Romantic Dalliances: More Adventures from Croatia

Days 4-6 (Zadar, Split, and Opatija, CROATIA)

Regarding the title....the following days were the brunt of a running trip-long joke over the fact that Mike and I continuously found ourselves in the most ridiculously romantic places with not our significant others but with each other. I'd have to say that sharing the king size poster bed in Zadar would have to be the icing on the cake...

Anyway, we arrived in Zadar without too much trouble--we struggled to find the hotel at first but reasonably quickly oriented ourselves and found ourselves plop in the middle of Germantown, Croatia, with plenty of German television stations, German fashion sense, and more German speakers than Croatia. Fun? After a fashion. The food was miserable (included in our all inclusive steal of a deal resort price), but it wasn't of German origin, rather, it was the cheap chicken finger type cuisine you find served at Bar Mitzvah's and other events where a zillion young teenagers find themselves clumped together.

The room was gorgeous with lots of nice wood and an amazing free basin sink and really comfortable shower. Very posh. We only stayed for a night and wandered about the city during the morning before moving on. Covered a lot of very beautiful Renaissance buildings, wandered through a market, downed some gelato, and bought some maraschino and plum brandy, two Croatian specialities (the maraschino from Zadar itself). Haven't sampled it yet, sent it home with the parents during their visit.

After Zadar, we hit Sibenik, one of my favourite cities from the whole trip. It's an amazingly well preserved medieval city with cobbled streets running this way and that and huddled buildings that have stood for centuries. The approach to the city is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, with a sweeping bridge leading you out over the inlet giving you a view of the islands and the city and azure water ahead. Once arrived, a crumbling fortress at the top of the main hill gave a wonderful view of the entire city. But running amidst these ruins was just fabulous. My memories already turning hazy, but either in Sibenik or Zadar we also enjoyed a pleasant pizza by the waterside surrounded by the old beauty of these heritage cities.

We ended our day in Split, Croatia's second largest city. And what an adventure we had.... Coming in off the unfinished highway, we curved past the industrial area and in to the downtown, not quite knowing where we were going. We missed a turn for a marina that Mike was trying to get us too, and the next hour or two involved driving on the streets of a city with inclines comparable to San Francisco, many a one way up hill street (with a few where cars tried to back up the entire way...), careless pedestrians, and a few unmarked pedestrian zones that we discovered the hard way. After about 3 or 4 twisted loops around the area we finally stumbled upon the right signs and shot through the tunnel to a beautiful little hotel on the sea. Apparently Hotel Jadran used to be the site of some rather important swim meets, judging by the excellent pool out back and the memorabilia everywhere inside. It felt rather like a locker room for an indoor pool, but the rooms were quite well furnished.

The evening (and the next morning) involved walking back to the heart of the city along the water. The ruins of Roman Emperor Diocletian's palace lie at the city's heart, and people still live, work, and play within their 2000 year old walls. Dinner was a traditional Balkan meal at a restaurant called Sarajevo--Mike was quite taken in by the irony, finding himself in a restaurant by that name in a corner of the world he had no idea existed 6 months ago....

Wandering these smooth marble streets was really a phenomenal experience, with so many thousands having trod the same paths before. The nicest shops, the most intriguing nightlife--it still was thriving within the crumbling walls of this ancient palace, and it's difficult to capture it either in words or pictures (we went back during the day to try to attempt it). The most ethereal and beautiful part of the whole night was when we stumbled upon a conical chamber in a distant part of the palace that had brilliant acoustics, and as we marvelled at it (with a hole in the roof open to the sky), a local group began an a cappella melody of songs in another tongue (I presume, of course, Croatian), and the melody was a truly haunting one. I have no conception of the songs meaning and intent, but the lusty night voices are a memory forever craven into the depths of my aural memory.

After our brief morning in Split, the longest (and most insane) day of our trip began. From Split, we drove to the nearby city of Trogir, which was rather similar to Sibenik, but had more energy and modern development. It was another gorgeous and very well preserved city, but something about Sibenik still captured my heart.

From Trogir it was back onto the long road north. The day would end in Opatija, one time summer seaside resort for the Austro-Hungarian elite. While Opatija was nothing special--a smaller, quieter version of Monte Carlo (and yes, I can compare both firsthand), the journey there was an adventurous one.

Shortly after we passed the highway exits for Zadar on our journey north, we veered on to the coastal road for a bit of scenic cliff driving. Major hair pin turns, sweeping mountain-sea vistas, up down and around until our heads spun. Eventually, the beautiful road got tiring, as we simply were not logging the miles, despite my (ahem) superb handling of Tina. I'd say we spent about 2-3 hours on this road carving our way slowly up the coast, and when we finally decided to leave it to return to the highway, the journey OVER the mountains was nearly as harrowing as the journey along the cliffs--in some ways more so as I drove up gorgeous switch backs just waiting for a peleton of cyclists to come churning up hill along the wickedly beautiful path. Over the mountains, away from the warm Mediterranean glow--and back to the snow. Now, the day was only getting more exciting, because...

Croatia is in the process of completing it's motorways. Many of them will not be finished for at least another year or two. One of these unfinished roads was on our map--but not in front of us on the road. So we made it about halfway on our northward journey, and signs for Opatija and Rijeka disappeared--there was no way to link to the east/west road from Zagreb without going almost all the way back to Zagreb. So Mike sat down and managed to plot us a route over local roads--and so we saw some of the most isolated territory in central Croatia, up there with Pribic. For some of our journey, the road was barely paved and the width was less than that of my driveway at home. However, the signs were good, and despite all types of winding directions, we ended up back on the east/west road that WAS completed and continued on our way. Again, only pictures could do this little shortcut justice, but I think it did save us time (and gas!). A true adventure. I still wonder if staying along the coast would not have been the quicker route--but I'm glad we took the route we did in the end.

From there on in, things were generally straightforward and we passed through Rijeka (Croatia's third largest and a city with many links to personal friends here and at Wash U) on to it's smaller sibling, Opatija, on the east coast of the Istrian Peninsula--arguably Croatia's prettiest terrain. Our hotel was a sprawling casino--as were many of the other hotels along the main strip. Had some excellent calamari for dinner, a bit of gelato followed, and off to bed. In one day, Split to Opatija, with about 6 different worlds in between.