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.