We walked in, and were greeted with a question, “Brian and Brian?”

So, we made it alright, sometime around 11.  We had a beer with the son of the owner and relaxed on the terrace watching the moonlight reflect of the bay below.  We had finally made it to our last destination.  We would finally be spending consecutive nights in the same place.  It felt good.

Dreaming In Shades of Blue

Author’s note:  This post covers the day of July 25^th.  I wrote it that night while in the hotel.

This morning had an early and quick start.  We set an alarm for 7 AM, packed quickly, grabbed our hostel breakfast of a glass of milk, a slice of bread, and a small container of off-brand Nutella, and we were out the door.

We got up early so we could try to make it out to Plitvice Lakes National Park before the crowds got heavy.  The drive took longer than expected, and we got to Plitvice around 10.  Bought tickets and some pastries to tide us over until lunch and headed in.

Plitvice is a series of lakes that are all interconnected by waterfalls or passages that flow either above or below ground.  Thick forests of a variety of trees grow around the lakes, while amongst them sprout a plethora of water loving plants that I wouldn’t begin to be able to name.  Moss and what they call travertine grows everywhere.  Wooden plank walkways are constructed over and around the lakes and waterfalls to allow you to explore them.

We explored the lower lakes first, and the upper lakes second.  The water is so beautiful that it is hard to put into words.  Most of the time the water is a brilliant turqoise, but then at times it’s a deep cerulean blue, while in the shallow parts near the shore the water is so clear that it’s nothing but a viewing pane for the fish that you can see swimming past.  And if you can see the shoreline from up above, you get to see the changing shades of the water as it gets deeper and deeper.

The waterfalls are certainly impressive, some are tall, some are powerful, some are small, some are rocky, some are mossy. 

We continued walking around Plitvice until around 3.  Then, we grabbed some food (sausage, fries, and a porter) and ate it by the water before heading back to our car.  I do want to mention that the sausage was quite good and tasted like it was filled with a corned beef type of meat.

We then drove to Zadar, arriving about 6.  It took us a little while to find our hotel, the Venera Guest House, but we found it.  We then walked back to our car to grab cameras and whatnot, when Smith discovered that we needed to pay for our parking spot (which, if I may say, I absolutely nailed first time parallel parking with the pressure of people backed up behind me).  But the machines only take coins, and nobody in Croatia wants to give you coins.  If you have exact change, they take it, if you don’t, they tend to round to the nearest 10 kuna so they only have to give you bills.  They hoard coins here.  So Smith had to go get change, then the machine we tried to pay at was broken, but finally we paid, and headed to the waterfront at about 7.

We came to Zadar mostly for the waterfront.  To see the Sun Salutation and hear the Sea Organ, two creations of local architect/artist Nikola Basic.  The Sun Salutation has solar panels that store electricity to then produce a light show at night meant to represent the solar system.  I think the Sea Organ is much cooler; it has a series of slits cut into the side of the wall at the waterfront and pipes underneath, such that incoming waves flow into the slits and vibrate the pipes, making music come out of slits in the concrete walkway up above.  It is an incredibly relaxing place to rest.  The water here is also incredibly blue, but a deeper shade than at Plitvice.

We listened to the Sea Organ for a while, then ate an amazing dinner at a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant on the water.  Bottle of white wine from a vineyard near Zadar, black risotto with cuttlefish, gnocchi with shrimp and scallops, tuna steak with green peppercorns and swiss chard, and sea bass filet with truffle sauce and gnocchi, and it all cost $100.  Croatia is awesome!  This was the first meal in several days that we could completely and totally relax.  We had no place to be afterwards, nothing to see until sundown, already had put our stuff in our hotel room.  It felt really nice to sip that last glass of wine and just let the stress (fun stress, but stress nonetheless) of the past few days fall away.

After dinner we checked out the light show from the Sun Salutation and walked along the waterfront to come back to our hotel.  Then I started writing, and writing, and writing to try to catch up on my blog.

A Day Made for the GoPro

Author’s note:  This post covers the day of July 24^th.  I wrote it the afternoon of July 27^th while relaxing on the terrace of the house we are staying at in Zaton.

July 24^th was made for the GoPro, from beginning to end.  We slept in, well until 8, because we still wanted to get a lot of stuff in that day.  The breakfast at the hotel was good and free, bread, jam, omelette, coffee, juice.

We threw our stuff in the car and headed further south to the very tip of Istria and a park called Kamenjak.  We took a wrong turn in the town of Premantura, and another once we were inside the park (which has far more roads than the map showed), but we finally found our way to Colombarica Beach.  There we finally got to do some swimming, explored some small caves, and jumped off the rocks into the water.  I then relaxed in the sun for a bit while Smith did some more beach exploration.  Once I felt rested I chased him down, and in the process found a much higher ledge that some people were jumping off.

I felt I just had to do it.  The first time was certainly a little nervous, but I mustered up the courage.  I then jumped it twice more to get it from different angles with the GoPro.  The second time I was almost as nervous as the first, but the third time was easy.

After that we grabbed a drink at the very cool bar just above the beach.  It’s called Safari Bar and is a series of “rooms” created by naturally growing trees and palm fronds stacked up.  The ceiling is at about my head height everywhere, so it makes a nice shaded, cozy space.  Some rooms even had playground equipment like slides and swings for the kids.  We drank watermelon-canteloupe sangria before heading out of the park.

From the park we went back to Pula for lunch.  Smith really enjoyed his seafood platter, most everything lightly fried.  My dish was okay, stuffed peppers, but the Malvazija wine was once again very good.

After that we drove straight north through the middle of Istria to get to Pazin to see Pazin’s Chasm, a natural phenomenon that inspired some of Jules Verne’s writings despite the fact that he never actually went there.  We started on one side of the chasm, walked down through it and out the other side.

We had originally planned on walking through the town around the chasm to get back to our car, but there was a zip line across the chasm.  So of course we took it.  GoPro captured that ride too as we flew across the chasm and got off the line about 20 yards from our car.

After Pazin we tried to drive through a park that was said to have great views.  We got incredibly lost in the park though and ended up driving all over these mountains of gravel roads.  We asked a local how to get to the highest mountain, but it seems he sent us the wrong way because if we got to a point that if we had gone down that slope, I don’t think we would have ever gotten back up it.  So we turned around, and while in reverse the car started making a scraping noise.  We both figured something had gotten stuck and would come loose when we started going forward, but it continued.  We got out of the car and found a decent sized stick about the width of a quarter and a couple feet long.  The stick had somehow found its way over a hose and then twisted around so that the hose was in danger of being torqued out of its connections.  It took some work but we got the stick out.

We continued for a bit hunting around the gravel roads of the mountainside but never found our way to the rocky valley we were searching for.  Although we did run into a flock of sheep with one lone shepherd watching over them, and probably wondering what the hell we were doing there.  So, we gave up on the gravel roads and found our way back to the asphalt.  We were going to just drive to Rijeka, but we saw signs for the highest peak in the park, so we took that 7km ride up to the top where we could see for miles and miles.  This whole time in the park we never saw a single other tourist until we started to leave the peak, we saw one other car.

So, we finally got back on the road headed to Rijeka.  We got in late, just as the sun was beginning to set, and checked into our hostel.  At this point it was dark, I was tired and very hungry in yet another new place, and stressed from another day of driving and getting lost.  So, you can imagine my reaction when the car behind me parked incredibly close to me, and I bumped them trying to get out of my incredibly tight parallel parking space.  I was pissed, and the owner was just coming out to the car too.  But there was no damage, and we asked them to back up so we could get out.

Dinner that night was at some Croatian fast food place called Food City, but they were advertising Bampy brand food, I don’t know.  It was a crappy sandwich, but we just needed to eat.  After that we grabbed fries and McFlurries at McDonald’s because I just needed something to go down easy.  We returned to our hostel without incident and went to sleep.

The day ended stressful and a little unhappy, but there was a whole lot of fun and excitement the rest of the day, so I can’t look back on it as a bad day at all.