Croatia, It was nice to meet you
And so ends another one of our vacations of 2015. We began with our 12 day Nordic Wonder Tour
followed by the 18 night Historic Eastern Capitals Tour, and then on to the
Colorful Croatia Tour for the last 10 days.
Any one of those would have been a nice holiday but back to back to back
it becomes an adventure. However, no
flies on us as we move on with the Best of Southern Italy Tour for the next 7
nights.
These first three tours have been a challenge with 10
different countries and as many different languages and almost as many
currencies. Not only are each of the
languages different from each other but they don’t fall lightly on the ear. With our more familiar French, Spanish,
Italian and maybe even German we can figure out some words to go to the
bathroom or buy a beer or get breakfast but not so much with Hungarian or
Russian. Now for our last 4+ weeks
abroad (and 3 new tours) we will be in 2 countries with one currency. Yay!
There is a lot of rambling here because this was really a
nothing day. It was cloudy this morning
but temps were in the 60’s--comfortable.
There is only one cruise ship in the harbor so today would have been the
right day for milling around in the old city.
That piece of info somehow didn’t make it into our Colorful Croatia Tour
packet. There are a few more people in
the breakfast room this morning. Some
Canadians are talking about their elections taking place today. They have found their new pretty boy. We know the ropes for the menu thing and we
get big breakfasts with plans to skip lunch again. We don’t have to be out of our room until
noon giving us some time to get some travel chores done and a car rental
voucher printed.
Since we have no other plans we take this opportunity to
hike over to the ferry office to swap our voucher for tickets for tonight’s
boat. The process takes about 2 minutes
out of a one-hour round-trip walk so we hang out in the little neighborhood
around the ships. We spend some quality
time bench sitting watching the big boats maneuver in and out of their berths,
check out the little outdoor market and the grocery store and decide we have
taken that part of the day as far as we can.
There are a couple more streets we haven’t ventured into in
the neighborhood of our hotel and this is our big chance. This area is called Lapad and we find the
Lapad soccer field with lots of early teen girls doing drills. There are a dozen girls at a time dribbling
for ten yards and then back again before passing off to the next one in
line. They will be very good someday.
We pass a lady standing on the curb and notice when she
waves in a local ambulance. She quickly
directs the EMTs to a lower level apartment.
Of course on a day when we are just killing time we are going to check
it out. We hang around ghoulishly just
outside of the bushes near the apartment in question. Finally they bring another elderly lady out
in a wheelchair. Nothing to see here
people, move away.
There is a little boutique shopping mall which occupies us
for about 15 minutes. That brings us
back to our little upscale pedestrian walkway we found on Dubrovnik-Day-1. There is a tennis club with a half dozen clay
courts and a small stadium court. A high
school age boy and girl are hitting together and just ripping the ball back and
forth. On the court next to them are a
junior high age boy and girl hitting together and just ripping the ball back
and forth. These kids might turn out to
be as good as the soccer girls.
It’s mid-afternoon and the decision about what to do next is
made for us. It starts to lightly
rain. We go back to the hotel and grab
our kindles out of the bag storage corner and go up to the partially covered
terrace to read for a couple hours. As
the rain picks up we move the party to the hotel library where there is also an
old apple laptop suitable for crosswords.
Thank God we finally made it to dinner time.
We have had our eyes on a little place down the harbor from
the hotel, “Peppers,” It is a cute
little joint with about a dozen tables and some American jazz vocals on the
sound system. For the first time in the
last 6 weeks we see a real gin martini on the drink menu “served up with a drop
of dry vermouth.” We’re in heaven. We don’t care that they served it in a
margarita glass. We order off the
appetizer menu, shrimp, calamari, grilled polenta and arrancini. We nurse it as long as we can enjoying the
drink and music.
One final stroll in the light rain with our umbrellas seemed
like a good idea at the time. Then it
starts to pour. At some point we have to
get back to the hotel, gather up our luggage, get a taxi and get to our ship
for an 8:30 boarding. We sit under a
restaurant overhang as long as we think we can wait and maybe it eased up a
little bit. As soon as we start to move
we get pounded and while our heads are dry our pants and feet are soaked. The last block is downhill through a narrow
alley that tonight is a river. Now we’re
officially drenched and shoes and socks are both soaked. This rain thing is getting a little tiring.
The taxi comes, bye-bye to Jenny the strong Croatian woman
at the desk and we hurry to the boarding area for the ferry so we can wait in
line. Croatia is a member of the EU but
is not a Shengen participant which means there is not passport-free border
crossing. It also means lines on both
ends of this trip.
We have a cabin with a little porthole so we can view all of
the sights between our 10:00 PM departure and 8:00 AM arrival, meaning black on
black. We go to the lounge for a beer
and this is not your Crystal Cruise Line.
It is the Croatian government owned Jadrolinija ferry line. We do get rid of the rest of our kunas so
that’s a plus. At least 50 Japanese
tourists make their way into the lounge carrying some sort of dinner in bags
which is our cue to move along. We’ll
see how this night goes.
What did we learn today?
Seinfeld was a show about nothing and was on for years. October 19th
was a day about nothing for us and this may be our longest blog. Interesting.
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