Our flights to Croatia were
uneventful: Detroit to Rome, Rome to Moscow, and Moscow to Split. This last leg
had us crammed on Aeroflot in a planeload of drunken Russians, acting like
40-year-olds on Spring Break. Sadly, we arrived at Split airport with no bags.
Just the clothes on our backs (funky is too kind; we had been on the move for
just under 24 hours straight). If you know us at all, you know we worried about
them. Were they in Rome or Moscow? Were they delayed or lost? What would it
cost to replace everything? What had we actually packed? Would Customs find the
contraband Roger had stuffed in his suitcase?
The hotel turned out to be
great, and the owner, Frane, took charge of tracking down the luggage, giving
us time to explore this great city. Split was clean, interesting, walkable, and
filled with good restaurants and gelato stands. What's not to like?
We hit the streets, with Roger immediately
shopping for replacement clothing. Two shirts later, he was once again dapper.
How good did he look? Like a local, apparently.
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Posing as a Local Seems to be Working. |
He went to a local market very early on Sunday morning. The cashier
returned his change. “Thank you,” he
said reflexively in an otherwise wordless transaction. The guy behind him in line, a grizzled old
Croat, heard his English looked him hard in the eye. Hard and cold. “You’re not Croatian,” he
said. “No, I’m American,” Roger
said. They guy looked him up and down,
from his sandals and white socks to the top of his head and back again. “You LOOK Croatian,” he finally said. “Thanks,” was all Roger could think of. We spent the rest of the day pondering if the
guy meant this as an insult or a compliment.
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Was Lost, but Now it's Found Frane, our host, with missing bags. |
Split is one of the oldest walled
cities on the east coast of the Adriatic, built as a retirement palace by the
Roman emperor Diocletian. We know this because we had just read it in Wikipedia. A beautiful city, but pretty poorly
labeled. We usually get a proper tour
when we visit the historical sites, but we did this one on our own. We bought the requisite entrance tickets but
had no idea what most of it was. The
advantage here is that you can make shit up, confounding the other
English-speaking tourists by our own narration while looking intently at a hotel brochure but might be a guide book. We speak quietly with each other, but with other,
but with great authority: “Elvis was buried in this crypt before the Balkan
War, and re-interred in Graceland in 1993.”
The city had an interesting market, a
promenade along the waterfront, and a world-class, one-of-a-kind display of
stuffed frogs in human positions. The mind boggles! Rather than spend the cash
to see the exhibit, we took photos of the poster and store-front and used our
imaginations to picture the displays. Cost-effective tourism!
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"...507 Stuffed Frogs Displayed in Human Positions." That's why we travel! |
Literally minutes before we left our hotel for
the Split bus station for Dubrovnik, our bags appeared at the hotel. Frane was
right; there was nothing to worry about. I guess we should have taken that
advice.
Dubrovnik: Cash Cow of the Adriatic
Dubrovnik is gorgeous. It is an ancient walled city, much larger
city than Split, and popular with the tourists for a very good reason: it is
one of the most picturesque cities in the world. Several large cruise ships
dock there daily, spilling thousands of tourists into town in addition to the
thousands already staying there. And this is slightly off-season. We had
arranged to rent an apartment right in the old walled city, a great location
for sight-seeing and general exploring. The old city is spectacular, the
architecture is beautiful, the marble streets gleam, and everything we need or
want is at hand. Shortly after arriving in town we stopped at a grocery store
and Linda recognized Lauren, who is from our hometown and graduated with our
daughter Kate. She and her husband Chris are on a year-long global trek,
having wonderful adventures. Had we walked into that store 10 seconds later,
we never would have seen them. We love that quality about travel, the
serendipity of so many experiences.
Linda Takes a Dive
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Heroes of The Wall: Aron and Cameron;
Victim: Linda (Center)
Bystander: Roger (Right)
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Walking the fortified wall
surrounding Dubrovnik was the first order of business, and the views from the
top are ispectacular. The brilliant blue sky, red roofs, and terra-cotta
buildings made every corner a photo op. The Adriatic was a pretty good backdrop
for it all. This is where and when Linda did a face-plant, transforming half or
her face to an ever-changing array of color and cutting our walk a little
short. Cameron and Aron, paramedics from California, came to her rescue and
became our closest friends in the country, at least for a while. Certainly our
only hero friends! We found that gelato made Linda feel better, sort of icing
her face from the inside, so we increased the frequency of our gelato stops. It
seems to help.
It is also delicious.
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Dinner in Old Town with new Best Fiends: Julian and Daria |
The Adriatic coastline is dotted with beautiful lsands. Which one to choose? Time constraints led us to
Lokrum, an easy ten-minute boat ride from Dubrovnik. It had peacocks, a
fortress, rocky beaches, an old monastery, and filming sites from Game of
Thrones. A well-spent morning for sure. Back in Dubrovnik, the tourists return
to their cruise ships in the late afternoon and the city quiets down
considerably. That evening, we just barely managed to ride the cable car to the
top of the mountain in time to catch the sunset. Quite a show! At the cable
car, we met an interesting couple, Julian from Stuttgart, and Daria from
Bolzano, Italy, who became our brand new best friends. (Do we sound fickle?)
He's an automotive engineer and she's finishing her PhD in architecture, and
both of them were charming company. They hung out with us on our terrace for
drinks and joined us for dinner at an old town restaurant, impressing us with
their historical and architectural knowledge, typical intelligent European insights into American culture, history and politics, and just having fun.
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Enjoying the walk on the city walls. |
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Zlatko, trying his best! |
The country of Montenegro is a short
drive from Dubrovnik, and we hoped to get a peek at it since we were nearby.
There's no telling if and when we'll be back in this part of the world. Small
tour companies throughout Dubrovnik offer day trips, so we booked one for the next day. There were 15 of us in a
small bus with Zlatko, our tour leader who made every effort to show us a good
time. Our group was a strangely unresponsive group of slack-jawed dullards, appropriate
since we were, after all, on the short bus. It made the day day less than
thrilling and Zlatko's efforts fall flat. We visited the walled towns of Kotor
and Budva, known for orthodox churches and walled fortifications. We missed most of the
commentary on the way back to the city as we dozed, but by then we were
mentally finished learning for the day. One can only absorb so much!
The food has been great. Italian, seafood, pizza, street
food sandwiches, and ice cream have met our nutritional needs quite well. As
always, we are deeply impressed by the language abilities of our waiters and
other workers who deal with tourists. We've pretty much stopped apologizing for
only speaking English, but we still feel pretty crappy about it. Not enough to
learn another language, you understand, but pretty crappy.
Coming up Next: Bosnia:
Was it a good trip? We had a
better time than Archduke Ferdinand!