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Published: November 8th 2008
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Zadar
The girls in Zadar, outside the main cathedral YOU CAN CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE; YOU CAN GO THROUGH JUST THE PHOTOS IN THAT ENLARGED FORMAT. IF YOU PUT YOUR CURSER ON THE MAP, YOU CAN MOVE THE MAP AROUND FOR BETTER ORIENTATION. Yes, you read right
2003 - I'm doing a bit of catch-up regarding our travel journals. This is for our records mainly, as most of these journals went out in print form years ago, but we thought you might enjoy a bit of "time travel." Also on this site is a blog on
Malta from Christmas 2004. I did a "quiet publish" on this one, meaning it is on our site but you all didn't get notice of it. If you are interested, look above "CROATIA 2003" and you see
Travel Blogs by: Kathy Bernie - Previous Entry. If you click on that, it takes you backwards through our blogs.
CROATIA, SEPTEMBER 2003
In September, 2003, while living in Bochum, Germany, we went sailing in Croatia with friends from Seattle,
Stuart & Susan Simon and Rose & Mike Peck.
It was a week’s cruise leaving from
Zadar, which is about the middle of Croatia on the coast - north of
Town View
We sailed into and by so many lovely towns and villages. I don't remember the name of this one, but it shows what a "typical view" was like during our week of sailing Split and Dubrovnik. To orient you, just think of Italy and that bit of water to the east, which is the Adriatic Sea - see map above.
Before meeting our friends in Croatia, Bernard and I drove from Germany to
Geneva, Switzerland for him to attend a preparatory meeting of the International Red Cross. Bernard was there representing the German Red Cross. Bernard's German boss, Dr. Fischer, was there representing the Dutch Red Cross. Go figure.
After Geneva we drove east across the wide part of
Italy - more trucks we have never seen! And it was hot. You might remember that 2003 was one of Europe's hottest summers in history (deaths in France alone was 15,000!). Our car had no air-conditioning, so not only did we have the heat to contend with, but the noise and pollution coming in the open car windows. Not a pleasant trip.
It went from the awful to the sublime as we drove out of Italy into Croatia. The road south to Zadar is along the winding, and stunningly beautiful coast. The
Adriatic Sea has the clearest water imaginable and there are islands off the coast all the way.
Stuart & Susan
These folks might look familiar to some of you - old and dear friends from Seattle Small, picturesque villages hug the coves.
We intended to reach Zadar in one day, but about 5 o’clock, after driving 10 hours, we were going through a wonderful village, spotted a tourist information office right next to an automatic bank machine (we needed local money desperately) and across from that was a promising looking seafood restaurant. Took about five seconds to decide to stay.
The man at the tourist office didn’t speak English, so we used a combination of German (me), Polish and French (Bernie) to arrange for a bed and breakfast - the old fashioned kind in a lady’s home. The lovely older lady drove down to the tourist office and escorted us back to her home - a 3 min. drive, but convoluted, so good to have a guide. The room was big, airy, cozy with a balcony and an ocean view. As we settled in she brought us frosty local beer that I had to drink by myself - not a bad chore I tell you even for this non-beer drinker. Our hostess didn’t speak English either so my bad German had to serve.
The next day we drove the rest of the way
Rose & Mike
Our sailing companions and friends, Rose & Mike Peck from Seattle to
Zadar where we met our friends. We stayed a night there before getting the boat on Saturday. We had the 50-foot sailboat and a local captain until the following Friday. We spent the time sailing not too far from Zadar around the many islands and through a group of islands that is a national park. We stayed each night at a marina so that we could have access to restaurants - we had decided not to cook all of our meals on board, but to enjoy the local seafood as much as possible. Turned out the seafood was frightfully expensive! Any meat or chicken dish was about a quarter the cost of a piece of fish. Our best seafood meal, however, was the one we cooked ourselves. As we sailed through a canal on our way to a village marina (there were villages dotting the entire coast) we saw that they were aqua-farming mussels. Our captain, Bucky - yes, he preferred that to his real name which he said wasn’t macho enough (?) - said he could buy us a bucket of mussels for dinner if we wanted. If we wanted???? Put together with a green salad whose fixings
Wine Makers & Mike
Exploring a quiet village, two friendly gentleman invited us in to try their "new" wine - what a hoot! We spoke no Croatian, they no English, so we let the wine talk for us! were bought fresh at the local market and fresh bread mounded with garlic butter, it was the perfect meal.
We had sunny days, so swam a few times, although the entry into the water was a shocker (you got used to it quickly). The wind was good and we had some days of fast sailing. Bucky was a racing fool and a stickler for keeping the sails trimmed for maximum speed. I think he was a bit disappointed in us as sailors, however, as we didn’t want to work as hard as he'd have liked, nor did we want to be overly competitive - Bucky was always trying to stay ahead of other boats in the area.
The week went by quickly as we caught up with our friends on what had happened last time we sailed together in the
Caribbean a few years ago. We hadn’t seen Mike and Rose since then, but Susan and Stuart had been to visit us in Holland the year before. Didn’t matter, still had families to discuss, books to critique, and jokes to crack.
We parted company in Zadar with the other two couples heading for
Prague and us driving
Wine Cellar
Rose, Susan and me enjoying the "new" wine - notice the wine-making apparatus behind us back to
Germany. Fortunately this time we got to drive a different route - through
Zagreb and then through
Austria, which was spectacularly beautiful.
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