Dubrovnik, Croatia

Unless you take a ferry, to get to Dubrovnik from elsewhere in Croatia you need to cross into Bosnia and Hercegovina for six miles. Fortunately, those border crossings went fast. Driving along the coast is just stunning. It's winding and hilly, and islands everywhere. There are over 1,000 islands in Croatia. 

Dubrovnik is on a very narrow strip of land between the coast and Bosnia and Hercegovina (it's worth finding on a map). The city is particularly known for the wall that surrounds it (though now the city extends far beyond the wall, and inside is called "Old Town"). The Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the wall defended the city as far back as the Middle Ages and as recently as the early '90s. Ivana, my host, told me that the wall is two kilometers long, which makes it the third longest wall in the world, behind the Great Wall and another wall not far from Dubrovnik. I walked the wall when it opened, at 8 a.m., which was the right choice to avoid crowds and heat. 

The walled city was a very different experience from the palace in Split. Of course it's much larger, and many people live inside the city walls. But the tourism is much more dignified. There were no stalls in the streets; there were many shops, but they were inside buildings. Ivana told me that her house is the youngest inside the city. Her grandfather built it in 1902. I walked up the steps one night with an older man who said he was born in his house, which was a few homes up from Ivana's. And when I say "up," it really is up. My view from my window included much of the city and wall. 

the main street, Strodum

my street at night

the view from my room at night

Me with Ivana, and Ivana showing me her new ring (she works at an antique store)

lots of cats

I walked through a memorial to the Defenders of Dubrovnik, 194 men who fought and died in Croatia's War of Independence in 1991-1992. Of course many of them were born around the same time I was. The Yugoslavian army tried to detach Dubrovnik from Croatia with the intention of integrating it into a Serb-dominated state.

Ivana suggested I head over to Lokrum, an island just off the coast, and it was the right choice. It was a quick ferry ride, and I walked the entire island--full of its own history, including an old fort, a botanic garden which was a research area for the adaptation of exotic plants to Lokrum, monastic ruins (which date at least as far back as 1023), and an unfinished quarantine hospital begun in 1534. The island is made of thick layers of limestone and dolomite. Lokrum also had the largest bunnies I've ever seen. And lots of peacocks. I took a short swim before catching the last ferry back to the city at sunset. On the ferry I sat next to the woman I saw feeding carrots to the rabbits. She said she goes to the island every day to feed them.  

 

peacocks on the coast

the old monastery

see both peacocks?

baby bunny

no idea

Split, Croatia

Split wasn't a highlight for me, but it was an interesting city.

Getting there from Rovinj was a gorgeous drive. At one point I remember entering a tunnel after a lush valley, hills everywhere, and then exiting the tunnel to desert, a brushy, dry coastline. (I've been through more tunnels in the last two weeks than I think I've been through in all my life.) 

Split is a grander coastal city than Rovinj (and probably all towns along the coast), and it has its own thing going on, as a good-sized city, besides tourism. It has a wide malecon and a port for cruise ships. The malecon includes dozens of benches, flowering bushes, and palm trees. I was surprised at how many people (including people who looked like tourists) were sleeping soundly on or near the benches at 9 a.m. I took advantage of the city fountains to grab water, which seemed to be available almost everywhere I visited this trip.

the malecon

My first night in the city I heard some of the most beautiful, haunting and peaceful, music I've ever heard, walking back to my guest house through a well-trod alley. I've looked up what the man who was singing wrote down for me, "Kad Procvatu Bethari," and while the music is beautiful, of course it's nothing like what I experienced in the orange glow of that alley, this very sweet young hippy playing his guitar and singing so beautifully, with the sound echoing off the walls. 

Diocletian's Palace was impressive, but the experience was significantly diminished not only by the tourists, but also by the restaurants and souvenir vendors scattered even within the palace. But there are some elements of the palace, including the sphinx, that are 3,500 years old. For the third time in a handful of days I paid to torture myself and climb a tower. In this tower, the stairs seemed sturdy enough, but the exposure was high, particularly to the outside. Yet again I was breathing deeply and counting stairs. And people asking if I was okay. I can drive through Central Europe on my own, but climbing stairs in a church tower is about as terrifying as it gets. I gave myself permission for this to be my last tower on the trip, and I was relieved when I convinced myself it wasn't worth the view. (But then a minaret later presented itself in Mostar...) 

a very uncrowded moment

3,500 years old

now how cute is this gargoyle?

see?? you can't even see where the stairs and pillars overlap

The crowds were a bit much for me, the tourism a little more intense than anywhere I'd been thus far, and I decided to head over to the island Hvar for a few hours in the morning. Definitely a mistake. Hvar is large enough that I imagine you might be able to get away from the crowds, but masses of people show up on a large catamaran almost hourly. I did climb up to an old fortress, which of course would be incomplete without a prison.

this is the boat shoveling people onto Hvar--it's an hour-long trip

from the fortress

prison

My favorite part of my Split trip was going kayaking for about four hours one evening. It had been a very hot day (they all were), and there were eight of us total. I partnered with Slovan, our guide, who at 40 is the oldest member of the Croatian national climbing team. (I wish "the oldest" at something was not younger than me.) A few of us also did some cliff jumping (which doesn't scare me nearly as much as all those tower stairs... I trust the water, and I get to give in to my constant impulse to jump when I'm up high!). I was told photos of the jumping would be posted, but nothing so far. We launched near an area where two of three ships were grounded in extreme winds in the last year. No one will take responsibility to remove the ships, the owners saying they don't have the money.

sunset after kayaking

Rovinj, Croatia

Sunday afternoon...

I'm sitting on a rocky-pebbly shore in my swimsuit on Katarina Island, off of Rovinj ("rov-EEN-ye", but not all Croatians pronounce it the same way...), after my first swim in the Adriatic. I haven't checked email in many hours, I don't have a watch on, and I've had a cherry strudel for breakfast (thanks for the pastry fund, Aunt Jody and Uncle Tad!) and a pistachio ice cream cone for a late lunch while I waited for the 4:30 ferry for the island. I've been traveling for days like this, just mostly enjoying a nice dinner each evening. It's probably around 6 o'clock. I'm sharing this spot with six other people. When I asked a woman if there was a place to change, she laughed. "Nobody cares, you're not in America," she said. Lots of primary-age girls don't wear swim tops, and here and there is a woman sunning topless. (By the little river I swam in in Slovenia, a man changed from his speedo, just facing a tree.) Everything is so low-key. Even the broken glass on the beach--worn and smooth and dusty--is not a threat. The water is crystal clear.

(Katarina Island, as seen from the top of a precarious staircase, which will make an appearance later)

island companions

I'm loving Rovinj, and immediately decided to spend an extra day here after roaming the town last night. I'm staying in a sweet one-bedroom apartment about a 10-minute walk from the main area. Rovinj has a Venetian feel, buildings rising straight up from the narrow stone streets. Pasta, mussels, olive oil, good cheap wine. Lots of tourists, but mostly in a way that adds to the vibe. People in swimming suits, people riding bikes, people gazing at the sites, people walking with ice cream cones. And honestly, not to be undervalued, a city that thrives on tourism means it's no problem to walk up to an ice cream stand and speak English. (All the menus are in at least four languages.)

(My car, with my apartment in the background.)

Later... 

Now it's a dry white wine, caprese salad, cheese ravioli with truffles (and wow, we're talking the type of cheese ravioli worthy of truffles), sitting off the marina watching a setting sun, with kind and attentive waitstaff. (I wandered up on this restaurant, Bar Rio, but later discovered this was the number-one rated restaurant in Rovinj on Trip Advisor, which is quite a feat, but I'm not surprised.)

There is something so moving to me about a stranger reaching out his or her hand, literally, to help someone. I've had that happen at least three times today and watched it many more, as men helped passengers step off boats. (After my trip back from Katarina Island on the ferry, the man helping people off was delighting kids by lifting them high in the air and setting them down to get them off the boat. Without fail, they paused afterward and looked up at him with awe and delight. A man followed a string of kids, and he and the boat man joked, the boat man lifting the passenger, too, prompting laughter in adults and confusion in kids.) Earlier in the day, when I first began to work my way back down the many scary stairs of the Saint Euphemia Cathedral tower this afternoon, a man reached his hand up to help me down to his tiny platform. Holding hands is somewhat an intimate act, so different from shaking someone's hand. 

(scary stairs, looking back up--after the first flight or so many were only 4-5 inches deep, and they weren't very flat!)

Rovinj: dusty streets that indicate a coast, squawking seagulls, roads far too narrow for two cars to pass, but that doesn't stop them from being two-way streets (quite typical in the whole region). Just lots of yielding. Of course many of the stone roads between buildings rising straight up are narrow enough that in America we would only consider them sidewalks, but motorcycles, little cafe tables with people drinking coffee and wine, and shop stalls all manage to fit.

Later later...

My last afternoon in Rovinj was spent on the coast, at Punta Corrente, a large point at the end of town. I settled into a spot and bobbed up and down quite contentedly for a while--the temperature of the water could keep you there for hours, and by the looks of things, that's just what most people were doing. The winding shore was perfect--big blocks of rock, easy to climb around on and sun on, and with no sand the water was very clear--I could see the bottom well past where I couldn't touch anymore. What delighted me even more was that the vegetation was mostly pine trees, so if you weren't sunning on a block of rock, you were snoozing in the shade on a bed of pine needles. Of course plenty of topless bathers, and some nude. My eye very accidentally landed on a very tanned penis at one point. I'll just end there. 

(This first picture was my spot.)