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We overlooked one thing when choosing a place for R+R after our Balkan bus tour. Tours are draining so we knew we needed a couple of days where we could get up when we wanted, eat when we wanted and generally laze round somewhere beautiful to re-charge the batteries.
Trogir, a tiny island supporting a picturesque medieval town and connected to the Dalmatian coast by an equally tiny bridge, seemed like the ideal choice. But what do picturesque medieval towns have in abundance? Churches. And what do European churches still do that antipodean ones don’t?...ring their @#$%ing bells from 7am in the morning for about an hour.
The sound of church bells echoing over a wooded valley is one of the most lovely sounds, but when the bells are right above you, rebounding off thick stone walls and narrow passageways, several of them at once not quite synchronising, punctuated by jet planes swooping overhead to land at Split airport, motorbikes roaring round the lanes which are too narrow for cars and the general cacophony of people getting ready for another day living and working in a walled town as they have done for centuries, I
realised we clearly hadn’t thought this through.
However Trogir is fascinating. The best way to describe it is a mini-Dubrovnik - more manageable to get around, fewer crowds, friendlier people and less like a giant film set. You can walk around it in under 20 minutes, it has a castle, cathedral, several palaces, more churches, a great produce market just over the bridge, a Riviera-style esplanade lined with bars and luxury yachts, floaty-resort-wear dress shops, ice cream parlours and more restaurants per medieval metre than anywhere else we’ve stayed.
We’ve had a superb fish platter for two with grilled sea bass, wild boar gnocchi, prawn and wine risotto, gilt head bream, tagliatelli with shrimps and salmon…there is a big Italian influence on food in Dalmatia as it was ruled from Venice during the Renaissance.
Most meals have come to roughly 300 kuna including wine – about $NZ65. It is an absolute delight for once to be in a place where the $NZ dollar seems to be worth more – Rhys tells me this isn’t actually the case, it’s that Croatia is in the EU but not in the European monetary zone
our apartment
With its tiny balconyand still uses kuna (which one guide told us was a small weasel-like animal which they used to use the skins for as trading currency – so thank you little kuna for still being worth bugger all).
The island was first settled by ancient Greeks before the constant waves of civilisation from Roman, Ottoman, Italian, Austro-Hungarian to Yugoslavian and present day Croatian.
We are at the start of the tourist season so it’s relatively quiet, meaning the tour groups only start at 8am, pouring through the narrow alleyways, heads swivelling, mouths agape at the Viennese Renaissance and Baroque architecture which has earned Trogir its UNESCO World Heritage listing.
I’ve come to the conclusion Croatians don’t really enjoy being involved in tourism, they are barely lukewarm restaurant touts and the women sitting outside the clothes and souvenir shops offer only a shy, almost apologetic, “haalo…” as an attempt to entice you to buy their kitsch knickknacks and linen shirts made in Italy. They’d all rather be sitting in a café drinking their very good strong coffee or out in their gloriously productive veggie gardens where instead of useless lawn they grow enormous
Mastering the vagaries of European laundry methodstomatoes, courgettes, beans etc in soil that looks like road metal.
This is not to say they aren’t friendly – they are warm, tactile people, ready with a pat on the arm as a greeting – but they’ve had tourism thrust upon them as one of the few work opportunities left to a previously subsistence village lifestyle in a constantly changing world.
From here we’re taking the bus to Dubrovnik to catch our overnight ferry to Italy, so ciao for now!
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