My final night in Zadar was great...I got mistaken for a photographer (much more exciting than engineer turned management consultant – my fancy new camera gives me much more credibility than I deserve!) and a movie star (many Europeans, particularly those in more rural areas, recognize the American accent as being from Hollywood since much of what they know about the US is from the movies – they also recognize the southern American accent which they typically associate with George Bush…not quite so positively). I laughed at both comments and confessed that, unfortunately, I was neither. It didn’t stop me from dreaming a little dream, however. How great would it be to just travel and take pictures full-time?
I headed out the next morning to catch the bus from Zadar to Split, and had
another (predictably, at this point) maddening encounter at the bus ticket counter. First, I stood in the “ticket” line (not the “information” line as I had done the previous day) only to find out that for this particular route I actually had to stand in another line. Of course. I then moved to the other line which already had several people in it all of whom had different issues to contend with which ended up taking an exorbitant amount of time to resolve…people didn’t know how to read the schedules, didn’t know exactly where they wanted to go, didn’t have cash or the accepted credit cards,
did have the right credit card but didn’t know the PIN number (for this one all of us in line had to wait for the woman to run outside to find her husband so he could come in and enter the PIN for her…she was apparently not to be trusted with their money but was good enough to run the errand of buying tickets). In the middle of this madness, an old Croatian couple decided to get in line…attempting to insert themselves right in front of me at the point at which I was probably number five in a line of ten. Having had enough of this game, I looked at the woman, shook my head “no,” and gave her the thumb to the back of the line. She looked at me in apparent confusion (unclear if it was legitimate or not!) but I wasn’t going for it that day and I just kept on going, this time adding the verbal, “No. Back of the line.” to my non-verbal cues. I have no idea if she understood me or not but, whatever it was, I finally got the message through and she moved to the back of the line. This didn’t stop her husband, however, from practically standing on top of me in an attempt to cut in the line. He played dumb and I played ‘no way” and held tight to my spot, using myself and my bag to keep him out of the line. I think I actually rolled over his toes with my bag at some point (that part was not intentional!) and he finally gave up. Victory!
I had arrived quite early but after two lines and all of the inefficiency and mayhem in the second, I was cutting it close with respect to getting on the 10am bus. I finally got to the front of the line and would have made the bus had the woman at the counter not received a personal phone call exactly at that moment and then decided to take it…for 10 minutes while I stood there fuming. Having already spent a week in Croatia I knew better than to try to fight it and just accepted the fact that I would have to kill an hour at the bus stop, found a shabby café, and camped out with a coffee until it was time to leave. (Incidentally, as we all boarded the bus yet another older Croatian woman started bulldozing her way through the line and cutting in front of everyone when a British girl grabbed her arm to stop her and said, extremely annoyed, “Excuse me! There is a queue!!” I felt a bit better that this wasn’t only happening to me…and that I wasn’t the only one fed up enough to start challenging the local senior citizens!)
I arrived in downtown Split which, now officially in the most touristed part of Croatia and one of the larger cities, was crazy and packed with travelers. I had already planned on making this day a throw-away given that I was clearly on the ragged edge and needed a little break. I got off the bus, grabbed lunch (pizza and sladoded from a couple street vendors – yummy and cheap!), and grabbed a taxi to my hotel. I arrived at the hotel to exactly what I needed at that point…beautiful, modern, spacious and
clean hotel rooms with air conditioning, glorious air conditioning. I have definitely gotten spoiled over the past few years by staying at nice hotels when traveling for work and I was so happy to be back at one after the previous ten days of less than stellar accommodations (I am admittedly too cheap to pay for the nice ones so was only there because I got it for free with my many accumulated hotel points!). I spent a few hours relaxing in the air conditioning and getting back to being a relaxed, appreciative, and tolerant tourist.
I wanted to go to one of the nearby islands the next day and tried work out all the details the previous night. Consistent with everywhere else in Croatia, planning what should be a very easy day trip was not quite so easy. I decided that I would go to nearby Brac Island to see the famous white pebble beach of Zlatni Rat (Golden Cape) and climb Vidova Gora which is the highest point in the Croatian isles at 778m. To do so, I would need to get a transfer from the hotel into town (I was about 10km out), take a ferry to Supetar on Brac, and then catch a bus from Supetar to Bol which would be my starting point for the day. The hotel ran shuttles into Split every hour starting at 9am and they advised me to take the 9am shuttle and the 10:20am ferry. I thought everything was settled and then, just to be sure, started checking into the timing of the ferries, buses, etc. If I were to leave when was recommended, I wouldn’t get to Bol until 1pm at the
earliest and then would have to catch the bus back to Supetar at 2:30pm in order to make my other ferry and shuttle connections. (Again, none of the logistics in this country have been optimized for convenience or logic!) I was finally able to figure out that there was a 7:45am ferry and that if I left the hotel at 7am I could get to Bol by 11am and then catch the 4:10pm bus back to Supetar. Still not a lot of time but much better than 90 minutes!
I walked out of the elevator the next morning at 7am and asked the concierge to call me a taxi. All of the hotel staff were staring at me like I was some sort of zoo animal or something…I guess their typical guests don’t get up that early! I got in the taxi and told the driver that I wanted to go to the ferry to Brac. He asked me if the concierge had told me that there was a ferry this early in the morning, also very confused. I told him, yes, I knew there was a ferry at 7:45am and he just shrugged the “whatever, lady” shrug and drove on. I arrived at the terminal 20 minutes later and, to my great relief, there really was a ferry to Brac at 7:45am (given the typically poor quality of transportation information and the cab driver’s disbelief in the early morning ferry I was a little nervous!) and I was on my way.
I got to Brac, caught the public bus 30 minutes later, and arrived in Bol as predicted at 11am. I only had five hours for fun on the island so headed straight for the tourist info center (as instructed) to get information on the hike to Vidova Gora…but, of course, the tourist info center was closed as it was Sunday. Bummer. Undeterred, I stopped in a couple other tour operator shops and asked if they knew anything about the hike. The first guy understood what I was asking but didn’t know how to help me and pointed me down the street to another shop. The guy there raised his eyebrows and clarified, “You want to climb Vidova Gora? By
walking?” Um, yes. That was the plan! I had read about this hike multiple places so wasn’t really sure what all this confusion this was about. He added, “It takes three hours to go up.” and then looked at me questioningly as if to say, “Are you really sure you want to do that?” I said, “Yep. That’s ok! Where do I start?” He looked at his colleague next to him, shrugged like “Well, I tried to warn her.” and pulled out a map of the local roads, directing me to the starting point of the hike. I said thanks and took off down the road. A Croatian woman at the hotel desk had told me the previous day, “Being active isn’t really part of the Croatian culture yet. Most Croatians just want to lie around in the sun.” No kidding!
The simple map and directions were perfect and I was soon on the trail up Vidova Gora. I ran into a wire gate blocking the trail with a sign hanging on it stating “ZATVORI LOZU” in red paint. I figured that it said something like “trail closed” and even tried to translate it on my phone which came back with “destroy vines” which wasn’t particularly helpful. At any rate, no flimsy little wire gate was going to stop me when there was no obvious reason to close the path so I opened the gate and kept going. (I passed a few of these gates and signs along the way and was starting to get a little concerned until I ran into some people coming back down and knew the trail must be ok.)
The hike was steep but I love climbs and it was well marked so it was an enjoyable hike up to the top. Once I got to the top of the mountain, I had a more gradual climb to the actual peak and happily continued up enjoying the spectacular views of the surrounding islands and could even see the Italian coast in the distance. As is probably clear at this point, I really like hiking and I especially like it when I’m rewarded with a view that you can’t get unless you put the work in to get there. I think this makes what you find at the end of the trail even more special, knowing that not everyone will find it.
Unfortunately, on this day I was to be grossly and unexpectedly disappointed if I thought I was going to someplace unique and special. I rounded one of the last “corners” on the mountain only to run into a road and parking lot packed with vehicles and tour buses. No wonder the guy in Bol thought I was crazy for wanting to walk up…everybody else and their brother had taken one of the fifty vehicles in town up to the top! I had thought I was doing something unique and I had really just spent 90 minutes climbing up a mountain which was a 5 minute drive up the other side. So annoying! There was even a restaurant at the top. I wove my way around the tour groups and cars, shooting “cheaters!” at them with my glare as I passed. At least the views were amazing even if the summit was not quite as sweet and peaceful as I had hoped. I snapped some pictures and then turned around to head back down. I wanted to go to Zlatni Rat before heading back to Split that evening. Since the path up only took 90 minutes, I expected I would be back down in an hour which would give me a couple hours at the beach.
Had things gone according to plan, I
would have had two hours at the beach but – surprise, surprise – I got twisted around on my way back down and it ended up taking longer to get down than I had anticipated. A lot longer…as in around three hours instead of one. I’m not entirely to blame considering it was really rocky on top so the trail was hard to find (and I didn’t have a peak to guide me forward like I did on the way up) and I was following markings on the rocks which ended up being for another, apparently unknown, trail (see, this is what I get when I actually try to follow the marked trail for once!). Regardless, I ended up spending an extra two hours trying to get down a rocky mountain face which I would climb down (making my own path), get stuck, climb back up, move 100m another direction, and then try again, and again, and again. I finally decided to backtrack and walk back towards the summit to make another go at finding the legitimate trail instead of just trying to free climb a descent but not before I had gotten myself pretty scraped up (think long scratches up and my down arms and legs, and stickers poking out from my ankles and calves) and extremely sunburned. (I had sunscreen with me but in my severe frustration with getting lost
again had forgotten to put it on until very late. Bonus…mad
and sunburned.)
I walked back near the summit, realized I had walked
way farther across the mountain than I should have, ultimately found the right trail again, and practically ran down the mountain to try to make up some time. Unfortunately, I had spent too much time scrambling on rocks and no longer had time to go to Zlatni Rat which was a bit of a walk away. I grabbed a snack and hung out in Bol for a bit less than an hour as a consolation prize and then caught the bus back to Supetar to start the journey back. It was a fun if a bit frustrating day even given the seven hours of roundtrip travel including six separate modes of transportation for only five hours on the island but I’d still do it again (although maybe not the getting lost part).
I hurried back to the hotel where I’d scheduled a sports massage and, without going into too much detail, let’s just say that the Croatians are quite a bit more liberal with respect to massages and modesty particularly given that my masseur was male. (I told my friend Ron about it later that night and he replied with, “Wow. Did you ask
him to tip
you afterwards?”) Ron was coming from San Francisco (via Barcelona) later that night so I figured I better get things in order before he arrived. Namely, I really needed to do some laundry but was not going to pay the $5 for a pair of socks or underwear that the hotel was charging so made due with what I had, which was a bathtub and shampoo, and shampooed my dirty clothes. (Admittedly, I was getting a little desperate.) Let’s just say it got me through but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.
Ron’s flight arrived late that night and we caught up for a couple hours at the hotel bar. I hadn’t run into a single American in the past almost two weeks of travel and then I got to this hotel to find an army of them. While waiting for the bill, Ron and I got to witness some of them at their finest…a bleached blonde, practically orange-tanned, woman in a skin tight minidress and five inch heels, clearly having had some
*ahem* quite obvious plastic surgery, arguing loudly with the waiter over her bill. “I am NOT paying for his drinks. Let me just tell you what happened. That guy, Carl, was hitting on me and I wasn’t interested so he put his and his wife’s drinks on my tab and I am NOT paying for it. He is, after all, a
billionaire. I think he can afford it.” She and her entourage (another bleached blonde couple) made some additional hand waving and finger snap points before sashaying away down the lobby. Shocker, they were from Laguna Beach. Such an unfortunate confirmation of the So Cal stereotype when there really are some normal people down there (so I’ve heard…)! We laughed along with a Brit and two Australians who had just watched the same thing and Ron defended his So Cal roots. I felt like we had just been caught in the middle of a reality TV show. (And seriously, besides the fact that this guy was married and hitting on other women…what kind of guy does that while sitting with
his wife and then, when turned down, has the audacity to put both of their drinks on the other woman’s tab? Maybe it’s a billionaire thing…unbelievable!)
Thankfully, Ron had made it safely and we were now just hoping that our other friends, Paul and Amanda, would also make it into Split that night. They weren’t sure they would be able to get a seat on the bus from Zadar where they had flown in from London and then still had to find a place to stay once they arrived. The only thing I hate worse than staying somewhere less than stellar with no air conditioning in a hot climate on vacation is walking around in the middle of the night to try to find a place to stay which invariably less than stellar and without air conditioning in a hot climate on vacation. Given that Paul and Amanda had gotten in so late (we heard from them by email at 3:30am) and everyone was already pretty tired, we decided to take it easy the next day and spend some time in Diocletian’s Palace (basically, the old town in Split which is called a palace but is a series of small cobbled streets and beautiful old buildings) and at the local beaches.
We met the next day around noon and decided to grab lunch before heading to a nearby beach. Thus, we began the first of what would end up being many “restaurant finding expeditions” over the course of the next week during which Paul charged ahead of the group with Ron close behind, racing up to every restaurant, pulling out the menu, doing a quick evaluation of the options, and then always arriving at the same conclusion…“Let’s keep looking.” I was usually in the middle trying to bridge the gap with Amanda trailing behind taking pictures. The funny thing is that, especially in heavily touristed areas (like Diocletian’s Palace), all of the restaurants are almost
exactly the same so the menus never really changed. This didn’t stop Paul from looking at each and every one for sometimes up to an hour while the rest of us followed behind in single file like baby ducks only to decide that we should just go back to number two or number three out of the last fifteen. Then we had to attempt to remember where number two or three was actually located…
We finally ate and then walked along the water for a few kilometers to one of the local beaches which had been recommended and found a spot to camp out. We spent a couple hours reading on the pebble beach and swimming before heading back to clean up and go to dinner. Ron had picked out a great seafood restaurant in another neighborhood in Split and we were all looking forward to a good dinner after all the water and sun (and sladoded!) that afternoon. We bought some drinks including a local rum for a bit of a pre-game and headed back to Paul and Amanda’s to shower before going out.
Ron opened the rum, smelled it, and immediately made a disgusted face. “This stuff smells
really sweet, like a hangover in a bottle. I think it smells like egg nog!” He handed it to me. I smelled it, made the same face, and said, “No, I think it smells like cotton candy! I can’t drink that!” Amanda mixed it with Coke, made the same face, and took a drink. Her conclusion? “It smells like cotton candy but it tastes like bubblegum!” We all agreed on it tasting like bubblegum and between the egg nog and cotton candy smell, Ron started saying it was like Christmas and a carnival in a bottle. It was henceforth called “Carnimas” and we drank it for the next couple hours before dinner while they caught me up on US politics and news…ok, ok, it wasn’t exactly news. They caught me up on US pop culture including new (non-country) music and gave me an introduction to the very classy reality show Jersey Shore. For those of you who know the characters of Jersey Shore we each got Jersey Shore nicknames for the trip…Paul was, of course, Pauly D (particularly appropriate since his last name really does start with D), Ron became Ronnie (obviously), Amanda became Manni, and I got AWoww. The things you think of when you’re drinking bubblegum rum…
We finally left for the trek to dinner and, a couple kilometers away from the hotel, Ron realized that he didn’t know the name of the restaurant and nobody had brought the guidebook. We were too far gone to go back and all I could remember was “konoba” was in the name which means something like “small, family-run restaurant” so wasn’t particularly helpful as anything could be a konoba. I had also previously looked it up on Google Maps so remembered roughly where it was but not exactly. (I know you’re thinking that this is a recipe for disaster!) Shockingly, my vague recollection was enough to get us there without even getting lost! Not sure how the one time I really don’t know where we’re going is the one time I am able to direct everyone there without a problem but it actually worked out! It had been quite a hike out to the restaurant but the food was excellent (I had cuttlefish ink pasta which was black…and very good!) and we had a great time.
We had started pretty late and had walked quite a ways so it was nearly midnight when we made our way back to the Palace. We stopped by a convenience store on our way back to buy drinks and Ron began to open them as we stepped back outside, using one bottle to snap the cap off the others. He finally got down to the last bottle and, as there were no other bottles with caps intact to use, asked for Paul and Amanda’s room key as his bottle-opening tool of choice. It suddenly became a slow motion movie…Paul handed Ron the key while saying, “Be careful and don’t bend it…,” Ron grabbed the key and put it to the bottle, Amanda reached out with a frantic, “Don’t bend the key! Don’t bend the…,” Paul reached out and said, “NooOOOooo….,” as I just stared like a dope with another bottle (with cap intact) in my hand that Ron could have used, while Ron proceeded to crank down hard on the key…bending it to the point I think we all thought it might break.
Paul snapped, “Man! I told you not to bend the key!” He grabbed it, wedged it into a crack in the wall of the building we were standing next to and aggressively tried to bend it back the other way. Amanda jumped in, “Paul, let’s just try it first. Let’s just try it first. Don’t you break it!” Ron apologized gratuitously, we got Paul to calm down (and forfeit the key to Amanda, clearly the more trusted key guardian of the two), and decided to go back to their place first to try the key and then, if needed, call their landlord. The rest of the walk back was fairly quiet as we all just hoped that the key would work. This night was going to get very ugly very fast if not! We reached the door, Amanda tried the key, jimmied it around a bit and jostled the door, we all held our breath, more jostling, and…voila! The key worked! Ron let out a huge sigh of relief. Paul bounced back into typical Paul mode and was already thinking about the next stop and the next drink, and Amanda was just relieved to have a place to sleep for the night. Thank goodness for small graces!
Ron, Amanda, and I attempted to call it a night – it was already late and everyone was tired given the late night before – but Paul would have none of it and we all went out for one more drink in the Palace. It turned out to be really fun and was just a beautiful place and gorgeous evening in which to hang out a little longer. We stopped to take pictures in the street which, with Paul involved, weren’t just “stand and smile” pictures so got us lots of attention, and then all made it back to go to bed. It was a great, if slightly stressful at times, first night out for the group.
We left the next morning at 9am for our bus ride to Dubrovnik, the world-renowned “jewel of the Adriatic” and I was excited to have friends with me for this trip given all the previous Croatian and Slovenian bus rides I had already done solo. We were only going around 175 miles but the trip was expected to take four hours, largely because of the fact that the coastal two-lane highway was narrow and wound tightly to every curve of the coastal rocks. We also had to cross the border into Bosnia and Herzegovina and drive through the “Neum corridor,” a 22km long section of the coast which belongs to Bosnia and Herzegovina (bordered by Croatia on either side – bizarre!), meaning we would have to go through Bosnian passport security which would also extend the trip time.
At this point, I had been on seven different Croatian buses and the drivers had always, and sometimes annoyingly, stopped for 20 minutes of snack time and bathroom break for every 90 minutes of travel. We get on this bus, however, and after three hours the bus hadn’t stopped. I was getting a little desperate (my punishment for starting out the day with coffee and a diet Coke!) as was much of the rest of the bus. We finally stopped for gas and 70% of the bus jumped up. There was a little scuffle at the front of the bus and it didn’t seem like they were letting people off, but then it subsided and I tried to get off out the back door with some of the other passengers also ready to make a run for it. I stepped off first and the bus “ticket collector” (not the driver but just the ticket checker and “order keeper” on the bus) who was standing outside the door took one look at me and shouted, “Sit DOWN!” as he pointed me back to my seat. The girls behind me shuffled backwards and we all got back in our seats (and crossed our legs).
Those that had gotten off for a smoke jumped back on (not sure why smoking was an approved activity but we weren’t allowed to use the bathroom!) and we took off, now very close to the Bosnian border. The same jerk who yelled at me walked the length of the bus rather forcefully pulling the window curtains across the windows and snapped at Ron and Amanda who were sitting by the windows, “Police CONTROL!” We stopped at the border, the Bosnian border official got on the bus, briefly checked passports (hardly even glancing at those from the US – a US passport buys you access and exemption from the typical border-crossing questions in some of these countries!), and we went on our merry way. Given all the drama about police control from our bus ticket jerk, it was really anticlimactic. We all agreed that our 20 minutes in Bosnia had been wonderful as we exited back into Croatia.
We had previously been talking about passport pictures; all of us complaining about how bad ours were and how chubby they made our faces look. I have always called mine “plate face” and when I referred to it by that name at one point Paul asked me about it. I told him that I called it plate face because my face looked as big and as round as a dinner plate. After the Bosnian passport check, he asked to see it and immediately started laughing. Plate face, confirmed! Of all the bad pictures I have taken in my lifetime (and there are plenty), it figures that the one I actually have to live with, show at every country border, and be scrutinized against for ten years is plate face. I still don’t understand what happened – I never really had a plate face! (And no, I will not scan it and post it on the blog. There really are limits to self deprecating humor and plate face is it for me!) Turns out plate face came back to haunt me in Montenegro but that story is still to come…
We finally rolled into Dubrovnik, a full
five hours after leaving Split, and got off the bus (and I, at least, headed straight for the restrooms!). Ron and I went to check-in to our place while Paul and Amanda went off to find theirs, and I think we all were pretty worn out and hungry from that bus ride. I had been feeling car sick for a couple hours for the ride and just being stuck on a bus for five hours had left us all pretty drained. We didn’t know it at the time but a bottle of red wine had broken in another passenger’s bag at some point during the ride and had leaked into Amanda’s so she also had to deal with red wine soaked (and some ruined) clothes when she opened her bag. Such a bummer! We met up for lunch, had another baby ducks following mama Paul restaurant finding escapade, and finally settled on grab and go pizza and sandwiches. (Definitely not worth the long search for that!)
Paul and Amanda wanted to spend some time on the beach before dinner and Ron and I opted to explore Dubrovnik for a couple hours instead. I went picture crazy and Ron was a great sport, following me around down every side street, alley, and stairwell without complaining. I think we probably covered 80% of Dubrovnik’s old town in only two hours (and it really is a jewel) and we had a lot of fun exploring. We all then met up again near sundown to walk the Dubrovnik city walls and this ended up being one of my favorite parts of my entire trip. The light was perfect for pictures of the old town and the temperature was actually pleasant instead of suffocating. Dubrovnik is truly captivating and absolutely gorgeous with all the orange tiled roofs and marble stairs and side streets. Unfortunately, the old town was severely damaged by Serbian and Montenegrin bombings in 1991 (for which members of the Yugoslav Federal Army and Navy, the Bosnian Serb Army, and Montenegrin paramilitary units were later indicted for war crimes in connection with the three months of artillery attacks targeting the old town and its surroundings) and much have the city had to be rebuilt or repaired afterward. Although the city took great care to maintain as much of the old town as possible and to repair the rest as carefully as they could using old style building techniques and materials, the war wounds are still visible in much of the city. The extent of these bombings was most apparent to me as we walked along the city walls as it was quite clear that many of the rooftops were new and in stark, sad contrast to the old originals. Dubrovnik remains the jewel of the Adriatic, however, and I got some of my pep back from the city tour from above. By the time we all went to dinner that night it was clear that we were all back on the upswing.
Again, we followed Paul for too long looking for a dinner restaurant and
again we ended up going back to number two or three out of fifteen. The restaurant we finally settled on didn’t seem like anything special but we had some great Balkan food and just a really fun evening. We, of course rounded it out with more sladoded and strudels (apple or cherry are the Croatian specialty) and a few drinks at some Irish pubs. (We never could figure out why Irish pubs were so seemingly popular in Dubrovnik but there sure were a lot of them!)
We had previously decided to go to Lokrum Island the next day which is a tiny island very near Dubrovnik (maybe a 15 minute boat ride) instead of taking a two hour ferry rides to some of the larger islands. The real deciding factor was that the long ferry rides departed from the ferry terminal which was a $20 taxi ride away and required that you show up at 7am for an 8am departure
in the hopes that you would get a seat as no reservations were allowed. (What kind of crazy system is that?!) Lokrum, on the other hand, left hourly from the small port in the old town. None of us were feeling like waking up at 6:30am on vacation so figured that Lokrum was a happy island medium. We decided to meet the next morning at 10am and called it a good night.
Ron and I wanted to have breakfast before we left for Lokrum (more specifically, strudels) so headed out that morning to pick up our goodies. We stopped at the local market to buy some snacks for the day and Ron went into muscle-man protein mission mode…settling on a can of tuna (for breakfast?! is that really necessary?!) as his best bet. We grabbed strudels and coffee on the way back from the market and then gorged. Ron forced himself to eat the tuna first saying, “I don’t want to end breakfast on a tuna note. I’m going to end with something good!” I can’t really relate but definitely the right call! From this point onward, Ron was an apple strudel eating machine. I credit the fact that he forced down a can of oil-packed tuna immediately before the strudel with his apparent new found love for apple-filled pastries. Dirt would have probably tasted pretty good after that let alone a fruit-filled strudel! Choking down tuna fish for breakfast definitely shows a lot of dedication (and stamina to get it down!) but…gag a maggot! Dedication, schmedication…pass me another cherry strudel, please! (I do have to give Ron credit though for eating the strudel...had he stuck with tuna-only for breakfast I would have been really worried!)
We met up with Paul and Amanda and got on the boat to Lokrum. We were all really glad we’d chosen the lazy day option and didn’t have a lot of travel and transport craziness to contend with. We arrived at the island 15 minutes later and set off to find a beach for the day…and once again began the duckling walk behind Paul for an hour as I think we actually may have hit every single beach on the island. (It’s a small island but still.)
This time we settled on the very last place we checked so maybe the search was worth it (I still think probably not though). Ron and I wanted to get something active in during the day so decided to hike up to the fortress on the island which we did…in a grand total of 20 minutes. Not much of a hike but beautiful views of Dubrovnik so well worth it. We had already traipsed around most of the island on our beach search so there wasn’t really much more to explore. We rounded the northern end and both agreed that one of the main beaches was probably better than the one we had settled on for swimming and spending the day. We got back to where Paul and Amanda were holding down the fort and Paul said, “We were thinking that maybe one of the first beaches might be better for swimming. There are a lot of sea urchins here.” Ron and I smiled and agreed and we all grabbed our things and headed back to beach number one. Classic.
We spent the rest of the day swimming and reading on the beach. The weather was perfect and Lokrum was a great choice for a relaxing day. We headed back early evening and began the night out with wine on the rocks outside the city walls before heading to another fun dinner and night on the old town, this time including live jazz on one of the squares. Again, we had a great time and I at least was really loving Dubrovnik alongside and despite all the other tourists.
After our low key day on Lokrum, I was feeling really antsy and had decided to go to Mljet Island the next day to go biking through the national park. Ron, Paul, and Amanda were more interested in another local beach day and weren’t excited about the two plus hour boat ride (one way) so we split up for the day and I was on my way to Mljet, supposedly one of the most “captivating” Croatian islands, the next morning at 9am. The yacht ride to the island the next morning was actually fantastic. For one, it was on a small (but not fancy) yacht instead of a big ferry and, for two, the ride north along the Croatian coast in the morning was absolutely beautiful and really relaxing. I don’t think I moved for the two and half hours it took to get to the entrance of the national park but just enjoyed being outside in the wind and water with such fantastic views of the coast.
One reason Ron had decided against Mljet was that he wanted to be in Dubrovnik for sunset and the boat back from Mljet was supposed to arrive around 8:30 or 9pm, too late for sunset (unless you’re in Finland!). I got off the boat at the port in Pomena (on Mljet) and they told us to be back at the boat at 4pm. Surprised as I thought I had until 6:30pm, I clarified to make sure I had heard correctly, “We are leaving here at 4pm, 16:00?” “Yes! Leave here 16:00!” Ok. Well, slight change of plans but what can you do? (Also not surprising at this point…I don’t think anyone involved in tourism in Croatia knows the actual details of anything he or she is selling.) The sad thing is that Ron could have come and still made sunset in Dubrovnik if only we had been given the right information! So frustrating.
With only four and half hours on the island, I hurried to rent a bike, paid the park entrance fee (around $20), opted
not to buy the park map (also almost $20 – highway robbery!), and took off on my bike. I had an awesome day biking around the lakes on the island and taking swimming breaks in the gorgeous water. I passed through a small village with a speed limit of 5km/hr (3.1miles/hr!) in which you had to actually walk your bike because you would (clearly) be going over the speed limit. It was exactly what I needed and although was much too short (five hour roundtrip boat ride for four and half hours on Mljet – can’t they figure these things out a little bit better?!), I got the “I want to move and explore!” out of my system for the day. Mljet and Rab Island were my strong favorites out of the islands I visited and they were definitely the most beautiful (Mljet, specifically) but I think the fact that I biked all day on both of them made a big difference. I got to see so much and it was really relaxing to be so independent and free in such beautiful places.
I hopped up from my rock perch on the far end of Veliko Jezero (“Big Lake” of the two there – the other is called Malo Jezero, or “Small Lake”) at 3:30pm, jumped on my bike, and got back just in time for my boat back to Dubrovnik. I arrived back in Dubrovnik at 6:30pm, showered, and was still able to make sunset drinks with the group. It was perfect (although I would have preferred to leave at 7am that morning to have more time on Mljet)!
This was our last night in Dubrovnik – our three days there had really flown by – and we had an awesome final night with drinks on the stone pier and then dinner (and I don’t remember following Paul for an hour looking at menus so I think someone else must have taken over this time…which I may have had something to do with!) and more Irish pubs. We were leaving the next morning for the final part of our trip together, and the final part of my trip overall (the other three would head on to Prague when I left to go back “home” to Helsinki).
Zbogom Hrvatska, Crna Gora halo! (Farewell Croatia, hello Montenegro!)
I finally did something that I haven’t yet done since I’ve been in Finland…I stayed in the country for three consecutive weekends! This decision was influenced by a few things, 1) I was exhausted after all my recent (months of) travel, 2) I got staffed on a hectic three-week case, and 3) Finland is actually very nice in the summer! One thing very special to Finland is the Finnish archipelago on the southwestern side of the country which is basically a scattering of thousands of islands from, quite literally, here to Sweden. The Finnish archipelago has more islands than any other archipelago in the world, approximated at around 40,000 if you count every land mass and rock that breaks the surface of the sea. Only 257 of these measure more than one square kilometer and even fewer are inhabited. However, due to the jokamiehenoikeus, literally translated as ”every man’s rights,” in Finland any person may go on any Finnish property to bike, ski, hike, camp, or hunt (providing he or she has the proper permits) as long as the visit does not harm the property or bother the owners. There are some loose guidelines with respect to what is outside of the reasonable limits (i.e. you can’t camp in the immediate vicinity – yards or gardens – of private homes) but you can basically do and go wherever you want in the country as long as you are respectful.
