Plitvice Lakes National Park

Saturday July 30th, 2011 Plitvice Lakes National Park
Last night we had another great dinner at Sperun in Split - tortellini in a cream sauce and calamari. Afterwards we took one last evening stroll along the Riva and got some gelato at Ivona, a recommended spot.
This morning, after breakfast in our apartment, we were out the door at 7:30 and walked down the Riva to the bus station. Of course we were 45 minutes early for our bus which left at 8:30 but I tend to be conservative on the what ifs of travel scheduling. Anyway there was time for Anita to have a coffee before we set off for Plitvice Lakes National Park.
The trip here took about 5 hours but it was, once again, very scenic. We’re starting to wonder if there’s anywhere in Croatia that doesn’t look good.
As we got closer to the park, the mixed forest actually started to look a lot like home. We stopped at a rest stop / restaurant not too far from here and there was definitely a hunting theme with some kind of animal roasting over a wood-fired spit, and lots of stuffed bears, boar, deer, foxes and other animals displayed. There were even 2 live bears in a small fenced compound at the end of the parking lot. It was so sad looking I couldn’t even take a picture. I really don’t understand stuffing dead animals to display as trophies (especially when arranged as if they’re having a tea party) and imprisoning live wild animals in a small, dirty compound. I’ve got no problem with hunting and I love to fish but there should be some respect.
It didn’t take long after we were dropped off literally in the bush on the side of the road, to find our hotel. They’ve done a good job of maintaining the natural environment here despite the hordes of tourists.
Sunday July 31st, 2011, Plitvice Lakes
The Hotel Plitvice is fine. It’s not fancy but the rooms, halls and dining room are all big. We have our room, buffet breakfast and dinner for 122 euros per night. It’s a little more than usual but it’s not bad since there are few alternatives. We’re right in the national park.
Sadly, the first person killed in the former Yugoslavia civil war was a park policeman killed here. The Serb army took over for 4 years and used this hotel as a barracks before wrecking it when they were finally pushed out. It’s been completely renovated and looks fine.
Yesterday afternoon we bought our park admission tickets (110 kuna each) at an information office. The tickets are good for as many days as we want since we’re staying in a park hotel. We just get them stamped at the front desk in the morning. There are little buses and electric boats on the biggest lake that are all free with a park pass. So we took the bus down to the other park entrance and bought some supplies at the little store there. There are hordes of tourists but we mostly avoided the trails for the time being and just came back to our hotel.
The hotel dining room is very nice but the food is quite plain. It’s adequate but nothing to write home about (that’s a blog joke). We went to bed early last night because we were tired and wanted to get an early start this morning. It’s best to get out early to avoid the mid-day tour buses coming in.
This morning we were in the dining room shortly after 7 and down to the dock before 8:30. We took the electric boat down the lake so we could start touring the lower lakes area first. It was very scenic with lots of waterfalls between the lakes in the chain. The water dissolves calcium carbonate from the rock and then it re-deposits it as it tumbles down from lake to lake. So the waterfalls are always changing. (That’s the short version). The lakes are all very clear and turquoise coloured. There are lots of fish and ducks.
There are fairly narrow wooden boardwalks that snake all around the lakes and waterfalls. There are also narrow paths below and above the cliffs.
It was a nice sunny morning and we had a great tour of the lower lakes. Then we took the boat back up to the upper lakes section and toured it. Unfortunately it started to sprinkle rain but it was still really beautiful.
After about 4 hours of wandering, we took the bus back from the upper section to our hotel. We’ve just had lunch and may go our for another short walk, now that the sun is shining again. Tonight and tomorrow morning it’s back to the dining room. Then we’ll check out, walk back up the trail to the highway and hopefully catch the 10:45 bus to Zagreb.

Dubrovnik Split Cruise

Thursday, July 28th, 2011, on the ferry between Mljet and Korcula
Last night as we were on our way to dinner, we stopped and chatted with our host, Marko and his helper Luka as we passed their little office down the street from our room. Marko has 6 properties with rooms and apartments that he rents so it’s a full-time job (and probably a pretty good living). He said he was having a relaxing day because all his tenants were good and there were no problems.
The day before we had heard him coming up the stairs in our building with a Japanese woman following. We could hear her whining, “Oh Marko, not more stairs” (we were on the 3rd storey). When she saw that 3 rooms shared one bathroom, she said, “Oh Marko, this just won’t do”. We’ve been mocking her ever since. Actually, this will probably be the only 4 nights of our 6 week trip that we don’t have an ensuite bathroom. Anyway, not every day is relaxing for Marko.
When we told him that we were going back to Mea Culpa (which Luka had recommended) to celebrate my 60th birthday, they congratulated me and then he said “Wait right here, I have something for you,” and he went into the office and brought out a bottle of wine as a gift. A nice gesture that is very typical of the friendly Croatian people. You’ll always run into one or two people anywhere who are a pain, but in general our impression of Slovenians and Croatians is very favourable, They’re very polite and considerate even when they’re not selling you something. If we ask anyone on the street for directions or anything else, they always try their best to help and make sure that we know what we’re doing. With the number of tourists they see, that must require quite a bit of patience, more than a lot of us have by the end of a summer in Combermere.
We had another great meal at Mea Culpa: one plate of pasta with cream and walnut sauce and one dish of cheese and mushroom lasagna. With beer, wine and tip it cost 158 kuna, or a little less than $32. Even in the old walled town, if you know where to go you don’t have to pay a fortune for a really good meal.
Our room was great except for the street noise at night. We had air conditioning but it was really loud and to run it you have to open the window and set the end of the flexible plastic duct outside, which is a bit of a contradiction in terms of energy use. So, with or without AC you still need the window open. Just when the people walking back from the bars slows down the clatter of the suitcases over the cobblestones starts. People have to get early flights or boats.
We got up before 5 to catch the local bus at the Pile Gate just after 6 to get in line at the Jadrolinja ferry ticket office which opened at 7 to get on the ferry that left at 8:30. We had breakfast in our room (oranges and yogurt with muesli and bananas). Access to a fridge is always handy and we carry light plastic containers, spoons and my Swiss army knife. Anita always has something good for us to eat so we’re never caught going into some overpriced restaurant or eating fast food because we’re starving.
We caught the correct bus with no problem and found the correct ticket office within a few minutes of arrival at the pier. We exchanged our receipt bought in Split for 2 tickets and boarded the ferry just after 7. At 8:30 all the cars and deck passengers were loaded and we set sail for Mljet. We got there about 10, unloaded and reloaded and now we’re on our way to Korcula. The scenery is very beautiful. We just went through some relatively open sea but now we’re getting closer to Korcula so it’s time to look at the scenery and take some pictures.
Friday, July 29th, 2011, Split
Korcula town and island were both very beautiful as were Hvar Town and island. However, all of the islands look very much like the mainland coast except that the water is all the way around instead of just on one side. It’s all very steep, rocky and rugged. There are lots of islands of all sizes.
We were on a Jadrolinja ferry called the Liburnija. An American woman originally from Croatia told us that she had cried on this very same ship when she and her husband left Yugoslavia in 1969. They took this ship from Zadar to Ancona, Italy and then went on to New York. They lived there for 20 years before they saw home again, partly because after 8 years they got their US citizenship and then still waited for the Yugoslavian authorities to forget about them. Her husband said he couldn’t go back before that because he wasn’t sure if they’d throw him in jail or not.
Now the ship, built in 1964, is only used as a coastal ferry because it doesn’t meet international safety standards anymore. Good to know halfway through the trip. The ship is about to be retired in 2 months. However old it is, it seemed perfectly adequate and there were no problems.
We arrived in Split about 6:45 and we waited for the first crush to get down the steps before we went down. We’d seen a lot of fantastic coastline but 12 hours on the boat is just about long enough. We walked back to the reception office for the hostel group we’d used before. We already had a reservation. This time they escorted us to a 2 bedroom apartment in the old town which we have all to ourselves - 3 beds, kitchen and full bathroom - about 5 minutes from Diocletian’s Palace. They gave us this for the same price ($100 Cdn per night) because the room we had before was “occupated”.
We had a quick shower and tried a different restaurant but unfortunately only one of the dishes was good. Oh, well.
This morning it’s raining so we’ve gone shopping for supplies, had breakfast in our apartment and will soon go out for a coffee and to post this at the reception office. Our umbrellas are very handy.
Tomorrow it’s off to Plitvice Lakes National Park and the Hotel Plitvice on the 8:30 bus.

Lokrum Island

July 27, 2011 Dubrovnik
Today, we packed a picnic lunch and took the taxi boat out to Lokrum Island, about 10 or 15 minutes across the water from the old town pier. We had planned to just tour around the old monastery on the island and then lounge at the beach but naturally, when we got there, we hiked up the hill to old Fort Royal, the highest point.
It was a little warm but luckily it’s only 25 and totally clear here today so it’s beautiful weather and not unbearably hot. In fact we haven’t faced any unbearably hot weather yet this summer.
The fort needs some restoration but the view was great. We got another tourist to take a picture of us. There were a couple of cruise ships in the bay below us. They drop off passengers at the other end of the city and then apparently just anchor in the bay to wait for them. The cruise ship pier can only accommodate a couple of ships at a time. Yesterday, we learned that sometimes 7 cruise ships per day unload passengers in Dubrovnik. That’s why from about 10:30am to 4:30pm or so can be very busy in the old town. Then it quietens down a bit when they all get on their buses and head back to the dock.
Lokrum Island is very lush and beautiful. The monastery and fort need some restoration but there is an olive grove, a beautiful botanical garden, lots of trees and lots of places to swim. It’s apparently a favourite spot for the locals to easily get out of town and enjoy the park and sea.
We eventually meandered down to spend a couple of hours on the beach (that is, rocks). We swam in the sea, which is beautiful and clean, relaxed in the sun, ate our picnic lunch and celebrated my 60th birthday with a beer and wine. Just what I always wanted.
Around 2:30 we went back to the dock and caught the taxi boat home. It only costs about $10 each for the return trip. We picked up some lunch supplies for our 10 hours on the ship tomorrow back to Split.
Tonight we’re going back to “Mea Culpa”, a great pizza and pasta place, for my birthday dinner. Celebrating a birthday in Dubrovnik with my sweetie is pretty nice.

Mostar

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011 Dubrovnik
We just got back from a mini-van trip to Mostar. We left from a Hilton parking lot about 5 minutes walk from here. We noticed that parking at the Hilton is 400 kuna for 24 hours. That’s $80 Cdn. Another good reason not to be driving. The van showed up at 7:45. It was an English speaking tour and there were 12 tourists and the driver/guide. Four of the tourists were girls from Turkey, 2 were a couple our age from Sweden and the others were young couples.
To get to Mostar, we had to drive northwest along the coast through the little bit of Bosnia Herzegovina , stopping for a break at Neum, and back into Croatia. Along the way we saw oyster farming that was begun in the middle ages and is still going on. There are hundreds of buoys anchored in 2 to 10 metres of water in the protected bays, with oysters clustered around the ropes below them.
Then we left the coast and drove along the Neretva river valley towards Mostar. There’s a huge farming area, about 100 sq. km., that was a swamp that was drained. It supplies a lot of food for this part of Croatia. After a while we went through the border again into Bosnia Hercegovina. The customs stops didn’t take long.
Our first scenic stop was at a little village called Pocitelj, which means resting place. It was an old fort above the river and has a very old Islamic mosque and school. The mosque and minaret tower were destroyed in the recent war but have been rebuilt exactly as before. The little school was unharmed but doesn’t look used any more. The steep little street up to the mosque was made of round stones about the size of baseballs., set in mortar. Not a smooth surface, but we’re used to that. Pocitelj was interesting but it didn’t take long to see it.
After another ½ hour, we arrived in Mostar at noon. It was a cool cloudy day, about 25 degrees. That’s probably a good thing because Mostar is the 2nd hottest city in Europe, after Athens, and temperatures at this time of year are often 45 degrees. Our driver showed us a few sites, including the famous old bridge that was originally built about 400 years ago. Then he gave us maps and left us on our own until 3 pm.
There was quite a thunderstorm so we decided that lunch in an outdoor restaurant overlooking the bridge was a good idea. We sat with the Swedish couple from our group and had a good lunch conversation with them while Anita and I shared a huge plate of the “mixed grill”. We’re still stuffed. Apparently it’s only a 2 ½ hour direct flight from Sweden to Dubrovnik. It’s easy to get here from almost anywhere in Europe. We’ve been seeing lots of Brits both here and in Split, who probably just take direct flights for short vacations.
After the thunderstorm while we were just finishing lunch, the bridge jumpers started work again. There are apparently less than 10 guys in Mostar with the nerve to jump off this high bridge into the fairly shallow, cold water. They climb up on the rail, get tourists to gather up at least 25 euros for them and then they jump. If they think they’ll hit bottom, on the way down they curl into a ball and hit the water that way. If they’re confident, they jump straight in and do the “needle”, not making much splash. It’s quite a tourist draw.
The current bridge is an exact replica of the original, which was shelled in the war and destroyed. According to our driver, Mostar is about ½ Moslem and ½ Catholic. They’re all Slavic people, (the only difference being their religion), who co-existed and intermingled for many years without problems. Most of the Moslems lived on one side of the main street around the river and most of the Catholics lived on the other side. They allied to successfully defend Mostar from the Serbs during the war.
Then they bickered more and more with each other until they started fighting in 1993, the battle line being the main street. By the time NATO intervened and stopped them they had killed about 1,200 on one side and 800 on the other, destroyed many buildings and the old bridge. There is obviously still some very hard feelings. We were mainly in the Moslem section where there are lots of little signs saying, “1993, Never Forget”.
International aid has poured in to rebuild the bridge and the town but there are still quite a few pock-marked buildings from shells and bullets. It’s frightening to see how people in the same community can turn on each other. It’s apparently true that the veneer of civilization is exceedingly thin.
Bosnia Hercegovina is composed of 3 different groups or faiths: Serbs who are Serbian Orthodox, Moslems and Croatian Catholics. (Again, this is a simple version of a complex issue that we don’t understand, so some of the details may be wrong.) Because the Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet, all road signs along the highway are in both alphabets. All the way from the border to Mostar, we could see that the Cyrillic lettering was painted over with yellow or black spray paints, like taggers use for graffiti. The fighting was very heavy in this area and clearly the Serbs are not popular.
Oddly enough, one aspect of the tourism in Mostar is to see all the destruction that the inhabitants wrought upon themselves. It’s more than a little unsettling.
Anyway, it was worth seeing but only once. We’re glad we decided to go there on a tour rather than take the bus and stay a couple of nights. Tomorrow it’s off to Lokrum Island just across the bay from Dubrovnik.

Dubrovnik

Monday July 25th 2011, Dubrovnik
On our last night in Split on Saturday, we went out to a good, sort of traditional restaurant called “Sperun” that was recommended in one of our guidebooks. Good food and not too expensive. After dinner we walked up the main pedestrian street in the old town to a gelato place for our 2nd of the day. The Hajduk - Barcelona game was starting at 8 and was on big screens on the Riva and in a lot of bars. It looked like there would be a pretty rowdy street party. We were tired and weren’t that interested in participating so we went back to our room for a good sleep before the next day’s travel.
On Sunday morning we bought some breakfast stuff, ate in our room and were at the bus station by 8:45. Our bus left as planned at 9:15. We had another good trip down here - very scenic and interesting. A lone traveller from Seattle on a 6 month tour sat behind us and beside him was a young woman from Dubrovnik who had just finished university in Zagreb. She told us lots of interesting things as we travelled.
One part of the trip that she didn’t like was having to pass through a few kilometres of Bosnia and Hercegovina in order to continue into the southern part of Croatia. There are still some unresolved feelings about the war.
She told us that although she was a small child, she still remembers having to leave Dubrovnik during the siege that started in October 1991 and lasted 8 months. The Serbian-Montenegrin army shelled Dubrovnik for that long from the mountains above the city, the worst night being December 6th. Her grandfather refused to leave and lived without power and water for a long time. He’d immerse his meat in olive oil to keep it from spoiling and found other old-fashioned ways to survive. Her cousins south of Dubrovnik had to flee and their houses were looted and burned. When we mentioned that we planned to visit Mostar in Bosnia and Hercegovina, she said she would never go there.
Naturally, this is only one point of view and the situation is far too complex for us to grasp in a few days. However, Dubrovnik has had a history of freedom and autonomy, which they often paid for to whoever threatened to swallow them up, whether it was the Hungarians, the Austrians, the Venetians or others. At one time Dubrovnik had one of the biggest navies on the Mediterranean. They were among the first nations to recognize the United States in 1776. There are “Libertas” signs or flags all over the place.
The guy from Seattle was also interesting - a software developer who had travelled widely. We talked about lots of different places in the world.
When we got to the main bus station in Dubrovnik, near the ferry terminal, it only took us a few minutes to find the local bus that would take us to the Pile Gate of the old walled town. That took only 10 or 15 minutes travel and after a few minutes we found our room. We’re in a great location, about 100 metres from the walls of the old town and about 50 metres from the sea. We can see both out our window. We’re just below one of the outlying forts used to protect the town. The reception guys were very helpful and gave us some tips on sights, restaurants to try and to avoid, which grocery store was cheapest and so on.
After we got settled we wandered in the Pile Gate and took a stroll down the Stradun or main pedestrian street. There are no cars inside the old walled city; it’s all pedestrian streets. They’re more or less at right angles to each other so navigating around is easy compared to what we’re used to.
Last night, we tried a pizza and pasta restaurant in the old town that had been recommended. It was great and not too expensive. The places right around the Stradun are tourist traps but if you know where to go in the back streets, it’s pretty reasonable, although everything here is a bit higher than in some of the last towns we’ve been to.
This morning we got up early, had breakfast in our room (there’s a fridge in the hall) and were at the ticket booth for the main wall walk at 8:10. If you start early there’s hardly anyone else on the walls. After about 10:30 the tour groups start arriving at the Pile Gate by bus. Many of them are from cruise ships. At least 3 cruise ships a day dock in Dubrovnik. (We’re sitting on our bed sipping wine and beer and out our window can see the steady stream of people walking the top of the walls right now.)
It cost 70 kuna each ($14) but was well worth it. We walked all the way around the top of the old town walls. It took us about 2 ½ hours but we could look down on the town on one side and onto the sea, for half of it anyway, on the other side. On the landward side, the back half of the old town is right at the foot of the mountain range. During the siege, the Dubrovnik people only held one small part of the mountain ridge top which is how the other army had a good place from which to shell the town.
It was unbelievably scenic. There are a few roofs in the old town that are the old faded brown but most of the roofs are orange, indicating that they’re new. Most of the roofs in the old town were hit by shells during the siege. People sought shelter in the old battlements. We’ve read that the Serb-Montenegrin army lost the battle for world opinion by shelling such a beautiful city, the “Pearl of the Adriatic”. We can see why. This is one of the most beautiful old towns that we’ve seen.
This afternoon we climbed up to the top of the old fort just above our room. We also got some great views of the old walled town from there.
Tonight we have reservations at another recommended restaurant on a back street of the old town. Tomorrow we have booked a daylong mini-bus tour to Mostar and another little town in Bosnia and Hercegovina. This seemed like the most efficient way to see them.
All of the guide books are right when they say that Dubrovnik is the one place in Croatia that you must see. It’s great.

Split

July 21st 2011, Arrival in Split
Yesterday we had noticed that there was a big setup in Zadar to view some air show that afternoon. At 5 pm, back in our room in Diklo, as the air cleared after a brief thunderstorm, we could watch the whole thing from our balcony. There were planes doing loops and spins and flying in formation. Who knew this would happen?
After dinner in Diklo last night we went to bed early to get a good sleep for today’s travels. After breakfast in our room we took the local bus into Zadar bus station and caught the 9 am bus for Split (95 kuna or $19 each). It was supposed to take 3 to 3 ½ hours but was more like 4 ½ hours. We just caught it in time and so we got the last 2 seats right up at the front with a good view of the driver. At various times on the way he smoked a cigarette by taking a puff and then holding it out the window, ate a pastry, talked on his cell phone, flirted with the young women, waved at other bus drivers, talked to the ticket man and, oh yeah, drove. Sometimes he did 2 or 3 of these things at a time while steering with one elbow. Nevertheless, we did get here.
The speedometer and hand brake apparently weren’t working so right after we stopped in one of the bigger towns and rammed even the aisle of the bus full of people, we went to some greasy bus garage. He backed in and for about 20 minutes mechanics fixed the bus with all of us in it. The driver stood in the oil slick in the garage, smoking cigarettes and chatting. But it got fixed, he didn’t set the garage on fire, and away we went.
The air conditioning was good so it really didn’t matter that the trip took awhile. A young Slovenian woman who lives in Split (and had visited relatives in Mississauga) was sitting near us on the bus and she interpreted for us, letting us know what was going on. As she said with a laugh, “Its not about the destination, it’s about the journey”, and she was right. As Anita said, who needs TV with all this going on as we passed by absolutely beautiful scenery along the Dalmation coast.
There are lots of little seaside villages full of vacationers enjoying the sun and swimming in the sea and lots of little marinas and campgrounds and then some vacant land. This goes on for miles and miles. We also went through Trogir which we had thought of visiting. It looked nice but not worth the trouble to get back to.
We had little trouble finding the reception office for our room, although I‘m not really sure how. Reception is in a building about 100 m away from our room but it’s a maze of little side streets. I’m not sure I can find it again. Our room is just inside the Iron Gate of Diocletian’s Palace. The palace isn’t really a palace anymore but is a walled part of the city with other buildings built from the original structure and from later buildings built inside it. Ours is the only room here that belongs to the hostel group we rented from.. We have our own entrance off the street and our own concrete stairs up to our room and bathroom. It’s very nice with AC, satellite TV and WIFI, which has some coding problem so I can’t connect yet. If I can find the reception office again, maybe they can fix it.
Diocletian was the Roman Emperor at the end of the 3rd century. He was born near here and the palace was his retirement home. It was built in 11 years and 2,000 slaves died during the construction. Diocletian was noted for his persecution of his subjects, especially Christians. When he died the people were so happy and partied so hard that there were riots. Diocletian’s other dubious claim to fame is that he is the one who decided that the Roman Empire should be divided into 4 management sections, which for some historians was one key part of what made it all fall apart.
On the harbour side of the palace is the Riva, or waterfront promenade. It’s very beautiful with lots of palm trees, the water on one side and the old town, including the palace, on the other. We’re here for 3 nights. It probably won’t take us that long to see everything but it’s just a nice place to be, much better than Zadar.
The reception people (one of whom lived with relatives in Victoria for 3 months) told us of a good restaurant just past the end of the Riva that has good food, moderate prices and is frequented by lots of locals as well as tourists. We checked it out and we’ll go there tonight.
Friday July 22nd, 2011 Split
The restaurant we went to, “Fife”, was pretty good. Most of it is outside on sort of large wooden picnic tables so it’s quite casual and filled up quite quickly after 7pm. We were lucky we got there just as the big rush started. The food was not fancy at all but very good and certainly cheap. We’re going to go back again tonight.
This morning we tried to get the wireless internet working to no avail. After yogurt in our room and pastries on a bench on the Riva, Anita had a coffee in a café while I went to try to get ferry tickets to Dubrovnik on Sunday. Well, there isn’t a ferry to Dubrovnik on Sunday. It only runs twice a week. However, there always seems to be a line-up at the ticket office for the ferries out to the islands or to Ancona, Italy. Scrap that plan. It looks like it will be bus to Dubrovnik. With no internet access, we were having trouble coming up with a travel plan because we didn’t know what was doable.
Before it got too hot this morning, we toured Diocletian’s Palace. It’s a big rectangle 705 feet by 590 feet. We paid 35 kuna each ($7) to tour the foundations. There are all these cellar rooms with vaulted ceilings and huge pillars. There’s a slight slope to the land so the cellars were built to provide almost a walk-out basement on the sea side with Diocletian’s private rooms up above. The back half of the palace housed his 700 servants and guards. After that we wandered all through the palace which is now partly original passages and mostly other buildings built since, including a couple of churches - the ultimate slap in the face to a Christian-hater like Diocletian. The buildings inside the palace now are little shops and residences connected by narrow cobblestone streets, some of which used to be hallways, looking a lot like any other old Mediterranean town. The buildings are partly built out of old walls of the palace rooms sometimes and sometimes not. Our 2nd floor room is above a little “Fast Food” store. Our street is about 6 or 7 feet wide with a restaurant on the other side taking up about ½ of it. This is normal for us now.
One area we toured was the palace vestibule that’s still intact. This was the entrance to Diocletian’s private quarters and it’s impressive, just as it was designed to be. Huge arches and vaulted ceiling.
At lunch we had a cheese burek and tomatoes down on the Riva, overlooking the harbour. It’s very beautiful.
This afternoon we resolved to figure out our plans. We know we have one more night here and 4 nights in Dubrovnik. We went to the reception office (found it again) to use the internet there, which worked well. We decided that we’d bus to Dubrovnik, tour it for a day and a half, maybe take a day bus tour to Mostar in Bosnia and Hercegovina, then spend my birthday on Lokrum Island off of Dubrovnik seeing the monastery and enjoying the beach. Then the next day we should be able to catch a big ferry back to Split, which takes 10 hours but stops on the islands of Mljet, Korcula and Hvar on the way. Then we’ll stay 2 nights in Split and then get the bus to Plitvice National Park. This wasn’t our original plan exactly but travel requires flexibility.
We talked to our hosts and reserved 2 nights here again on our way back from Dubrovnik. Then we reserved two nights at the Hotel Plitvice, right at the entrance to the National Park. Now all we have to do tomorrow morning is reserve bus tickets to Dubrovnik, ferry tickets from Dubrovnik back to Split and bus tickets to Plitvice. Piece of cake, hopefully.
Tonight it’s back to “Fife” to see what else is on the menu.
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011, Split
Last night we went back to Fife for dinner - good but slow service because a big crowd arrived right after we did. We had dalmation pasticada (beef stewed in wine and spices and served with gnocchi) and stuffed zuchini, both very good. Because our food was cold at first and we sent it back, they gave us a free dessert. All this for 124 kuna, including tip - less than $25 Cdn.
After dinner we went for another stroll along the Riva. It was packed. From Thursday until tomorrow has been a big festival celebrating the football (soccer) game today between HNK Hajduk Split, the revered local team, and FC Barcelona, the European champions. This is the 100th anniversary of the Hajduk team and the celebrations are centred on the Riva. This is a huge deal. There are klapa groups and others performing, a pageant showing some highlights of the Hajduk team’s 100 years and concerts by some famous Serbian and Croatian performers.
This morning I got up early and was at the bus and ferry terminal by 7:15. First I got bus tickets for tomorrow to Dubrovnik and on the 30th from Split to Plitvice Lakes National Park. Then, after some searching, I found the right ticket office and bought tickets for the ferry from Dubrovnik -Mljet-Korcula-Hvar -Split next Thursday. The bus tickets cost 550 kuna total and the ferry cost 230 kuna. Quite inexpensive really, for the distances we’re travelling. Here the train station, bus station and ferry terminal are all adjacent so it’s a busy spot even at 7am.
After my business trip, we got pastries and yogurt and ate on a bench on the Riva. Then we stopped at a café in Narodni trg, the old town square and had coffee (decaf espresso with whipped cream for me - first coffee in a couple of weeks). You get a dandy espresso here for 8 kuna ($1.60).
We had wanted to go out to a local park and beach today but it was cloudy and windy. We decided to walk out there anyway just for the exercise. On the way we stopped in the fish market. That’s another happening place in the mornings. Any local seafood you want is right there, freshly caught. There are piles of oysters, shrimp, scampi, squid, octopus, sardines and lots of other fish I didn’t recognize. Restaurant buyers come in with little trolleys and load up bins of seafood for the day’s customers. Lots of local people are buying just enough for a meal.
We walked up to the park but decided to come back fairly quickly because it looked like it would storm. On our way back we went by the fishermen’s wharf which has a little kitchen and roofed dining area. There were over a dozen fishermen in there having a fish fry, drinking beer and wine, singing klapa songs and generally whooping it up. It seemed a little early (11:30 am) but they’d probably been out fishing since the wee hours of the morning.
We just got back to our room when a vicious thunderstorm started. There’s thunder, lightning and rain right now. Our power has flickered but hasn’t gone out yet. However, we’re safe, warm and dry. This is the 2nd thunderstorm during the day that we’ve seen on our holiday and there have been a couple at night. However, they don’t last that long. Once this is over the sky will probably clear and it will be another beautiful day. We can hear a klapa group singing under the awning of a little restaurant around the corner so the rain is probably ending and the Hajduk party is gearing up again.

Opatija to Zadar

Monday July 18th, 2011 Opatija
Dinner last night at “Roko” was great. Mussels with gnocchi in white wine and olive oil sauce plus some calamari and grilled veggies, beer, wine and tip for only $29 Cdn. It was so good that we have another reservation for tonight at 19:00 (7pm). After dinner we took a stroll around town. At a hotel right near us there is a big dining patio overlooking the sea. Last night they had a man and woman, accompanied by a keyboard player, singing opera songs. We stopped on the promenade and watched for awhile. The woman especially was great.
Today we started off by trying to do some emailing and banking at 7 am. I thought maybe the internet would be a little quicker with no-one else logged on here. It seemed slightly quicker for awhile but it ended up being so slow I couldn’t even open up our usual hotel booking web sites. We’re okay since we have tonight here, 2 nights reserved in Zadar and 3 nights after that in Split. However, as soon as we can get a reasonable connection I have to see if there’s anything available in Hvar on Hvar Island. That’s where we’d like to go next. If there isn’t, we’ll try Korcula on Korcula Island before we move on to Dubrovnik.
After the internet frustration, we had the buffet breakfast (included) in the big dining room here. It was a good spread with lots of both hot and cold items.
This hotel is very old-fashioned with a big staircase and very high-ceilinged dining room with chandelier. It’s a little past its prime but still pretty nice. There are some oddities like an outer padded door and inner wooden door to each guest room. The ceiling in our room is at least 14 feet high. And as in other places in Croatia, the faucets are sometimes hot to the left and sometimes hot to the right. In fact our shower is hot to the left while the sink 2 feet away is hot to the right. Alertness tests all around us.
It was actually spitting rain a bit this morning so we tried a bit more emailing after breakfast. When the weather cleared we went for a long walk along the “Lungomare” or seaside promenade which goes for 12 km. There are lots of spots to sit on a bench and look down at the sea crashing on the rocks. Right near our hotel is “Slatina” or the main tourist beach area. It’s actually a huge concrete patio with steps down into the rocky sea. They’ve made some pools in it (one with sand) open at one spot to the sea so that kids can play in the water easily. There are people scattered all over sunbathing and swimming. We’re very lucky to be able to easily paddle into completely deserted lakes in Algonquin Park and have sand beaches all to ourselves, as well as all the other beaches we can go to. Here, these concrete patios and concrete steps down off the rocks are all they’ve got so they enjoy them. It actually works just fine and people are having a great time. It’s just not what we’re used to.
After a long walk, we came back and gathered some supplies for lunch. Then we went back up the Lungomare about one km or so and found a nice shaded bench for a picnic. We spent quite a bit of time there and then slowly wandered back. After we’ve showered and mostly packed for tomorrow, we’ll go out for dinner and probably another stroll around. We’ll get the buffet when it opens at 7 and walk the couple of blocks to the bus station for the 8:50 bus to Zadar, arriving about 14:30.
I think we’ve seen Opatija. It’s a nice old-fashioned Riviera type town.
July 20th 2011 Zadar
The night before last we had another great meal at Roko. A kilogram of mussels in wine sauce, bread, scampi with gnocchi, beer, wine, complimentary brandy and tip, all for about $34 Cdn. The kitchen is open to the dining room so you can see the chef at work. There’s a woodburning oven so all the bread is fresh baked. It almost made us want to stay in Opatija just to eat there.
After the hotel buffet yesterday morning we got on the bus at 8:50 to go down the coastal road along the Kvarner Gulf for a little over 5 hours to Zadar. After we passed Rijecka, the road was carved out of the side of the steep hills (mountains?) from about 20 feet occasionally to mostly about 200 feet above the sea. On one side was steep rock and on the other was a steep bank or cliff down to the water. We sat on the right side of the bus to get a better view of the coast but partway along Anita relinquished the window seat to me because it was just too uncomfortable for her to look down into the sea beside the bus. If we ever had an accident, that would be it.
Neither of us have ever seen such a stark landscape. The islands offshore and the Kvarner gulf coast are all steep bare rock covered with layers of jagged rocks from baseball to suitcase size. There’s a bit of brush growing somehow here and there but no trees. There’s no soil for miles and miles. It looks really dry and apparently the winter winds are so fierce that the highway is often closed so high vehicles don’t tip over. There are a few small fishing / tourist villages clinging to the coast here and there. As we drove we could see little old dry stone roads and stone fences but very few people live there. There’s just no way to survive off the land.
Being lost in the bush at home would be a walk in the park compared to being lost in the bush here.
As we got closer to Zadar, the vegetation got more lush and the land got flatter.
We had to wait about ½ an hour at the main bus station to catch our local bus to where we’re staying just out of the city along the coast in Diklo. It took about 15 minutes to get here.
We’re staying in a really nice room with AC, balcony and wireless internet (well it worked yesterday but not this morning yet - when I originally asked the landlady about wireless she said, in broken English, “Of course we have WIFI, this is not Africa“). It’s about a 5 minute walk down the hill to the bus stop and the sea. This area has a lot of new houses and some old tourist cottages along the coast. It’s all pebble beach here, no big rocks. It’s quite busy with tourists staying here and swimming in the sea.
To paraphrase one of our guide books, in Slovenia and Croatia even the homeless go to the coast in the summer. It’s busy but not as totally insane as many famous sites we visited in western Europe last summer. However, it still takes work to find reasonable accommodation. We were going to go to Hvar Island after we went to Split for a few days but we couldn’t find anywhere decent and reasonable to stay. We had almost decided on one place yesterday afternoon but after we looked at the map and our notes for about 20 minutes and then went back online to book it, it was gone. So we’ve decided to go from Zadar to Split for 3 nights and then straight to Dubrovnik for 4 nights. We’ve booked a good room with shared bathroom (the first shared bathroom this trip) just 50 metres outside the old city wall at the Pile Gate. That will be a great location to see old Dubrovnik.
This morning we’ll have breakfast in our room (we have a kitchenette) and then catch the bus into the old town of Zadar to tour around for the day.

July 20th, afternoon

Well, we toured the Zadar old town. It didn't take too long, just a couple of hours. There are a few old churches and cobblestone streets but not too much that was very impressive. There were 2 interesting things. The Sea Organ is a concrete step by the sea that has pipes built into it, each with a little opening up into the step. The waves push air through the pipes and they make a sound. When it's turbulent, as it was today, many pipes will be making sounds - a sea organ.

The other cool thing is the Salute to the Sun which is a 22m in diameter circle of solar panels built into the promenade, that harvest the sun to power the harbour lights and also save energy which is re-emitted from the circle at night for a natural light show. Cool stuff.

We don't like to sound jaded but there really isn't that much to see in Zadar. We finally got back to our room after waiting for the Diklo bus for about an hour but we just looked around at the bus stop at all the action, including all the traffic controlled by whistle blowing cops and cadets. Tourist central. Tomorrow, we'll take the local bus from Diklo to Zadar bus station and then the big bus to Split, about a 3 1/2 hour trip.

There are a couple of pictures from our hotel in Istria, some from Rovinj and some from Opatija. There's a thunderstorm right now. I better send this before we lose power.