Belgrade, The White City

We left Zagreb and took the highway over the border to Belgrade, a journey of about 4 hours and $21 in tolls ($17.50 on the Croatian side and $3.50 on the Serbian side).  Crossing the border was an almost trivial formality – we didn’t even need to get out of the car.

While the roads are in excellent shape on the Croatian side – comparable to Germany or the UK, on the Serbian side highways are less well maintained.  However, as we were about to discover, most things are also much less expensive here.  It’s also easy to tell that we are in Serbia rather than Croatia as the signs in Serbia are in Cyrillic (although sometimes with Romanized signs alongside).  The language is essentially the same, so it was a good way to practice my Cyrillic reading as I could just compare my decoding to the adjacent latin letters.

For those of you not up on your Balkan geography, the former Yugoslavia consisted of six states: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzeogovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, which contained the national capital Belgrade.  While we’re at it, some linguistic decoding might also help.  “Yugo” means south, so Yugoslavia was the country of southern Slavic states, as opposed to Eastern Slavic states like Ukraine and Russia or Northern Slavic states such as Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Grad is the slavic word for city (think Stalingrad, Leningrad, etc.), so Belgrade means “white city” although what is “white” about it, I am not sure.

Arriving in Belgrade we discovered that the local drivers are extremely aggressive.  As soon as traffic slowed a bit on the highway, I was overtaken on the inside by people driving on the hard shoulder. Twice.  Only to be followed by two police cars speeding up behind me in traffic with flashing lights but no siren and overtaking me on both sides at the same time!  As we exited the  highway near our apartment people started making 2 lanes out of only one marked lane on the curved exit ramp.

Google took us to a location that did not match the address on our reservation, but it turned out to only be about a block or two down the same street.  But when we pulled in to the correct address, we couldn’t see any signage for our apartment.  After calling the contact number we were told to wait 20 minutes at they were on their way.  In the end it was 45 minutes before they got there and could let us in to the apartment.

Unfortunately this apartment turned out to be a mixed bag,  While it was spacious and nicely decorated, it immediately smelled of smoke, although in theory it was listed as non-smoking.  In reality, I don’t think anything in this country is non-smoking.  Later evidence of cigarette burns on the couch and butts on the balcony confirmed as much.  Since a pack of cigarettes costs the equivalent of US$1.50, smoking is something else that is much cheaper here.

There was what looked to be a decent kitchen until you opened the cabinets and the only cooking vessel was one frying pan.  No mixing bowls or the like, so basically fine for breakfast and microwaving things, not so good if you wanted to actually cook anything.  The other odd thing was that although the apartment was spacious, the bedroom was tiny.  Like I mean it could barely hold the bed tiny.  Also unfortunate was the fact that the a/c unit was in the lounge and did nothing to cool down the bedroom, but thankfully it naturally cooled down a bit at night while we were there.

The location isn’t bad.  On the ground floor is a restaurant, which we ate at on our last night, and there were nearby bakeries and other facilities.  The city center was about a 50 minute walk so we took a bus in, but later walked back to the apartment.

We headed for Kalemegdan - Belgrade Fortress which has a good view of the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers. The fortress is today a park and includes several rings of battlements. What’s kind of interesting is that the old moats have been repurposed for use as tennis courts, basketball courts, etc.

The park contains a zoo, gallery, a number of museums and restaurants. But with the exception of the latter, most of these were closed by the time we got there. However, the Military museum has a number of pieces that are kept on open display in one of the former moats. This included a number of WWII tanks from Allied and Axis forces, as well as other bits of military hardware of various vintage. The thing that most caught my attention was a 300 mm mortar that is huge. One can only imagine the sort of damage a shell from this might inflict.

Belgrade seems to be a much bigger and less pretty city than, say, Zagreb, but has a number of nice pedestrian thoroughfares such as  Knez Mihailova Street, the main drag.

It was about dinner time, so we went on the hunt for someplace to eat. We had read about a restaurant that sounded interesting, but were completely unable to find it. Using Google Maps to pinpoint its location, no one seemed to know about it, even though there were recent reviews. We are figuring out that Google Maps is less useful here than in Western Europe. While it’s accurate much of the time, there seems to be a number of addresses and driving directions that are incorrect. In the end, we found an outdoor café on a busy street that had a live singer and guitar player. Kelly ordered vegan Mexican fajitas and I ordered a tuna pizza. Mine turned out to be pretty much what I expected. Kelly’s turned out to be kind of a burrito made from pizza dough casing, filled with corn, mushrooms, and fake cheese. Note to self, remember the #1 culinary rule of travel, don’t order the Tex-Mex outside of the SW US or Central America. On the plus side, they had a lemon-mint cider which was something new for me and very tasty.

We stopped at the market on our way back to the apartment and since it had a washing machine, we decided to make use of that, necessitating the purchase of washing powder. The prices in Serbia seemed significantly less expensive than Croatia and way less than Western Europe or the USA (unless we are talking about imported goods). For instance, a box of washing  powder, maybe half the size of a small box in the US cost the equivalent of 0.60 cents.

The dominant religion in Serbia is Eastern Orthodox. The largest Orthodox church in Serbia, which is also one of the largest in the world is being built 10 minutes from our apartment. It is called St. Sava Temple and it’s being built by donation,  sort of like an Orthodox Sagrada Familia. The church is huge and the quality of materials, from what we could see, were very fine. The location of this church is where in 1594 the Turks burned down relics of St. Sava (founder of the Serbian Orthodox church in the late 12th/early 13th Century).

It struck me that when we travel and see classic churches, synagogues, and mosques, it seems like they’ve been around for a very long time and so it’s unusual to be able to see a religious building of this magnitude in the process of being built.

The other thing we wanted to see in Belgrade was the Tesla Museum. Nikolai Tesla is one of the few figures revered by both Croatians and Serbians. He was a Serb, born in what is today Croatia, who later moved to the US and became a naturalized US citizen. He is famous for his work in electricity and advocacy of a/c as the primary means of electrical distribution (rather than the d/c system proposed by Edison). He was also a futurist. At the museum an engineering student demonstrated a number of Tesla’s experiments, including using a Tesla coil to wirelessly light a bunch of unconnected fluorescent tubes held by various members of the crowd. We also saw a system that was used to remotely control a ship via wireless power signals, which Tesla pioneered. In Tesla’s time, many who witnessed this demonstration thought he was a magician or that there was a trained monkey inside the ship that responded to his commands. Also on display were some of his personal effects. In fact, this museum is the repository of his papers and is a serious research institution. Tesla never married and died with no children, but he had wanted his effects to be donated to Serbia when he died, and the government dedicated this building to that purpose.

Before setting out this morning, we had stopped in the restaurant on the ground floor of our apartment to see if they had anything we could eat. A nice waiter by the name of Sasha told us of a number of options that sounded good. He told me however that he would not be working later, but to ask for his colleague “Troll” who would be on duty tonight and who spoke English. They called him “Troll” because he is so large. When we arrived in the evening we had no doubt as to who Troll was, but he was surprised to hear us use his nickname and instead preferred that we call him Igor. Igor had worked on cruise ships and apart from speaking English, he was exceptionally friendly and helpful in arranging a meal that we could safely enjoy. Kelly and I started with some fresh tomato soup, after which Kelly had seared salmon and vegetables while I had a fresh forest mushroom risotto. I had a pear cider with dinner that was served over ice with chunks of fresh pear. It was really very nice, as was all the food. We finished up by sharing a slice of chocolate mousse cake. All-in-all the meal probably cost about half to two-thirds of what it might in Dublin and was a nice cap to our time in Belgrade.

On our way out of Belgrade we needed to gas us and there was a roadside filling station close to our apartment.  However, they do things in a manner I’ve never seen before.  They charge your credit card before they fill up – not put a hold on it, but actually charge it, so you have to decide how much fuel you want beforehand.  The idea of “fill it up” didn’t seem to exist at this station and if I were to charge say US$40 worth, but only have room for US$30, well hard luck me.  Luckily I was able to make a pretty accurate guess and ended up filling the car in one shot.

Z is for Zagreb

Good trivia question – what is alphabetically the last national capital?  Congratulations – you guessed it, Zagreb, capital of Croatia. 

We drove from Rovinj to Zagreb, 251 Km, or about 160 miles which only takes about 3 hours by highway.  The landscape changed from arid vineyards and olive plantations to huge swathes of deciduous forest.  The roads are good, but the tolls pretty expensive – it cost us about US15 equivalent for this 3 hours of driving.

The old part of modern Zagreb was actually two distinct towns – Gradec and Kaptol which were separately by a river and often at war with each other.  The river has long since been drained, but a vestige of the old animosity remains with a street whose name means Blood Bridge that links the two areas. 

There is also a Stone Gate that once protected Gradec and is now a significant pedestrian pathway between the two areas, but is also a shrine, so as people pass through, they stop for a few moments to offer prayers.  The walls are crammed with small tablets offering thanks for answered prayers.

We are staying within walking distance of the city center. Since we were in early enough, once we got settled, we walked to the old town and headed to The Museum of Broken Relationships which was open late.  On the way, we passed the Church of St. Marks and as this is Saturday and the church is located very close to the registry office, the square was filled with wedding couples having their pictures taken.  I’ve honestly not seen so many wedding couples or photographers in one place before!

This is one of the most unusual museums we’ve come across in all our travels and is certainly unique.  The rooms are filled with objects and notes or short presentations about how these items relate to the owner’s broken relationship.  Not all of these are romantic, some have to do with parental or filial relationships, but most of them are stories about how a love relationship ended.  This is not at all depressing – in fact it seems pretty cathartic for the people involved.  Some of the stories are lurid, some angry, some sweet, some full of disappointment. 

 

One story accompanying some stiletto heels from a Dutch woman stuck in my mine.  She had started a romantic relationship with a boy when they were both young, but they separated after a short while.  I think his family may have moved away.  She fast forwarded to 30 years later when she was quitting her job as a prostitute and decided to write a book about S&M.  In order to do some research, she got herself a job at an appropriate (!) club.  As she was disciplining one of the customers, they each realized that they were the same people who had loved each other so long ago.  Apparently the boy had grown up with an overbearing father and that led him to feeling like he needed to be disciplined.

We tried to avail of the opportunity for some ethnic food here in the capital and ate dinner at a Sri Lankan curry spot.  It was something different, but only so so. 

Zagreb is really quite a lovely town.  Our restaurant turned out to be on one of the key pedestrian streets and an ideal spot to sit outside and watch people go by.  Eating outside is a treat and the weather has been pretty lovely. The downside is that lots of people smoke, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a whiff after only a short while.

After breakfast the next morning we walked back to the old city center of Gradec, first stopping at the extensive market near the main square.  There were two main outdoor areas, one mostly fruits and vegetables, and the other flowers. 

Adjacent were indoor markets for fish and, separately, meats, cheeses, and other delicatessen type goods.  At the market we picked up strawberries and apricots, which were both very tasty.  The strawberries were less than $1 for a pound!

We were on our way to a museum next to the Museum of Broken Relationships, The Museum of Naïve Art, which is dedicated to a school of artists who were not formally trained, but nonetheless very creative and expressive.  The movement was lead by a man by the name of Generalić and you can see his self portrait here.

The early naïve artist’s medium of choice was oil on glass, as this was a less expensive and easier medium to work with and the images have an almost poster like quality with their vivid colors.  The method they used was to sketch a scene, then place the glass over it and paint on the reverse of the pane.  Thus all of the images when displayed are actually mirror images of the original sketches.   By the way, this is still a popular art form here in Croatia.

Leaving the  museum we headed back to St. Marks in order to hear a concert in the church, performed after mass had ended.  Coincidentally we arrived just as a military unit marched up and did a changing of the guard ceremony right in front of the church. There are several government buildings lining the square, but the guards stand on the portico of the church itself.  Given how hot it was and how heavily dressed they were, one could only imagine that their guard post was an endurance test.

The concert featured the church’s organ and included pieces by Bruxtehude and Bach, some of which sounded very esoteric.  The organ was very powerful and as the church is not huge, the lower tones resonated in a most impressive manner.

We had taken our dirty clothes with us in order to use a nearby laundry.  While waiting for things to finish washing and drying, I brought back some lunch and we finished listening to one of the David Sedaris audio books we had brought.

Once all the laundry was fluffed and folded, it was time to explore another part of the city, so we headed south and walked to the Botanical Gardens, which are lovely.  Sort of like islands of specimen samples, each area of the garden seemed different.  Following a well deserved rest, we walked back to town and up to the Cathedral, which dominates the skyline of the city.  Apart from having a chance to view the interior, we were also there for another concert, which was also of organ music.

As we headed back to the hotel it started to rain – the first precipitation we have experienced in the Balkans, so we had dinner at a close by restaurant that turned out to be very good.  Kelly ordered tomato soup and I ordered nettle soup.  For main course Kelly had fresh tuna and I had the branzin (sea bass), both of which served with vegetables.  All washed down with the local beer and very reasonably priced.

Motoring to Motovun

Today’s travels will take us into the heart of truffle country and to the hilltop town of Motovun (see above), a fortified enclave in the heart of Istria. 

But first we drove about an hour to the seaside town of Poreč (the č is pronounced “ch” like in punch). 

Poreč is a popular seaside resort, which seemed to be populated by a surfeit of Germans. We are here not for the seaside, but to see the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Euphrasian Basilica, which dates from the 6th century. The complex contains earlier 4th century remains, a Bishop’s residence, a baptistry, a Venetian tower, and the spectacular golden Apse mosaics.

The  view from the Venetian tower is really pretty, and as you can see, we’ve been enjoying some lovely weather. 

The Apse dates from the 6th Century and the mosaics predictably depict Christ and the Apostles, the Virgin and child as well as St. Maurus, Bishop of Eurphrasus after whom the basilica is named.

In each of the Istrian towns we have visited we have seen lots of what I might call “Romeo and Juliet” balconies, but there appear to be lots more of them here in Poreč.  It is really easy to imagine yourself back hundreds of years just by looking around at the buildings and the street.

In a land that lives on seafood and meat, vegan options are few and far between.  We’ll have our fair share of fish this trip and will minimize our dairy intake, but it would be impossible to avoid entirely on this trip, even if we wanted to.  So far all the restaurants we have seen have been local Croatian places, which tend to serve fairly simple meat and fish dishes as well as pasta and pizza.  We have not seen any ethnic restaurants yet, although I think we did spot one McDonalds (if you could call that ethnic!) in Rovinj. 

Since we know we’ll mostly be eating fish in local restaurants this trip, we’re taking advantage of diversity when it presents itself.  Here in Poreč there is a vegan restaurant called Artha, which is unusual as we’ve been led to expect only to find such places in some of the big towns like Rijecka, Zagreb, Split, and Dubrovnik.  So we took advantage and had a nice vegan lunch before heading off to the hills and the town of Motovun.

The approach to Motovun is pretty spectacular and reminds me of other fortified hills towns we have visited in France and Germany.  Indeed the overall landscape we’ve been seeing is very similar to Provence, France or Tuscany, Italy.  Even if not quite as pretty, many of the local produce is similar – truffles, olive oil, wine, lavender, and the land and landscape seems vaguely familiar.

In Motovun, you have to park at the base of the hill and either hike up or take a bus.  As it was kind of hot, we wimped out and took the bus, but only one way – we would walk back down under our own steam.  The views from the ramparts are pretty spectacular.

Also the high position and late afternoon thermal currents make this a good place to paraglide and we saw three paragliders in action, including watching this one take off by the city gates.

Motovun has no shortage of truffle shops, most selling Zigande brand truffle products. The next town down the valley is Livade, which is truffle center, Croatia, and the HQ of the Zigande company.  Even here, truffle products are not cheap.  Costs depend on the type of truffle (which varies by season) as well as the type of product.  Fresh truffles seem to currently be selling for about US$300/Kg (2.2 Lbs), so even a few ounces cost a decent amount.  Truffle is often mixed with mushrooms and olive oil as these enhance the flavor and expand the volume of whatever you are using the truffles with.  We bought a medium size jar to make a nice truffle sauce for some pasta when we get home.

Truffles are so expensive because not only are they rare – they are very hard to find.  Buried about 8 inches down, usually in oak forests, the only way to find them reliably is to used trained animals.  Pigs in some other countries, but here they use trained dogs and we’ve seen pens of them on our walks.  Apparently they do the truffle hunting at night, which encourages the pooches to use more of the their sense of smell to navigate (and hopefully pick up the smell of truffles) rather than eyesight.

One of the shopkeepers told me that in the past anyone could hunt for truffles, but they almost wiped out the entire crop from overhunting and picking truffles too small (i.e. not letting them reproduce).  A flood a couple of decades ago also did major damage to the crop.  Today you have to have a license and trained dogs, both of which cost a lot of money, and hence the premium price for this epicurean delight.

We had read about an affordable restaurant called Konoba Dolina in Gradinje, the town next to Livade where we ended up having dinner.  Every night we’ve eaten al fresco as the weather at dinnertime tends to be lovely and tonight was no exception.  The only downside is that lots of Croatians still smoke and while it is supposedly banned indoors, no such luck on the terrace.

The dinner was simple, but very tasty, starting with a simple salad followed by gnocchi with wild asparagus and another pasta dish with truffles, which was the star.    This was made with something called fusi, or homemade pasta, which was a shape I had not seen before – imagine rolling out ravioli squares, but instead of filling them, you just roll end up, kind of like a mini (empty) cannoli. Down home cooking, Croatian style, washed down with the local vino.  Not a bad way to live.

Roving in Rovinj

Istria is, depending on whom you talk to, the most Italian area of Croatia, or the most Croatian part of Italy.  Actually this town, and many others in Istria are officially bilingual and in this case the town is known as both Rovinj (Croatian) and Rovigno (Italian). Indeed Istria was part of Italy until not so very long ago.   The whole Adriatic coast was strategic to the Venetians, and as evidenced by the bell tower at the top of the hill, Rovinj/Rovigno was an important location for them.  Apparently on a clear day you can actually see Venice from the bell tower.

Surprisingly, after Croatian the most common language I hear on the streets is not Italian, or English, but German.  It is a bit of a novelty for shopkeepers to automatically assume we are Germans.

Unlike other major Venetian port towns, such as Pula, the harbor here was not so large and deep, and therefore the Austro-Hungarians didn’t develop this into another navy port.  Staying as a sleepy provincial backwater was actually to Rovinj’s benefit and today it maintains much of its medieval charm and lacks industrial squalor.  Rather the area around the town is surrounded by harbors and beaches, which in this area does not mean sandy shores, but rather rocky patches and man made terraces by the sea.

The town itself is a charming old burg with the sorts of cobbled streets that make you wonder if these stones were ever replaced, or have been there for thousands of years.  After a good walk upon them, we stopped at the museum to see an exhibit of Chagall prints and lithographs as well as a local photographic exhibition upstairs.  Some of the photos were pretty good.  In the “nude/body” category, there were images taken in museums and art galleries which included subjects in black or white full body suits.  Sort of like a “where’s Waldo” it took me a minute to figure out that some of the “artwork” was in fact these people and not inanimate objects.

One thing I like to take pictures of is unusual doors (I have a huge collection from Spain and Portugal if anyone ever needs them!).  The one above caught my attention as it was so ornate.  Only later did I notice the smiley face on the panel next to it.

We sat at a café in the harbor and got some drinks.  Kelly stayed conventional with a cappuccino, but I’m always on the look out for something I haven’t tried.  There was a listing for “Cedevita” which the waiter said was kind of like a lemonade and I could choose orange or lemon.  I opted for the latter and when he came back, he explained this was a vitamin drink for kids and gave me a glass of water and a yellow packet, which ended up being something like Tang (or Squash for those in the British Isles).  Well, at least I know what Cedevita is now.

Kelly and I knew we would have a lot of driving on this trip and as we had recently attended the David Sedaris event in Austin at the Bass Concert Hall where we had a blast, so brought with us a bunch of his audio books. (Shout out to the Austin Public Library – great system – once you are signed up, you can get your content to download and manage checkout, returns, etc. automatically.)  We spent a nice half hour listening to some of his stories, enjoying the view of the town and the crystal blue water, and improving my vitamin intake.

Our apartment manager had recommended a nearby restaurant called Maslina, so we headed there for dinner.  Started with a tuna carpaccio, which was excellent, followed by fish with truffle sauce and vegetables, and a pizza.  They had a special “homemade cake” which was nutella based with a hazelnut crust and a nice end to a simple, but tasty meal.   Kelly compelled me to add that we walked for many miles today, just in case anyone might think we are gluttons. (Maybe gluttons for punishment!)

Plodding around Pula

After a few hours sleep, it was time to move the car.  Thankfully there was someone setting up breakfast who was able to tell me that I could park above the hotel all day for free.  Now, wouldn’t it have been a lot simple to have sent me that information via reply when I emailed them rather than promising to have someone meet me?

Our hotel is just a stone’s throw from the amazing Roman Amphitheater, but we decided to walk around the rest of the town and leave the Amphitheater for last.

Istria, and for that matter, the rest of Croatia, has been a crossroads for various groups of mostly warring people for millennia.  We have the term “Balkanization” for a reason.  Along the coast, the architecture today is mostly a blend of four distinct influences – Roman, Venetian, Austro-Hungarian, and Communist Era.  Pula was an important port for the Romans and there remain many impressive artifacts of their time here, such as gates, temples, the forum, etc.  The prominent bell tower is Venetian, and this was one of the key ports that the Austro-Hungarians chose for their navy, which is why this is still a busy industrial town and port towns.

One of our first stops was a nice indoor/outdoor market.  The fresh strawberries ($2.25 for a about 1.1lbs) were amazing.  We also tasted the local cherries which were equally delicious.  Istria is truffle country and along with France’s Provence and Italy’s Piedmont, it is one of the world’s major truffle producers.  The market was lined with as many different presentations and uses of truffles as you could imagine including spreads, cheeses, and oils, as well as whole, sliced, diced and other packaging of the pungent fungii themselves.

The jewel of the city has to be the Roman Amphitheater, one of the six largest remaining examples in the world.  When at its full scale (it was originally started as a smaller facility then expanded during the reign of Vespasian), it could hold 23,000 people.  The upper tiers would have been wooded and no longer remain.  Today the facility is still used and has seating for 5,000, although they have curtailed the loudest rock concerts as they are afraid they are disturbing the stones.

There were 4 towers, two of which remain, which would have been topped with scented water reservoirs to sprinkle the crowd with what we would today call air freshener, in order to mask the stench of all the death.  Sand in the inner oval would also have absorbed blood.  Archaeologists think wooden masts at the top of the structures were used to raise canvas tenting to shade the audience.  I remember seeing a documentary about this some years ago and am now wondering if it was, in fact, shot here.

The facilities were extensive and in addition to gladiatorial and animal combat, naval battles could be re-enacted when the amphitheater was flooded.

In the area beneath the amphitheater, where the prisoners and animals would have been kept, there is a small, but interesting museum, mostly focused on the ancient production of olive oil, wine, and garum (fish sauce), which were mainstays of the local economy.  On display were hundreds of different amphora, many of which were stamped with their makers marks, which is one way archaeologists can track some of the commerce throughout the Roman empire, when for instance, a Pula made amphora is dug up in Rome.

For lunch we decided to try some truffle pizza, which was pretty good, and very inexpensive.  Then it was time to head off to our next stop, Rovinj.  As we got close to our destination, I realized I still had the key from our Pula hotel in my pocket.  Since we were so close, I figured we should at least drop off our stuff at our Rovinj lodgings before potentially heading back to Pula.

We are staying in an apartment in Rovinj and the owner was able to call the Pula hotel owner for us.  I had asked if he could just mail back the key, or else I would drive back, but instead they agreed he could instead give it to the bus driver on the next Rovinj-Pula bus.  Never would have thought of that!

Tonight we are just going to head to the local supermarket and have a simple dinner at our apartment.  Tomorrow we’ll explore the town.

Poo poo in Pula

There are actually a couple of direct flights to Croatia from Dublin.  Aer Lingus has regular service to Dubrovnik in the very south and Ryan Air flies to Zadar in the middle of the country.   After doing research I found another flight on Aer Lingus into Pula in Istria, in the north of the country, which is what we took to get here.  We’ll eventually fly back to Dublin on the Dubrovnik flight in a tad under 3 weeks.  The Pula flight turns out to be seasonal – 3 times a week beginning May 19th, so we are on one of the first of these flights this year.

The only downside to this flight is that it arrives at 10:20pm.  Well, that and the fact that within Europe, Aer Lingus operates as a budget airline, so the cup of tea and glass (not bottle) of water we got on the plane when asked “what would you like to drink” were not in fact free, but cost Eu3.  Not going to break the bank, but none the less a bit of surprise, especially as the glass of water was charged for at 0.60 cent.  Really, Aer Lingus can’t give you a free glass of water?  Luckily I did not see a coin meter on the bathroom door.

So why is 10:20pm a problem time to arrive? First off the car rental counter for Sixt, where we had reserved, closes at 9pm.  Luckily I noticed that when I booked and contacted them.   For Eu32.50 more we were able to have someone stay late to meet us.  When we went to get our car, there was another couple in front of us, who seemingly had also paid the same fee.  Hmmm, sounds like a bit of a racket to me.

The other problem is that check in to our hotel was supposed to be before 9pm.  Again, I had emailed them and they told me that it was no problem.  Someone would meet us and show us where to park.  Except that when we arrived at our hotel, there was no one there, but there was an envelope with my name on it that contained our room key. Later we were told they have a new person on late duty and that they had misunderstood their directions.  The challenge here was parking in a country at night when you don’t know the regulations.  The spot outside the hotel had blue stripes around it and consulting people in a local bar yielded opinions that the car was fine until 10am tomorrow or maybe only 7am tomorrow.  Deciding I didn’t want one of my first experiences in Croatia to be that of getting a parking ticket, I set my alarm for 6:30am.

Meantime we found our room, and noticed something on the pillow, as you can see from the photo.  At first glance, this looked like the mess a small dog might leave on the carpet to let their owner know they weren’t too happy.  Which was quickly followed by the following thoughts – how did the dog get into and out of our room?  Why did it do this on BOTH our pillows? and what sicko came in and wrapped their poo in plastic?

Instead this turned out to be some chocolate covered, banana flavored marshmallow sweet.  My brother Andrew, ever the punster, opined later that this might be a Croatian specialty, named after the city along the coast, i.e. Banana Split!

Europe Here We Come

Time to get ready to roll out the blog again!

On Tuesday we head to Dublin, Ireland for about a week, and then off to Croatia, starting in Pula, Istria, and ending 3 weeks later in Dubrovnik.  Along the way, we plan on side trips to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro.

From Croatia, we will be going back to Dublin for another week before heading home.

Beginning to get excited!