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| Lubenice, Cres |
For our penultimate day in Croatia with my parents, we decided they needed a flavor of some of the nearby islands. We remembered our abbreviated hike near Beli on the island of Cres, and decided to go back there for a more thorough hike. I'm going to skip over the part about not timing the ferry right, the misunderstanding about whether the ferry ticket was purchased for both cars (it wasn't), the confusion about whether the ETA on the GPS was wrong, and the friction about how much gas a rental car gas tank needs when it has to be returned empty. The point is, we eventually made it to Beli. We weren't arrested by the Croatian ferry authorities although we probably should have been. The planning kinks were mostly worked out by the end of the morning, and even the hairpin turns on the narrow highway clinging to the side of the mountain got easier and easier.
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| Springtime in Beli, Cres, Croatia |
We showed my parents the Roman bridge at Beli, along a path dotted with pomegranate, olive, fig trees, and grazing sheep. Although in the spring we only had about 20 minutes to explore this path, it turned out that those 20 minutes were the most beautiful. Once we got deeper into the park, the forest grew thicker and we didn't have the beautiful vistas anymore. So we walked for maybe an hour, but eventually decided to turn back and head for another part of Cres.
It was Adam's idea to to go Lubenice, a 4,000 year old town, now nearly deserted, perched on a cliff about 378m above the ocean. The drive there was amazing, with mountains and coastline for over an hour. But our knuckles started to get white when we neared the village. For perhaps ten miles, there was a 5' high stone wall bordering each side of the very windy road. The road was supposedly a two-way street, but in several areas, it was only wide enough for one car to pass at a time. So on this little stretch, the fahrvergnugen was a bit diminished even as the scenery amazed.
After we arrived and had a look around the town, we stopped for a beer on a loggia overlooking the ocean. The grownups had cold beer, green olives, and Pagsi Sir (a delicious salty sheep cheese from Pag) while the kids had ice cream bars.
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| Beli, Cres |
We later learned that there are only about 18 residents left in Lubenice, none younger than 65, most all of them only speak Italian, and the residents share only two surnames. Knowing how remote this village is, and even dangerous to get to, it's not hard to picture it becoming a sort of Croatian ghost town even in my lifetime. Supposedly, one of the most gorgeous and secluded beaches in all of Croatia lies just below Lubenice. The location of this beach will probably ensure that Lubenice has visitors in the future, even if it doesn't have any permanent residents.
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| On the highway to Lubenice |
Dinner was knocking. We headed to the other side of the Cres to catch a different ferry to the island Krk (which is connected to the mainland by the Tito Bridge). We wanted to celebrate my birthday dinner at a restaurant in Vrbnik called Nada, which was getting renovated (and was of course closed, along with the entire island) when we were there in March. At the time, we had a nice chat with the owner, who has family in the U.S. We found the restaurant, got seated right away, and proceeded to have a fabulous birthday meal in the most gorgeous al fresco, sea-view second floor patio you can imagine. Vrbnik is famous for its white wine, made from a type of grape called "Zlahtina" that grows only in the Vrbnik region, so we enjoyed a full liter of that with our view.
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| Lubenice loggia |
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| Lubenice |
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| Klancic Street, Vrbnik |
Meanwhile, the girls were smitten by a little pug at the next table. After talking about the dog for awhile, Jonah asked the young and attractive owner if she could understand what he was saying. She looked him straight in the eye and said, "Of course! I understand every word you say!". As it turned out, her name is Amalia, her mother Vlasta, and the pug Cookie. They live in Zagreb but have a second house in Krk Town (not far from Vrbnik). Amalia was an exchange student in Massachusetts. Before the evening was over, she and her mother offered to show us the Narrowest Street in the World, Klancic Street. Vlasta initially had trouble trying to find the street, so she found a little house with the light on, knocked on the door, and said something, including "amreechee", to the man who answered the door. He smiled and pointed her in the right direction, and didn't seem at all bothered at being disturbed by a group of total strangers at 9:00PM. I recently looked up the "narrowest street" factoid, and was disappointed to learn that, at least according to the Guiness Book of World Records, the narrowest street in the world is in Germany, and it is narrower than Klancic by 19cm. But then again, the street in Germany looks more like a passageway than a street, so maybe Vlasta and Amalia were right after all.
Amalia emailed us this picture from the end of our Vrbnik visit, which just proves that Croatians are very friendly once you've broken the ice.
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| Vrbnik, with Amalia and Cookie (taken by Vlasta) |
