Sunday Aug 2nd:
We are here in Croatia! It was a busy 24-36 hours or so. Amy and I took separate flights; she was on Swissair and I was on SAS, both leaving Boston around five.
I flew into Split via Copenhagen, and she went through Zurich. Amy and our friend Don were supposed to arrive around the same time, but Don's flight was cancelled outright, and Amy had a two hour delay, so I had to hang out for a fair amount of time at the airport checking schedules and waiting for folks to turn up.
I wandered down to the rental car desk and negotiated with the folks there. You can get a rental car for a very reasonable rate in Split these days, but the people behind the counter make an unbelievably hard sell when it comes to the extra insurance -- they give you lengthy descriptions of the bad things that might happen to you, and they put a large hold/deposit on your credit card… I did eventually succeed in extracting the car without the extra insurance in the end, but I felt as though I had been put through the wringer. Smallish Dacia, manual transmission, very underpowered, but in fact it fit our needs just fine:
Once Amy finally turned up, we made the drive into the small town of Marina. Rental house/apartment turned out to be nice: kitchen and living area on the ground floor, then a sort of detached building up above (you have to walk outside to go between) with bedrooms and a couple of balconies/patios. Really nice view out over the bay, windy but warm. Small but nice swimming pool, foosball table, pair of kayaks as well. It is maybe a 20 minute drive from the airport, which is pretty convenient. Photos:
Chau-wen was also there to greet us; he rolled in the night before. Pete and Rosana arrived around the same time I did; spent a while chatting with them in the Copenhagen airport. Pete was using cool gadget called a TextBlade (super compact keyboard you can use with a phone). Very interesting, looks like it would come in handy on cycling and hiking trips (Pete can always be counted on to have the hippest and most up-to-date gadgetry).
While we waited for the stragglers to get in I went for a trip to the grocery store with Hildegard and Reinhard and Julia and Nora; we visited "Kaufland" (a chain that is big in Germany as well, they told me). It was fun to hear about what Julia and Nora have been up to-- it definitely sounds as though they are both launched into adulthood...
Hildegard is teaching both English and French; her students are at the equivalent of 7th or 8th grade. Sound pretty challenging to me!
Don was flying in from Barcelona, where he'd been vacationing the last couple of days. He had his wallet stolen on the last day poor guy, and had to scramble to get his hotel paid for and all that (he called Pete and managed to get some help paying the bill remotely).
Reinhard and I doing a test kayaking run in the pool, just to see if things work:
After that we hauled the kayaks down to the bay and had a good session -- we managed to make it most of the way to Marina, then cut south along the bay and finally crossed back over to the north side to where we started. In the middle of the bay on the way back the wind changed and a rainstorm swept in and dumped rain on us -- that was interesting (glad we did not get hit by lightning). There was one point where the sun had come out but it was still raining hard on us (kind of a cool experience).
More miscellaneous photos:
Let the foosball begin!
Around the house:
Gaming:
Cooking...
Setting up for dinner:
The maestro of mixology at work...
The youngest of the bunch, very interested in cats and dogs...
This was from a side trip to Trogir, a neighboring town:
It was very nice to see all of the gang...
Monday:
Today was our sailing day. Karim had organized the expedition, for those who were interested in being out on the water. Early start, since we had to drive in to Split (pronounced “Spleet” by the locals); the car I drove included Ervan, Don, Hildegard, and Pete (a very full load). We arrived in good time, so we were able to wander around the wharf area and find a place to get coffee, then get onto the boat by around 8:30 or so for a 9am departure.
The boat (“Ocean Blues”) was a big catamaran, crew of around 4-5, with maybe around 80 or 90 passengers? It was kind of hard to get a good count. We did not do any actual sailing as it turned out (just motored around), but the boat was good for seeing the sights and for swimming when we stopped.
We headed south to the big island of Brac: very hilly, dry, lots of scrub brush / bushes. At the docking point on Brac we all piled out of the boat and (to my surprise) then got onto a couple of buses that were waiting there, which took us up to the highest point on the island. The inland landscape on Brac is extraordinarily rocky; it was clear that most fields were being used for livestock (sheep we were told) but they were very shy critters indeed, we never laid eyes on them. Many of the areas had huge piles of rocks that people had cleared from the fields to improve the soil (still looked very rocky even then).
The bus eventually deposited us up at the top of a high point, where there was a lookout over a cliff with views to the south. Very foggy initially, but then things cleared a bit and we were able to spot the famous “Horn Beach” down below. We hopped on the bus again and made our way down to the southern coast and the beach we’d seen previously. Short “history lesson” bursts from one of the crew along the way -- Brac is apparently know for stone masonry and stone-quarrying (a lot of the light, sand-colored stone you see in Split and other cities comes from Brac) and wine-making as well as sheep. It is also well-known as a place with many local dialects (some almost incomprehensibly different from mainstream Croatian). We eventually came down from the hills and the bus deposited us at Horn Beach, which turned out to be a really delightful place in spite of its popularity with visitors. The beach itself is not sand but small sandy-colored pebbles, swimming was fantastic, and they had big groves of pine trees with lots of nice shady spots to rest at when you weren’t swimming. Interesting fish, too: I brought my goggles and had fun chasing them around underwater. We stayed for 2 or 3 hours or so, before making the walk (half hour) over to the town of Bol, where we boarded the catamaran again. The walk from beach to Bol was nice, although very built up (lots of cafes, restaurants, and ice cream stands).
The boat:
View from the top of Brac. The tiny sliver of sand-colored coast is Horn beach:
The beach itself:
Once back on the boat, we motored up the coast to the northwest. Partway to our first swim stop we saw some clouds on the horizon and within about ten minutes we were being blasted by rain -- I actually enjoyed it, but then again I did pack my rain jacket. The rain finished right around the time we got to our stopping place, so we had a nice swim there and had our lunch (should really be using “air quotes” for lunch, since it was around 4pm at this point).
Underway. I think this was the section where we were getting rained on:
Stopped for swimming:
After that it was more motoring, another stop for swimming, and finally a last leg back to Split, pulling into the dock around 7:20. Interesting conversation in the car ride back with Jane, about some cool security-related computer research work she had done the summer before. Long day! Arrived back to the apartment to find a nice dinner prepared by Amy, Rosana, and Chau-wen -- yum...
Amy had her own separate set of adventures visiting Split; I will have to get her to write down her thoughts at some point.
Tuesday:
Slept late, yay! Warm and sunny today, had a fairly lazy breakfast with people filtering in and out of the kitchen at odd times. Lolled around for a bit, then got up an expedition to the grocery store, this time to shop for dinner stuff (Amy and I were on the hook for the big meal). Chau-Wen and Ervan came along too; Ervan wanted to lay in provisions for his bartending exploits.
We bought ridiculous quantities of chicken, ingredients for fatoush salad, some eggplants, and rice. Lunch was assorted sandwiches with leftovers from the night before. After lunch Karim and I went down to the ocean to swim and kayak again. He and I had another long paddling session while Lilya hung out and swam with Hildegard and Reinhard and Amy. I had a swim when we got back; Lilya was still splashing around and having fun, and she kept on looking at me and saying “Voiture!” “Voiture!”. I had no idea what she was talking about until I went for another swim the next day in the same spot, this time with goggles, and sure enough there on the sea bottom was the remains of an old car (looked like it had been there for a good 20-30 years if not more).
Dinner prep in the afternoon, then had fun cooking. No American-style grill, but the house had a sort of detached fireplace thing with a sizable hearth and a chimney with a good draw, so we set up our charcoal there and were able to grill pretty effectively (Chau-Wen helped a lot). Dinner around 7:15; I cooked the fatoush and the chicken and Amy did the rice and the eggplant, and whipped up an amazing fruit cobbler with nectarines, plums, and blueberries (the fruit here is very good). Photos:
Game session after dinner; Ervan brought an entire suitcase of games to play, so he had multiple sessions going on. I passed on the game below, but later on I participated for a game called “Codenames”, which was pretty fun social/guessing game (although tricky for the non-english-speakers).
Wednesday:
Got up fairly early-ish to hang out in the kitchen and drink coffee and chat. Amy, Pete, Ervan and Don had decided to make a day trip to Dubrovnik, and they hit on the idea of hiring a local guy to drive them there and back (left at 8). Meanwhile, the rest of the gang (minus Chau-Wen) decided to drive up to that national park to see the waterfalls on the Krka river, up to the north. I was in Reinhard’s car for the ride.
The visit to the park was a real eye-opener; the last time we had been there I think there were maybe 30-40 other people there at the same time? This time there were literally busloads of people coming in and out -- they opened up an entire new entrance to the park off to the side, with vast parking lots and a shuttle system to take visitors from the lot into the park (huge operation). The waterfalls themselves, along with the boardwalk and trails, were very much the way I remembered from ten years ago; the only big change was the size of the crowds. We had a very short hike/tour and then a nice swim at the base of the falls -- water cool but not cold, and a good current to swim against. As before there was a line strung across the river with buoys to keep people from getting too close to the waterfall itself, but now in addition they have a crew of 3-4 lifeguards sitting in a small rubber raft attached to the line, so that they can blow their whistles when someone tries to do something stupid.
Photos:
Thursday:
Today, rafting, huzzah! Reinhard had opted for the afternoon (1pm) rafting departure instead of the earlier morning one, so we got to sleep in a bit and have a leisurely breakfast, which was nice. We packed sandwiches, then hit the road around 11. Blue and Jane were in our car, and since they were ready a bit early, so we took off about 10:50. Most of the ride was uneventful-- down to near Split, then up into the mountains for a while and finally down back to the coast to the town of Omis (pronounced “Omish”).
Omis was insanely trafficky -- the last couple of kilometers took us almost half an hour, but we did finally get there and squeeze into a parking space. The others filtered in eventually, we got organized, then hopped up on a bus (big one) to take us to the put-in point. The bus circled way around to the south before cutting into the mountains again, so we got a lot more views of the coastline. On the way:
At the put-in:
Swimming, part of the way through:
Under way:
The rafting experience was great, and was very similar to the ride we did back in 2009, down to the same set of stopping places along the way -- but it was just as fun the second time around, and the river is still as beautiful and unspoiled as ever. Two fabulous swimming stops, the first in a wider point in the river and the second near a big rock you can climb up and jump off. Julia, Nora, Reinhard, and I jumped off, as did Jane later on.
Our guide on the raft was competent but not especially chatty, definitely a man of few words. We saw fish and ducks, but generally in small quantities. We eventually hopped back on the bus and made our way back, then into the car and back to Marine. Rosana had cooked up a veritable feast, an oven bake with potatoes, chicken, yogurt, and arugula (yum).
Ervan, meanwhile, had been scoping out possible routes for our motorcycle trip, so after dinner he and Reinhard and I looked at maps and tried to decide on where we would go. The plan was to make a big circle starting at Split, then up to Mostar, Sarajevo, east down into Serbia, then south into Montenegro, and finally back south to the coast (very ambitious).
Friday:
Amy came down to breakfast this morning and discovered that one of the feral cats hanging out near the house had been busy -- this was a rather small and innocent looking ginger-colored cat, it managed to kill a snake and had decapitated it out on the patio and was making breakfast out of it, eek. Photo:
Today was mostly a rest day, but we did have a number of good conversations. Chau-Wen and Ervan are both retired now, so they had some interesting perspectives on the whole retirement process and what it was like to chase their various pursuits without having to consider employment. Very good food for thought for the future.
Saturday:
Complicated airport logistics in the morning -- Don had reserved an Uber for the ride in for his (very) early flight, but that somehow fell apart, so he came and woke me up (I had volunteered to be backup) and I drove him in a bit before 6am. Later in the morning we emptied out the fridge and did various other cleanups, then headed off in assorted groups to return rental cars and drop off the people who needed to be dropped off for their flights. Amy and I went in to return our rental car, which took much longer than I had imagined, but we did finally finish that, then the two of us said our goodbyes.
I piled into the car with Pete, Ervan, and Reinhard (along with all of our motorcycling gear, that was an amazing squeeze) and we headed off to Split to find the motorcycle rental place. That took an almost comically long time -- we had to sort through conflicting locations from the GPS, Google Maps, and Apple maps, so we spent quite a while driving around from one spot to another, then once we had located the right street, we spent another lengthy interval finding the office, which was buried in a sort of lower-level warren. We did finally get there, however. [More on the motorcycling trip in a follow-on post...]
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