Blogs from Dalmatia, Croatia, Europe - page 75

Thursday, 24 June 2010 Km so far: 3280 Spent a few hours exploring Zadar, confirming our first impression that it is a very attractive town, great street cafes, wonderful waterfront, interesting buildings of various vintages. Drove up the motorway half way to Rijeka then cut back through the mountains to the coast again. The motorway was brilliant with extremely impressive tunnels and viaducts through the mountains, then more picturesque coastal scenery before arriving in the busy industrial city of Rijeka. Wound our way through the city without stopping to admire the shipyards up to the motorway heading towards Slovenia and Italy, but then headed southwest, leaving Dalmatia and entering Istria, a peninsula that is the most north-westerly part of Croatia. Pleasant but tedious drive through lots more rolling green countryside, wine a major product here, and ... read more

Tuesday, 22 June 2010 Km so far: 2680 Still intermittently wet and Trogir has the feel of an English seaside resort, with the optimism of being on holiday and the reality if it being a bit cold and wet. Drove into Split for the morning which was a mistake; we could have gone by boat or bus and it is the sort of city where driving is difficult, congested narrow streets, very little in the way of useful signposting and scarce parking. More by good luck than good management we found a car park that was within a few minutes walk of Diocletian’s Palace, our main objective. It is a fascinating and mixed up place, a sort of ancient semi-ruined area of temples and palaces, some Roman remains, others medieval and renaissance, all with a general ... read more

We left behind the calls to prayer, the melt in the mouth Turkish Delight and my favourite mezze of eggplant in yoghurt and met our next group of sailing friends in Split, Croatia. We boarded our fifty foot Bavaria, the Ariola )one of said friends likes his comfort), the next day, and for the past week have been showing off our favourite overnight stops between Trogir and Dubrovnik. Knowing that he has two or three years of holiday photos to edit back home and that we have already visited these places at least twice before, K has shown great restraint and been leaving his camera on the boat so he wont have even more photos to edit, hence the lack of pictures to accompany this blog. We have been able to sail most days in gentle ... read more

Cavtat is, to the uninitiated, best described as a peaceful coastal town further along from its more widely-recognized neighbour, Dubrovnik, yet it would be grossly unfair to even think about claiming that it stands in the shadow of a more prominent European city. It is fair to state that Cavtat has an identity all of its own, and while everything in Cavtat is on a smaller and more manageable scale, it scores points for being precisely that - nothing too overstated, pretentious or indeed under-supplied. A cluster of guest houses and hotels line the waterfront, back streets and winding road out of town, and it is precisely on this route where my residence, the Villa Stanovic, was located, worth the asking price for the balcony views alone! Since this was to be the shortest stay of ... read more

June 13, 2010. The word's out: Croatia is one of the hottest destinations in the world. A boomerang-shaped nation tucked between the Adriatic Sea and the fringes of the Balkans, the country has emerged from its bloody past and has grown into a beautiful teenager who knows how to throw a party without totally leaving its storied past behind. Blessed with a beautiful Adriatic coast and a great culture, never has Croatia seen a brighter future than today. The view isn't without its share of blemish, though. Accession to the EU remains a tantalizing prospect to many Croats and war crime issues still linger (Ante Gotovina still enjoys a hero status in his homeland despite reproach from the UN). Despite display of steady growth recently, the economic climate remains patchy. Corruption still provides a major headache, ... read more