Dubrovnik, Croatia

Inigo Montoya

Some days, I want to rip that little electronic box of wires and pixels from the windshield and put it on the gravel road it told us to turn onto. And an anonymous female voice with the programmed American accent will say, voice cracking, "Recalculating" and I'll say "My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die..."  and I'll stomp on it with 2" wooden soled Dutch clogs until the screen is shattered and the wires are poking out of it like an electrified sea anemone.

Getting to Dubrovnik was a problem, thanks to the GPS.  It first misdirected us outside of Omis, and I won't get into it because we were partially at fault.  I'll just say that the GPS cost us over an hour, but we saw some gorgeous mountain/gorge scenery.  Because of the GPS fiasco, we now have rafting down the Cetina river on our next Croatia itinerary.

Cetina river gorge in Omis

The next GPS disaster was in Dubrovnik, when it directed us downhill to our hotel through a 2 km long warren of narrow curving alleys, that eventually ended up as a dead end.  There was NOWHERE to turn around.  While it was slightly wider than the Vis road, we ended up driving the stick shift in reverse, uphill, in the dark at 11PM.  After about 1/2 hour of this torture, with my mouth totally parched, I noticed that a locked gate (I checked the lock on the way down when we were considering exit strategies), a potential turnaround point, was unlocked and open.  A woman was there with her adult handicapped son in a wheelchair.  I asked if she spoke English and then in sign language, asked if we could turn around in her driveway.  She said yes, and then got her husband, who spoke excellent English, while Adam turned the car around.  Thankfully, her husband directed us to the street on which our apartment was located.  We found the street, but the apartment (Villa Rosa) was completely unmarked (no name, no building numbers, nothing), so we had to call the owners to find out if we were in the right spot and where we were supposed to park, and it was all just incredibly stressful and late and maddening.  If it weren't for that nice Croatian family, we would probably still be backing out of that alley.  Once we got in the apartment and found beds for all the kids, we thoroughly, completely enjoyed a glass of wine before collapsing in bed from the stress of the drive.

Square of the Loggia, Dubrovnik

We only allowed one full day for Dubrovnik.  With the time constraint, we bought a headset tour of the inside of the old city, and Adam listened to the mp3 player and then translated it into prose the kids could understand.  We passed an hour or two in this fashion, admired the beautiful buildings, and were amazed that after the Homeland Conflict, over 2/3rds of the buildings in Dubrovnik had been war-damaged.  We took a crepe break on the main square, right next to the Cathedral.  On our entire trip, this was the only church I wanted to see the inside of and that's because this the church boasts an unusual relic - Jesus' nappy.  That's British English for Jesus' diaper.  With my religious irreverence, it's probably for the best that we couldn't find it, because I'd probably be stepping on some toes now if we had found it.

Waiting for the ferry at Lokrum

Lokrum, Croatia

When we were too hot to go on, we headed for the historic old harbor where we caught a boat to the nearby forested island of Lokrum.  There are no houses, souvenir shops, hotels or stores on Lokrum, you go there to swim and enjoy all the coves and rocky projections on which you can sunbathe or dive into the water.   Our intention was to let the kids swim during the hottest part of the day, and we all ended up in the beautiful water.  We enjoyed watching all the tourists in the glass bottomed boats ignoring the glass bottom to stare at the nudist beach shoreline, which was not far from where we were camped.  There were hundreds of peacocks and peahens prowling the island from the days when Emperor Maximillian (Franz Josef's brother who built Miramare Castle in Trieste, Italy but was killed by firing squad in Mexico) restored the monastery, allegedly built by Richard the Lionhearted in 1192.  We left Lokrum late in the afternoon, fairly relaxed, and ready to find dinner in Dubrovnik.  Dinner was unremarkable (something all our guidebooks warned us about), but we were ready to walk the city walls.  The temperature had cooled down a bit and we walked the entire circuit, enjoying the views of the city from above, and hearing and seeing more Americans than we had heard since leaving the US.

Dubrovnik from the city walls, Lokrum in background

We didn't set foot in a single museum, we just whiled away the afternoon in the Adriatic.  And that was perfectly fine with all of us.  One day in Dubrovnik was enough.  We were ready to head home the next morning -- this time via the two lane ocean thoroughfare and not the mountain back alley route.

Mohawk boys

Dubrovnik

Collecting salt on Lokrum

Peahen chicks

City walls, Dubrovnik

Still baking

Ten Things I'll Miss

Top Ten Things I’ll Miss

And now, with only a week left in Croatia, these are the things I am really going to miss about living here.  There are actually far more than ten things we’ll miss, and we’ve enjoyed so many things about this culture, but I’ve narrowed it down to these ten things:

Car-Free Living

As I said in my other top ten list, I miss the freedom of having a car in a garage that I can use whenever I want without having to fill out a contract each time, but I also love not having one.  It’s wonderful to be able to walk to the grocery store, the coffee shops, the kids’ activities, restaurants, public transportation, etc...  This morning, like so many other mornings, Jonah has run to the corner store to pick up eggs or milk or bread, and he also can take himself to the soccer field, which is just around the corner from our building.  We can’t do this at home, and we’ll miss this aspect of Rijeka.

Market

Rijeka Market

Downtown, right near the opera house, there is a massive produce market.  I know these are fairly typical, going back centuries, in European cities, but this one must rank among the largest.  All together, it comprises about a mile of stalls and stands overflowing with heaps and heaps of local fruits, vegetables, mountains of salads, dried figs, potatoes, dried plums, herbs, garlic, flowers, nuts, honey, and everything imaginable.  When wild asparagus is in season, you see a lot of wild asparagus.  When cherries are in season, they are everywhere.  So you can really see what is in season and how it changes over the weeks and months.  There are also little stores mixed in with these microstands that sell eggs, bread, sandwiches, coffee, and pastries, but there are also three large buildings built in the last century especially for the purpose of selling fish, meat, and cheese.  Even though Adam has typically been the one to do our shopping at the market, usually on the way home from his morning jog, I love going there.  I love the sights and smells and the colors and the atmosphere.  But we’ve all really benefitted by having this really fresh and local food available every day.

Tap water

Before we came here, we knew the tap water in Rijeka was famous..  There is a saying that goes something like:  “Those who have drank the waters of Rijeka, will someday return.”  Initially, we were just glad the tap water was safe to drink, which it is not in a lot of other places in Europe, but we never expected to take a drink from the tap and think, “WOW!  This is really excellent water!”.  Yet everytime we drink from the tap, that’s exactly what goes on in our mind.  There is no chlorine, plastic, or chemically aftertaste.  The water really is amazing, perfectly refreshing, cold even when coming from the tap, and absolutely delicious.

Coffee shops

Coffee and hot chocolate near the opera

You can’t come to Croatia anymore and think it’s a steal.  The prices here are western European, even though, sadly, Croatian salaries haven’t kept pace.  The two exceptions to the rule are coffee and gelato, both of which are insanely delicious and really cheap.  But it’s more than just the price of the coffee that I’ll miss.  There is a culture here of really slowing down and enjoying a cup of coffee (which by the way, is very tiny by American standards – don’t’ think mug, think demitasse, and that’s a large!).  There are no Starbucks, and “coffee-to-gos” are just a novelty offered occasionally in the tourist areas.  There are no portable coffee mugs for sale in the stores.  Why would you need one?  You can sit down in a café, which are everywhere, order a coffee, and sit there undisturbed for three hours.  Sometimes I would go with the kids and they would have hot chocolate, sometimes I would go alone when the kids were at acting class, and it was always relaxing and the coffee was always beyond delicious.  And another things I like about the café culture…  the coffee almost always comes with a glass of Rijeka’s excellent water, it’s always served in real ceramic (never plastic or Styrofoam), it never comes from a pot (it comes from a machine, one at a time), and there is never artificial sweetener in little paper bags on the tables to with which to mess up the taste of your perfectly prepared coffee.

Digestives

A completely staged photo

One of the things in our cabinets that took us awhile to get the hang of were the digestive glasses, little 1 ½” tall glasses with an etched design on the outside.   Before we came, we had read about slivovica, plum brandy, and how ubiquitous it was.  We were unprepared for the variety of grappas and brandies that are sold everywhere from the downtown market to roadside stalls.  One of our favorites is medica, honey brandy spiced with herbs like fennel and rosemary.  We were offered walnut brandy on the embassy cruise around Split.  We had lemon brandy, similar to limoncello, in Rovinj, Istria.  I fell in love with borovica, a type of wild blueberry brandy, when I got a complementary sip in the island Krk.  We’ve had fig brandy (they have to do something with all the figs!), but my current favorite is maraschino cherry brandy.  Most of these are sweet, and they are just the perfect way to end your day, in one of those dainty little glasses.  It’s a tradition that will be easy enough to adopt once we’re home, but it’s the variety of the brandy that I’ll likely miss.  I better go have one right now.

Simplicity

In moving here, we downsized from a four-bedroom house on an acre to a three-bedroom apartment with a tiny balcony and no storage area or garage.  Things were bound to get simpler.  We have two trashcans to empty, one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen.  We have one TV (which we never use).  We have oak floors that don’t show dirt.  I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t mopped once (just spot-cleaned).  There is one small refrigerator/freezer, but no spare to make you feel guilty for not freezing the summer bounty.  There are six plates, six bowls, six salad plates, and a few serving pieces, but the cabinets are not stuffed with things we rarely use.  We can’t recycle very many things, so there is no array of recycling bins.   If someone is going to drop by, it literally takes a half an hour to entirely straighten up and surface clean the whole apartment, and it only takes a 60 minutes to do it properly.  I’m going to miss that!  

Adriatic

The Great Fiumanka Regatta 2011 from our balcony

We have a 180 degree view of the Adriatic from our balcony.  We can see Mt. Uchka on the right, and Istria farther down.  The lights of Opatija and the other fishing villages along the Kvarner coastline twinkle at night.  We’ve seen a regatta, cargo ships, sailboats, fishing boats, kayakers, passenger ferries, yachts (even Tito’s Presidential yacht) come and go from the Rijeka harbor.  We can walk ten minutes into the old city and be on a bus to the Lungomare, a 12K seaside promenade where you can jump in the breathtakingly clean water wherever you feel like it.   In fact, we took that 12K walk today and the kids are still in their swimsuits.  Looking out at our backyard pond in Michigan will just not be the same thing.

Trips

Orata from Vesna and Edwin's

We calculated that of the five months we’ve been here, we have travelled about 50 days.  That’s an average of 10 days per month.  Some were 5 or 7-day trips, but most were day trips.  If we were stationed much farther south, getting to Vienna or Budapest or Venice by car would have been too far away and too expensive to fly to.  That Adam could largely work during our travels, thanks to the internet, allowed us to visit all sorts of places throughout Croatia (including 8 islands) and beyond.  It’s a pace we couldn’t have maintained for much longer, but I’m really grateful that we were here in Rijeka, and that we were able to see so much of this part of the world.   I’ll miss the proximity to adventure.

Fish

There are no-frozen fish in Croatia.  There are no pre-filleted fish in Croatia.  You buy the fish whole, so you can see the clarity of the eyeballs and look under the gills to see if the color is fresh-looking.  You smell the fish to make sure it smells like the ocean, and not fish, so you know it’s fresh.  In restaurants, fish is usually divided into the first-class “white fish” (such as sea bass and orada) and the second-class “blue fish” (sardines), but both are excellent.  I’m afraid it can’t be avoided, but I am not looking forward to visiting the frozen fish section of Trader Joe’s to pick out the pre-filleted, frozen salmon.  

Pizza

Truffle and arugula takeout

One of the legacies of Venetian rule is good pizza, especially along the coast.  While there are some exceptions to the rule (I’m thinking a certain thick-crusted, barely-baked ketchup and cheese pizza in Karlovac), the pizza in Croatia is marvelous.  It’s typically wood-fired, and the crust is always very thin, and slightly charred from the hot temperature of the oven.  It’s usually one pizza per person, just like in Napoli.    Even the pizza-by-the-slice places, which you can always find across from a high school, are far better than what we get at home.  We are going to have a hard time adjusting to typical American restaurant-style pizza.

The VISit

Vis, Croatia

The Dalmatian island Vis is located 2 ½ hours by ferry from the mainland; it’s one of the furthest offshore inhabited islands in the Adriatic.  Between WWII and 1989, Vis was essentially closed to foreigners for military/strategic reasons; so much of the infrastructure today is still not polished and tourist-friendly.  Even the GPS regularly tells you to turn off a cliff.  Because it’s so isolated, the island is unspoiled and free of the throngs of cruise boat tourists.  Croatians love Vis for these reasons, plus its fascinating history (including a short period of British rule), the wild mountains, gorgeous beaches, the orchards and vineyards (the grapes on Vis have been famous for over 2000 years), the fish, the pristine beaches, and the two charming villages, one  of which was originally a Greek settlement.

The treacherous street we drove through

The ferry ride was expensive but uneventful, which was good, because we ended up having enough of an event on the way to the guesthouse/hotel.  As I hinted, don’t count on your GPS in Vis.  When the roads were laid out, perhaps when the island was a Greek colony, some points in the road were only 1.89 meters wide, and they are still that width today.  There are stone buildings on each side of the road, so 1.89 meters doesn’t mean 1.89 meters with a small shoulder or grassy patch turnaround areas with which you can buffer a tight squeeze.  It means that you car better not be 1.90 meters wide, and god forbid, if you need to turn around, you better be skilled in driving in reverse with no more than an inch leeway on either side of your tucked-in side view mirrors.  We were on this road for at least a couple kilometers in this fashion, white-knuckled, and yelling at the kids to be quiet so we could concentrate. 

But then we approached a narrowing in the road that seemed to me, absolutely impossible to pass.  We faced getting out of this mess by repeating the whole process in stick shift reverse, virtually guaranteeing major damage to the car, or going by foot to get our hotel owner, who could hopefully provide us with some guidance.  We decided on the latter, so I headed to our hotel in the burning hot midday son, leaving Adam and the entire family in the car, and found the hotel about another kilometer up the road.  Our hotel owner, Vojko (pronounced Voy-ko), a true Mediterranean man, immediately put me at ease, said that this happens all the time, and walked with me back to the bottleneck. 

In the meanwhile, Adam’s guardian angel had appeared out of nowhere and guided him through that treacherous spot, and the next treacherous spot, until the road widened to the point where she told him “Now you are free!”.  While Vojko and I were wondering where the car was, Adam and the kids appeared.  Adam told us about the helpful mystery lady and then we all walked up the road to where Adam parked, got in the car, including Vojko and his toy poodle, and drove to the house.  Vojko showed us the gravel road above the house that was the correct way to arrive.  Unfortunately, we noticed some scratches on the car, so when we get back to Rijeka, we will probably get to test that little car insurance proviso when you rent a car using your credit card.   

Bonus! A pool at the house

It goes without saying that we walked to dinner that night.  We strolled down the same pathway our little car was squeezing through earlier in the day, to a restaurant Vojko recommended called Pajode.  We sat in an outdoor courtyard edged with huge rosemary bushes.  The kids had fresh squeezed lemonade under a lemon tree, and before our meal arrived, our waiter was up in that lemon tree harvesting a bag of lemons.  We had two kinds of fish for dinner, a grilled white fish similar to orada, and a red scorpion fish which Jonah picked out, prepared in a traditional way called buzzara.

Liquid sunshine from La Terrazze

The next day, we let the kids swim in the pool before packing up the beach gear.  Then we headed for the beaches on the southeastern part of the island.   Vojko highlighted on a map several fabulous beaches on the island, but in Vis, knowing where you are trying to go with a map has little to do with actually getting there.   It took us a long time to find a beach, but we eventually made it to Teplus , a quite deserted, rocky beach with just a couple buildings in sight, including the restaurant La Terrazza, where we had lunch.   We ordered a delicious local red called Plavac (a bottle of which Vojko had given to us, from his own grapes), a mixed green salad, and a popular spicy grilled sausage called civape.  It was really perfect, all the moreso because we were starving to death.  The next beach, Srbrena (meaning silver beach) was far more populated, and it has an FKK beach discreetly off to the side (one of many in Croatia, as the result of 1960s tourism market research which suggested that the northern Europeans would be more likely to visit Croatia if there were nude beaches).

On silver beach

The day was incredibly windy, and we leaned that it was due to a southerly wind called the yugo (as in Yugoslavia, which means south slavs).  The winds made for some powerful waves so we had to be a little more cautious at this beach.    When the kids were tired out, we packed up the beach gear and drove to the most western part of the island to the second largest village, a fishing hamlet, called Komiza (just 10 or 18km away, depending on whether you take the scenic mountain route or the scenic coastal route).   The approach to the village was spectacular.   We walked around the village for a little bit and got a bite for dinner and picked up some items for breakfast before heading back.

Hiking to Tito's Hideout

Tito's Cave on Mt. Hum, Vis, Croatia

The next day, we let the kids swim in the pool before heading back to Kozima for a boat trip to the island of Bisevo, to see the famous “blue grotto.”  We initially thought we had had arrived too late and we had missed all the excursions to the island, but as we later learned, no boats were going because of the yugo.  The yugo had driven up the tide, and since entrance to the cave is just under 2m high (6’ 6”), it was too dangerous for boats to enter the cave.  So Adam organized a tour of the cave for the next morning, our last morning on the island, and we left Kozima for Rucavac, where there were boats for hire with which we hoped to salvage the day.    On the way to Rucavac, we drove and then hiked a little further up Mount Hum, the tallest mountain on the island, into a couple caves, where Tito and the partisans hid out from the Nazis during WWII and held secret meetings with the Allies. 

When we finally got to Rucavac, Adam called the first phone number on a boat-for-hire poster we saw, and we found ourselves on a little blue boat with Captain Antonio within 15 minutes.  We had a couple hours of the boat rental, so we asked him to take us to the green grotto cave, then to a very remote pebbly beach in a cove called Stiniva, accessible by boat or by an hour long goat path hike down a canyon. 

The Green Grotto

Antonio first boated us to the “green grotto”.  Essentially, there was a little hole in the ceiling of the cave which illuminated a spot in the water.  In the cave, Adam and the girls climbed off the boat and swam into the green light.  They got back on the boat and we boated to Stiniva beach.    Antonio got us through a 4-5 meter wide break in massive limestone cliffs , and once we passed through, the rock walls spread out and enclosed a 30 meter wide clean and practically deserted beach.   We all swam there, and soaked up the impossibly clear water in this stunningly beautiful cove, and after Lubenice, we all felt very spoiled to have navigated to the beach by boat instead of by Keen.  

Our rental boat on Stiniva Beach

Stiniva Beach, Vis, Croatia

On the way back to Vis town, we had dinner at Roki’s, which we later learned is sort of an institution on the island, although you would never know it by the signage or the astro-turf covered Ford parked alongside the rusted tractors in the parking lot (most tourists come by taxi van).  It was an odd collection of stone buildings, a vineyard (it was a winery also), a cricket field (the sport leftover from Vis’ days as a British colony), outdoor tables placed all over, and a peka shed.   Peka refers to a traditional sort of food preparation:  either meat or shellfish (fish is too delicate) are placed in an enamel bowl inside a cast iron pod with a lid.  Then burning hot coals are placed above and below the pot and the food is left to cook in that manner for up to three hours.   Since octopus only takes 90 minutes, and we hadn’t preordered the meal, octopus it was.  It was a large octopus, and while it tasted like fish, the texture was more like gummy bears with a layer of fat and little round suckers.  It wasn’t my favorite meal, but I loved looking at it.   Adam and I went through a whole bottle of their 2007 Plavac – our favorite from the wine tasting that kicked off our meal.  The kids roamed the property, collected a huge bag of fennel (which is a weed here), played with the dog, and wandered around the grapevines while we relaxed. 

After we got back to the guesthouse, Adam and Georgie went for a swim.  When I was going back into our apartment, I walked straight into the glass door and broke right through the glass. I was uninjured, but mortified!  But my good Mediterannean landlord took it with grace and only charged us about $80 for the replacement glass (which has to be ordered from Split since there are no glass stores on the island).

Peka

The next morning we went back to Komiza and boarded a boat to the blue grotto on Bisevo island.  Adam and I had seen a similar natural phenomenon in Capri.  The kids loved the speedboat ride, but when we got to the ticket stand to buy tickets to board another smaller boat that can make it through the mouth of the cave, it was a sweltering, disorganized mob scene.  After 40 minutes of waiting in a “line” that went nowhere, our boat driver had us reboard the original boat, and he took us to the entrance of the cave where there was a boat waiting.  We boarded that boat, did the blue grotto circuit with several other boats, and the kids were suitably impressed.

Yep.

We reluctantly headed back to Vis to catch the 2 ½ hour ferry back to the mainland for the last leg of our trip.  I say reluctantly, because we wished we had scheduled at least a week on the island.   After we found out that our room on Vis was still available, we very nearly cancelled our Dubrovnik hotel, but in the end, the lure of the “pearl of the Adriatic” was too strong and we headed to the ferry.  If we ever find ourselves back in Dalmatia, we will be revisit Vis, and next time, it will be for more than three days.

Scorpion on the sidewalk

In the Blue Grotto

Trogir, Dalmatia, Croatia

View from the castle tower

On the back flap of a Croatia guidebook we are borrowing from our upstairs neighbor, Trogir is listed as one of the five spots a visitor to this country must see (for the record, the other spots are Dubrovnik, Plitvice Lakes, the Porec Basilica, and Diocletian's Palace in Split -- all are UNESCO World Heritage sites).  So on our roundabout way to Dubrovnik, we thought we better spend a night here.  It did not disappoint.

We drove into Trogir after a brief stop in nearby Split (because Adam had a meeting).  Thirty minutes after departing Split, we arrived in Trogir at our hotel, the Villa Tudor.  Our room was on the top floor of a building right across from the historic area (just a two minute walk across a pretty bridge from our hotel to the island-town Trogir), so we had better views than if we were in the old town.  And the views were of a gorgeous antique stone city with campaniles and clock towers and castles with the Velebit mountain chain in the background.  Everything from the buildings to the "streets" -- all of Trogir is a pedestrian area only -- was made of limestone.  You could enjoy the town thoroughly by just walking around and taking in the ambiance (and food) without ever stepping foot in a museum.  And that's practically what we did.

In the town square

The streets in the historical core are not logically laid out in the way the Romans preferred, because the origins of the city are actually Greek, from the 3rd century BCE (the Greek settlers came from the island Vis which is where we are right now).  And because it's flat, it makes for excellent wandering down the tiny alleys and paths.  On one adorable street, I picked up a few souvenirs at a very cute tourist shop aimed directly at my demographic, knowing that except for Dubrovnik where prices will be inflated, I would probably not have such a good selection of Croatia products again.

We all walked to the 15th century Kamerlengo Castle and had great views of the city from the top turret. The castle was built for the Venetian governor of Trogir, and there are concerts in the castle nowadays.  We also walked to the 15th century loggia.  Adam walked around trying to learn things while the kids and I were perfectly happy to people-watch and eat gelato.  That was the end of our official sightseeing -- short but sweet.  And I thoroughly enjoyed the grilled sardines I had for dinner.  We had a good night's sleep in our air-conditioned room -- the first we've had all year -- and we left for Vis the next morning.

Lubenice Beach, Cres, Croatia

Lubenice beach (the small white crescent in the middle of the photo)

With only two weeks left of our adventure in Croatia, Adam and I are making a concerted effort to to tick the must-do items off our list.  Earlier in the week, we went to Trieste to take care of some logistics (buying train tickets to Lucca, finding a poster tube which was completely unpurchaseable in Rijeka, and other things that involved no sightseeing).  But the next day, we went back to Lubinice in Cres Island and had a proper adventure that involved getting the entire family lost in the middle of nowhere on a hot summer day with hardly any water. 

We had already seen the Lubenice village when my parents visited in late April.   Back in the spring, looking down the cliff, we caught our first glimpse of the beach that some people refer to as the most beautiful beach in the Adriatic.   From that moment, Adam had that beach on our Croatia bucket list.   In the car on the way there, we were trying to prepare the kids for the grueling hour-long hike down to the beach, and we told them that the first person in our group needed to watch out for snakes.  Jonah immediately yelled, “I call first!”  Then Georgie quietly said, “I call the car.”

On the trail

Waiting for water

We made it to Lubenice on the narrow windy roads that are technically two lanes (only because of the occasional shoulder that is necessary for two cars to squeeze by each other), got parked, found the trail entrance, and headed down.  Because of the cliff, we knew the trail would have to veer to the south (away from the beach) before curving to the beach.  At first, we saw a couple red arrows indicating the way to the beach, but after awhile, we stopped seeing them and just followed our bounding children, who, after all, were on a fairly well-groomed trail.  However, almost 90 minutes later (completely downhill), the trail seemed to end, and we were as far away as ever from the beach.  Furthermore, we hadn’t seen a soul, coming or going, in over an hour.  We knew that most people wouldn’t want to undergo such a steep hike on a hot day, but in high season, you can almost always count on a few fellow crazy people.  And we were enjoying the hike.  There were really fragrant herbs scattered on the ground -- a kind of sage, a kind of wild rosemary, and a kind of oregano -- and the air was regularly perfumed with these plants.  The terrain was all over the map -- foresty, rocky, mountainy, meadowy, gentle, steep -- but it was always beautiful and always changing, with the ocean nearly always in the background.  At this point, with the sun high in the sky and our water supply precariously low, we decided to head back and see where we went wrong.   The idea of giving up was eating Adam alive.  And Jonah, too.

BWGL (before we got lost)

We hiked back uphill for about an hour and found the point where we made the wrong turn.  We made the decision to continue on to the beach, even though we had already been hiking for almost three hours.  Since our water was gone, Adam volunteered to trek back to Lubenice and buy water.  The kids played in the shade and we occasionally saw a lone white shirt through the trees on the ridge leading up to the village.  Adam made it back with three liters of water (if any of you are thinking that three liters of water for five people on a grueling hike in the hot midday sun isn’t enough, you are the better Boy Scout), and we spent the next hour hiking downhill, following the red arrows, until we made it to the beach.

Lubenice beach, Cres, Croatia

At the beach, Lubenice in background

Lubenice beach, Cres, Croatia

Get a load of the clear sea water

, 

The hike was grueling and long, but worth it.  The beach was gorgeous.  The rocks were white and smooth and the water was as clear as a swimming pool but infinitely more refreshing.  We let the kids recuperate there for over an hour, but the moment when we had to start uphill (upcliff is perhaps a better word) finally arrived.  And we had about 16 oz of water for the return trip. 

We nearly got lost twice, and that would have been catastrophic since the area was massive and almost completely deserted.  But we stuck to the red arrows and made it back in about 1 hour and 50 minutes, completely uphill with three young kids. 

One of the most amazing discoveries on this trip was that our kids actually function quite well in hardship circumstances.  There was no fighting, no complaining, and no whining the entire time.  Yes, the girls asked for occasional rests when we could find patches of shade, and Adam ended up carrying Georgia on his shoulders for some of the way, but overall, all three of them were completely amazing.   You would have been impressed, too.

The ice cream reward (they had their pick of the freezer)

Ten Things I'm Looking Forward To

Today, I used up the last of my Williams-Sonoma hickory smoked sea salt, one of my most prized kitchen imports.  Since we only have about nine days left of our five months in Rijeka, I think I timed the use of that staple quite satisfactorily.   But with my favorite smoked salt gone, it's almost time to depart, which means it's time for my top ten lists.

I'm going to start with the top ten things I am looking forward to at home, and another post will cover the top ten things I'll miss about Rijeka.  I didn't put in friends and family because that's too obvious, and of course, it goes without saying.

Top Ten Things I Miss

1.  Target
Target is amazing.  Does your kid need soccer shorts?  You can count on Target to have several colors.  Did you stain your only white T-shirt?  Pick up a replacement in the clothing section.  Does your daughter have hives?  Stock up on Benadryl in the pharmacy section.  Do your kids not have a single crayon longer than 1/2"?  Snag a big box of Crayolas.  Get all these things, plus lots of things you didn't know you needed, in one easy trip!  I've really missed the convenience of Target, and there is nothing comparable here.

2.  A Grill
We could have picked up a little charcoal grill for our balcony, but we didn't.  In fact, I don't know where we would have bought one (see item #1).  It will be nice to pass the responsibility for the carnivorous parts of our spring/summer/fall meals and have that be taken care of in a delicious way that doesn't mess or heat up the kitchen.

3.  Library
There is a library here that carries English language material.  But you are required to have a residency permit, which we didn't get until April 28 (three months after our arrival).  If you do pay the library fee, you are only allowed to check out three items at a time, which would be enough books for about 1/4th of a kid.  So we had to rely on the Kindle, and on reading materials we brought (and that my parents brought), and it worked out fine, but I will be glad to have the library and its online reservation system at my fingertips.  As handy as our Kindle has been, I prefer the library.

4.  Single-ply toilet paper
Three-ply is the standard here. If you look very hard, you can find 2-ply toilet paper, and that's what we've been making do with.  There is no single-ply available anywhere.  As a result of Croatian ply-happiness, the toilet paper rolls in our apartment have to be changed daily (and of course, no one knows how to do that complicated maneuver but me).  And if you need to blow your nose with 2 or 3 ply paper, it has about as much give as cardstock.  I am looking forward to my single-ply Scott tp rolls that last three weeks and are very environmentally-friendly.

5.  Mad Men
I sometimes like to watch TV after the kids have gone to bed with a glass of wine.  Mad Men, HGTV, the Food Network, Netflix movies...  Although we have about 1,500 TV channels here, the only reliable English channels are BBC World, CNN International, and the like.  The German and Italian cartoons entertain the kids when they're desperate, and the Canadian Christian children's channel with all the furry puppets worked for a couple weeks (after which the channel was completely mocked and dismissed), but we've been essentially TV-free these past five months.  I'll be happy to catch up with Don Draper this fall.

6.  Glue Gun
It can fix ANYTHING.  It can hem bluejeans, put the bindings back on books, fix rattan chair seats, repair shoes, you name it.  I can't wait for it to be back in my arsenal.

7.  Almond Milk
In some specialty hyper-markets, you can find soy milk (which we don't drink), but I have never seen almond milk.  The kids have been on a 100% cow milk diet since February, which isn't probably going to hurt them in the long-run, but I'll be very happy to go back to the almond milk when we're back and get away from the hormones.

8.  Drinking fountains
Considering that the water in Rijeka is REMARKABLY DELICIOUS, it surprised me that there are no drinking fountains anywhere, not even in the locker rooms of Jonah's soccer club or the girls' gymnastics club.  You have to remember to fill your water bottles at home before any trip, and if you run out before you're home, you have to buy more plastic bottles of water.  I guess they are a luxury I've never really considered before, but they are a nice thing to have access to.

9.  Gardening
On our balcony here, I have two window boxes crammed with 36 Genovese basil plants (the summer herb I can't live without), and one small rose plant.  At home, we have over an acre of perennial gardens, annuals, vegetable gardens, a herb garden, and a lot of constantly-changing landscaping.  While it's been nice to have vastly-pared down gardening responsibilities for a few months, I have to admit that I like the gardening work and it will be feel very good to get my gardening gloves dirty again.

10.   A car
This item could go in both top ten lists.  I don't really miss having a car, but I miss the spontaneity and the flexibility that you get by having a car.  We have been very liberal with car rentals, and we haven't missed anything because we didn't lease a car.  Still, renting requires advance notice and added logistics and time with picking up and returning the car.  Sometimes, these logistics are quite complicated.  For example, the car rental agency we've been using tends to provide us with cars that have no gas in the tank, and we are supposed to return the tank empty.  In theory, that's fine, but in practice, it's very difficult to estimate how much gas to put in a car so that at such and such a time on such and such a date, with an X-kilometer trip on Eurodisel 95 gas, the tank will be completely empty.

The Yugoslav Navy Yacht

The view of the Galeb from our balcony

For several weeks, Adam and I have been complaining to ourselves about this ugly, rusting hulk of a ship parked in the harbor (photo, left), marring our view of the sea.  When we first moved here, a very clean, white modern Jadrolinija passenger ferry was docked in that same spot.  Last night, though, we had the kids' "drama coach" over for dinner and we commented on the ugly boat.  To our complete surprise, he told us that this ship was Marshall Tito's famous "Presidential Yacht," and that it used to be one of the most glamorous yachts in the world.  It's now a museum.

So this afternoon, the kids and I went to have a closer look, and what we found was a slightly moldy, raw, utterly fascinating time capsule from about 1955.  I could picture Don Draper having a martini on the avocado green upholstered couches with the kidney shaped coffee table.

Midcentury modern stateroom

As it turned out, this ship has had a fascinating history.  Built by the Italians (and most of Rijeka was part of Italy at that time) in Genoa to transport refrigerated bananas from Italian east Africa to Europe, it was originally called the RAMB III.  The boat never transported bananas, though, because WWII broke out.   It was captured by Germany in 1943, renamed the Kiebitz, and was put to work laying 5,000 mines, one of which was actually detonated by the RAMB III off Ancona, Italy (I guess this is a form of friendly fire), but the ship hobbled back to Rijeka and was repaired in time to be completely sunk by the Allies in 1944 while in the Rijeka harbor.

Ship guts

In 1948, a Split company pulled it up from the bottom of the harbor and sent it to Pula, where it was cleaned up and resurrected as the Golub (Croatian for seagull) for the Yugoslav Navy.  Tito used the ship from 1952 until his death in 1980 for parties, diplomacy and foreign visitors.   In Tito's time, the ship sailed up the Thames and met Winston Churchill for the first visit to Britain by a communist head of state.  Throughout its years of service, over 102 world statesmen were on board (like Queen Elizabeth II, Nehru, Nasser, lots of non-aligned movement folks), and even some actors like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were entertained on board.

Entrance

The Montenegrins got the boat after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, and it was in legal purgatory for years until 2009, when the city of Rijeka won the right to buy the boat with the intention of turning it into a floating museum.  The current exhibit came from the Marinko Sudac Collection, described as the largest collection of historical avant garde, neo avant garde, and post avant garde expressions in eastern European region and beyond. (Here you say "okay" very slowly, like a question.)  This particular exhibit deals with the destruction of the untouchable.  I'm a bit too linear for that kind of art, but the kids were fascinated by a video installation featuring a a very happy nude man and woman on a beach, looking sort of1960ish, getting dressed in completely clear vinyl knee-length raincoats, diving into the water.  I haven't figured out yet how this relates to the destruction of the untouchable, but I'm sure someone less INTJish than I could figure that out.

With the 1950s glamor peeping through layers of rust and mold and water-damaged wood, you know this ship has seen better days.  It reminded me a bit of Rijeka itself, battered and slightly crumbling but with a very layered, fascinating history.

A yachter

Brijuni II, Baby!

Byzantium ruins on the beach

Thanks to Adam's work, we had the opportunity to visit the island Brijuni again last week.  The first time we visited, we took an early ferry and walked around the island in the early spring cold before taking a short group tour on a tourist "train".  This time, it was summer, and we got to stay four days in a real hotel (the Neptun) right on the water, with two balconies, and a half-board option.  It felt like a real vacation.

Biking on Brijuni

After checking in, we headed straight for the bike rental shop.  Thankfully for us, Brijuni has a different biking safety philosophy than the Americans, and even the Slovenians.  Because of this more laid-back attitude, we were able to stuff the almost-five-year-old Georgia into a child booster seat.  If we would have been in Michigan this summer, she would be riding a two-wheeler by now, but that wasn't a reasonable goal here in Croatia with no bikes, no parking lots or flat land to learn on if we had had bikes, and no doctor-patient relationship (Adam's requirement for learning how to bike).  On Brijuni, there were no helmets in sight, except the Germans in their modern eyeglasses and who were extremely conscientious and brought their children's helmets and elbow/knee pads with them.  But since there are no cars allowed on the island except work vehicles, golf carts, and Tito's Cadillac, the risk of collision with a large vehicle was rather small.  Our biking arrangement worked really well except that Georgia's legs were so long in the booster seat that my feet would knock her feet with every rotation.  Despite that, it was still an exhilarating feeling to be back on a bike after a year, particularly in this idyllic environment.

Lucy and Tito's Cadillac

On or first full day, when Adam was at the conference, we biked to the Roman ruins and did homeschooling and collected odd things on the beach (a weathered and bleached out jaw bone, rocks with fossils on them, and hundreds of little seashells).  We biked around the island some more and ate our packed lunch on a beach, where the kids built a fort made out of rocks.  We went back to the hotel and watched Nadal defeat Docovic at the French Open semifinals.  Before dinner, Jonah and Adam played soccer at the hotel's park area.  After a late dinner, we went to bed with our french doors open to the waves, watching all the yachts moored in the harbor bobble around.  One of our disappointments (just a temporary one), was that the door to the safari park and dinosaur park seemed were locked.  Back at the hotel reception, we were told that we could only get into the park if we were on the little tourist train, which we had no intention of doing again.

Underage driving

The next day, Adam was finished with work so we rented another bike for him and continued our exploration of the island.  We walked through the horticultural center which specializes in Mediterranean species, and also takes care of rare plants that Tito received from the world's non-aligned leaders who visited him on Brijuni.  Then we headed over to the Byzantium Castle, a structure that was inhabited since the year 500, and used up until the 17th century.  Neither of these sites were featured on the tourist train in the spring.

The Byzantium ruins are in pretty good shape, on terrific ocean-front real estate, so we homeschooled there and took our time playing in the water and on the beach.    That night, we rented a golf cart and went back to the safari park area.  When we pulled up to it, this time a different door than when we were on our bikes, we noticed two bikers coming out of the park.  They told us that you could enter and exit by pressing a button.  So we did that and cruised right into this area that was supposed to be off-limits.  As it turned out, this was a different entrance (not the padlocked one we biked to earlier), and perfectly available to tourists who were not part of the train tour.  We saw some of the animals at the safari park, but we headed straight to the dinosaur park, which we missed in our spring trip to Brijuni.  We got out of the golf cart and walked to the beach where, sure enough, the rocks were sprinkled with the footprints of a carniverous dinosaur.  We had to have the golf cart back by 8pm, so we hurried back.  The next morning, we decided to take the later ferry back so we could rent bikes again and spend some more time at the dinosaur beach.  The kids checked out the dinosaur footprints, but their real interest was in collecting the salt that had accumulated in the footprints and in the other crevasses along the rocky shoreline.  There was a ton of salt in a deserted area about 200m north of the dinosaur prints, and a cement bunker of some sort.  WWII?  By the end of the morning, the kids had an entire ziplock bag full of salt crystals.  We headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags, and finally, after misunderstanding the ferry timetable, we finally made it back to Istria and to the bus depot in Pula, which got us back to Rijeka.

Dino print

Salt harvest on Brijuni

My paludier

George & lavender 

Unidentified flora

Homeschooling on Roman ruins