The End of the Line

As Plitvice National Park was obviously going to be immune to any variant of I-can-top-that-itis, all I have left to do is to tie up any loose ends that always come after the climax of the story. So below is a synopsis of the final day or so of our trip, the oh-so-fun travel day, and the slow recovery from jet-lag that ensued. These all deserve to be chronicled. And so they shall. Can't leave the story 98% complete, now can I? After that I shall speak of the trip as a whole and answer any questions in a live Q&A. Or not. Maybe I'll just channel your questions.

The drive out of the mountains and back to the coast was beautiful. Country roads all the way. Hay bales (the stacks were a Kosovo thing) and goats and wee barns straight out of a children's book and as far as the eye could see. We drove through one military base turned museum complete with enormous tanks posing for the cameras in the morning light, right on the side of the road. But mostly, it was rolling hills in the foreground, and giant Alps in the background. We gaped, we oohed, we aahed, and we just kept driving. No stops until we hit the last town on our list, Rijeka, the third largest city in Croatia, and the one closest to the Slovenian border, which we still needed to cross one last time.

Rijeka from on high.

We only had one afternoon and evening in Rijeka. We needed to high-tail it outa there the next morning in order to catch our flights. And it was once again punishingly hot, like, 98°F hot. But we soldiered on because it would be a shame to melt on our last day in Europe. Our hotel wasn't available for check-in until 5:00, which is crazy. Every other place we stayed in was available by 3:00 the latest. But this one was run by an impersonal property management company that didn't give a crap if people were happy with their stay. So we had to stall until then. Our first in-stall-ment (okay, that is pushing it even for me) was the hilltop Trsat Castle. It wasn't much when compared with all the other castles we'd seen. But it did have a pretty kick-butt view of the town below. I pretty much had the city figured out before we even stepped foot in it. The Cathedral is over there. That thing over yonder is the university. There's the natural history museum... You get the idea.

A tighter view of the important parts of town and of the Adriatic. Note the canal. We will be there later in the post.

You can see the flag on this tower all the way from the sea.

Steps. Always more steps.

Trsat Castle bits

We then stopped for lunch near the castle in a place I found on the net in about fifteen seconds worth of research. Twenty is my limit, so it seemed thorough enough. I was right. It was a great meal, full of local cuisine options, that really felt like a home-made affair. Mark said it was one of his favorite meals of the entire trip. I'd put it in the top ten, which is still pretty good, after 42 days of travel. It was a little family restaurant called Konoba MB that has been around for more than a generation. (If you look it up on Google maps, you'll find it about two blocks southeast of Trsat Castle.) I had Goulash. They nailed it.

No goulash pics, so here's one more castle tid-bit.

We then drove to the parking garage recommended by the afore-mentioned apartment management company. Not sure why they had us park there. It was quite a trek from the apartment and we passed multiple other lots on the walk from the garage to the apartment. It reeked so badly in there that I almost threw up walking up the stairwell. The heat wasn't helping with that. But as we exited the garage, leaving our luggage in Luka, we still had about three hours to kill before the apartment would be available. We texted the company, hoping it would be ready sooner. They gave us the ambiguous: "It might be ready earlier if the cleaner finishes with it. We will let you know." We held out hope, knowing that there was AC in the apartment, and there wasn't in the old town or on the promenade. But they never let us know. At 5:05, I walked into the office demanding the key, sweating through my shorts. Nobody was cleaning the place until the last minute. They just had no interest in throwing us a bone.

That's about the expression I had for most of the afternoon.

So what did we do for three hours in Rijeka? We walked the main, pedestrian-only, shopping street, but were too hot to shop. We stopped for a beer and some shade for a while. But that only took us so far. We visited the cathedral. We bought tickets to go down into the war tunnels built for WWII, which were being used to house an underwater photography exhibit. At least it was plenty cool down there. We took our time heading back up to the parking garage to get our stuff, and then back down to the apartment and the management office. Mostly, we sweated it out. When we finally got the keys around 5:20, we climbed the eighty steps up to the third floor (what we in America would call the fourth floor) of an old Austrian-style building (no elevator) and collapsed in our apartment waiting for the AC to kick in as it was pretty obvious that nobody had been in there for hours and the AC had been shut off the whole time.

The "shopping street"

The Cathedral

The inside of said Cathedral

The caves were literally cool as well as figuratively. At the moment, the literal part was more important.

The photography exhibit was very impressive. I couldn't stop taking photos of the photos. As you shall see below. Remember, none of these underwater photos are mine. And I can't give credit as I didn't record who took them. Though some of them have a visible sticker at the bottom. Like this first one. So nice photo, Danijel Frka! Anyway, please enjoy, but do not reproduce in any way. I'd be worried that I could get into trouble for reproducing. But since I only have about eight readers, I'll take my chances.

But we couldn't help wondering, couldn't they make better use of this space?

I mean, they had hundreds of meters of prime real estate right below the heart of the city.

Turn it into a dance club. Add a few strobe lights. It could be rockin'.

The air flow is great. You could even put restaurants down there. 

Or maybe a bazaar? People would definitely use it to get out of the heat of summer.

This dude approves.

Cool, but wouldn't sea water be really bad for a violin? I don't think it would sound the same either.

When we had finally cooled off due to full power AC in the apartment running for about an hour, we then went back out to enjoy the town in the evening when temperatures had dropped to the balmy mid-80's. We saw some pretty cool architecture. We ogled some crazy yachts in the marina. But we only had about an hour, because Carol had to work that evening so we made sure to feed her before that would happen. She chose an incredibly posh dessert-only establishment on the promenade. Of course she did. Have you met my wife? Carol's dessert was a chocolate cake decorated to look like an hallucinogenic mushroom. Mine was a Dubai-chocolate cake thing that is apparently all the rage these days. I'd never heard of it. But it was yummy. Pistachios in the chocolate. Michelle got an orange-flavored chocolate thingy I didn't care for, but everyone else gobbled up. Mark and Quincy just ate from our three plates, like hyenas. Order your own damn dessert, you free-loaders! Just kidding. All six of us have been sharing meals the entire trip. Well, five of us. Remy is a vegetarian, so she pretty much had her own thing most of the time in this very meat-centric region of the world. In any case, there is no way I could have eaten that whole dessert on my own. Too rich.

I bet the Botel Marina lets its tenants in before 5:00 p.m.

A selfie in Rijeka

Architecture in Rijeka

Feels a little like Vienna. That's because Rijeka was an important port town for the Austrian-Hungarian empire in the 1800s.

The beauty was in the details.

If you look closely, you can see the Trsat Castle that we visited earlier in the day. It is at the top of the farther hill, just above the left side of the orangish building in the middle of the picture, behind the canal. And this is the canal you can see from the pics at the top of this post when we were in the castle. Funny how that works, huh?

Carol's dessert.

After dessert, I naturally went back to the apartment to make dinner. The goal was to use all the stuff that we had left in the feed-bag which we'd been dragging all over Europe. Lentils and garlic and carrots and some crazy seasoning packet thingy that Michelle bought five weeks earlier, and anything else I could find that wasn't in jelly form or made of milk product. Not the greatest meal of the trip. But I hate wasting food. Unless it's apricots. Those things can go eat themselves. Or eggplant. Decide. Are you dairy or are you vegetable. When you decide, maybe I'll eat you. Until then, auf wiedersehen, aubergines. Yes, I had to look that up for spelling assistance. Sorry, no eggplant emoji here. ;) 

We played one last game of Ganz Schön Clever, a German dice game that has been keeping us entertained for much of the trip. Well, it and the three sequels I also own. Then we went to bed, knowing we'd have to get up and get on the road by 7:00 a.m. to make the drive to Ljubljana airport. In the morning, it was one last check to make sure we didn't leave stuff under the bed or in the shower. One last key drop in the box at the door. One last hike to the parking space where Luka awaited us half a kilometer up some hill. This was it. The six week adventure was finally over. 

The drive was uneventful. We waived good-bye to the Adriatic. We were a little worried about the border crossing with our Gandalf-esque "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" in Macedonia, and our "What the hell are you people doing at my border crossing?" guy on the last trip into Bosnia-Herzegovina; not to mention the two-hour ordeal into Croatia from Montenegro. But our fears were unfounded, as we didn't even have to stop. It is E.U. on both sides of this particular border. But in our newly established paranoid state, we found on the net that even the Slovenia-Croatia border can involve random checks that can be painfully slow. So we left super early just in case. But we flew through and landed at the airport with about three hours to spare for the Allens and over five hours until our flight.

"Quick! Take a picture! That is the last time we'll see the Adriatic!"

We parked Luka for the last time. We said our teary good-byes. Mind you, we weren't sad that we didn't get to spend more time with our beloved van, but we were sad that we left him with too much diesel in the tank. (That stuff is pricey. Our final fill-up was in Croatia where we spent 90euros, or over a hundred dollars for half a tank worth of diesel.) We only needed to leave it 5/8 full, just as we found it. But I was a bit too conservative in my guess and it was at more like 7/8. Ah well. At least the Alamo rental return parking lot was free. Fun story: Carol and I approached the Alamo office with the van keys in our hands, ready to close out the rental agreement. We were greeted outside the office by two nice young men who asked us how the trip went and if there were any problems with the van. We didn't complain about the fact that no sane person would ever willingly drive a vehicle that large in the places that we needed to go. We told them about the blown tire in the back. We suggested that they include instructions about the whereabouts of the spare and especially the tools required to change the tire. We handed them the keys and went to the airport terminal. We cleared security and browsed the duty-free shop for gifts for our lovely in-laws (Josh's girlfriend's parents) who so kindly took care of Gromit for the last week of our trip when Josh had already moved out to Irvine. We ate breakfast/lunch/certainly-not-brunch at the one "restaurant" that was open in the entire admittedly small airport. Then Carol had an epiphany. What if those guys, to whom we gave the keys to the van, didn't actually work for Alamo? They weren't in any kind of uniform. They were not actually in the office. We might've just been scammed. They could be joy-riding Luka around southern Austria by now, and we might soon miss our flight while having to file a police report. Crap!

Luka back at the airport.
Oops wrong Luka. This is just a book I saw at the airport.

Carol texted the Alamo office. I went back to security and asked if I could leave and then come back. They were skeptical. Finally, one security guy said my boarding pass would not work to let me through security a second time, but he'd remember me and he would be there when I got back. So I trusted him and left the airport to go back to the office to make sure we hadn't just blundered big-time. Just as I was through the turnstiles, Carol texted me saying all was good. They actually did work for Alamo. But I was already through, so I decided to double-check and went all the way back to the rental car offices despite Carol's assurances. The dude who took our keys was sitting in the office with another person actually in uniform. They assured me all was copasetic. Thank goodness. I turned around and marched the half-mile back to security. When I got there, sure enough, my boarding pass did not work. The guy at the entrance didn't know me. I had to explain my situation and have him find the guy who said he'd be there to let me in. He wasn't there. How do I get myself into these situations all of the time? At least I didn't blow a tire this time.

Long story short, I eventually convinced the guy of my innocence. It took some real sweet-talk. Not my specialty. He grudgingly let me through, and as I was putting my belt back on, the first guy shows up. He belatedly vouches for me to the second guy, who was still watching me intently, even while helping other people. Do I look that sketchy? Is it the receding hairline or the definitely-not-receding waistline that makes me appear to be an international criminal? I know they are just doing their job, but if was going to hijack a plane, why would I want to go through security multiple times?

Here we go. See how he doesn't even fit in the spots provided specifically for him? Dude needs to get in the weight room and shed a few.

The plane rides were fine. One stop over in Munich that wasn't too bad. The airline made us check our carry-on luggage. We made sure to pack into things we could carry on so we didn't have to deal with baggage claim. Best laid plans, once again! So when we got to San Francisco, we had to wait for just long enough at the baggage carousel to miss two Airporter shuttles. They come every half an hour at that time of night. We waited for our bags for forty minutes. The sad part is that we have Global Entry, because without it we almost missed a connection in Dallas with a three-hour layover last year. So we flew past the considerable line in customs. But all of those people made it through the line and into baggage claim and were long gone before our bags finally showed up. Best laid plans indeed.

So once we finally did catch an Airporter and then an Uber, once in San Rafael, we arrived at our front door exactly 24 hours after we left the apartment in Rijeka. We left at 7:00 a.m., Croatia time, and we arrived home at 7:00 a.m., Croatia time. But that correspondes to 10:00 p.m., California time. So we were just in time to go straight to bed and get a good night's sleep so that jet-lag wouldn't be a problem. Well, it has now been five full days and nights since we got back, and we are still recovering from jet-lag. Carol and I both fell asleep in different rooms at 7:00 p.m. last night (evening?) The kind of I'm-so-sleepy tired, that there is absolutely no way I could get up to go upstairs and brush my teeth and go to bed properly. I did eventually peel myself off the couch around midnight, but then woke up around 3:00 a.m. and never really was able to sleep again before getting up this morning to go to jury-duty in my zombie-like state. We got back five days ago! Why is this so hard? On the way into Europe, I took maybe one nap. I was good to go by day two for sure. But this always happens coming home. Today neither of us has napped. It is almost 10:00 p.m. as I type this. I am determined to sleep like a normal human being tonight. But you my dear readers, will never know if I succeeded, because this is my last post. So my story is that jet-lag is over, and I am sticking to it.

It is nice to be home.

So what are my final takes from the trip? What did I learn? How did I grow? What words of wisdom can I impart now that I am seven weeks older and wiser than I was when I typed that first post on the way out the door? I'm so happy you asked. Because I planned to tell you either way.

I learned that driving in Europe is hard. Especially in the countries that don't have the infrastructure budget to build roads wider than a single passenger van. I learned that it is even harder to park in Europe. There are never enough spaces, and the spaces that do exist are never accessible unless your car is a Mini-Cooper or a SmartCar. I learned that making plans is essential for a long road-trip, but that nothing ever goes according to plan. I learned that middle-of-nowhere, un-researched roadside cafes will often be the best meals of the trip, despite hours of research for the best restaurants in town. I learned that although everyone knows that the bigger the group of people, the longer it takes to get anywhere; what not everyone knows is that the graph of said time vs. group-size data set is exponential in form, rather than the expected linear situation. Enough said about that. I think I actually already knew all of these things before this trip. Hell, I'd driven the Amalfi coast in Italy. I definitely knew some of these things. But a not-so-gentle reminder is often necessary.

I grew as a navigator. Michelle and I both got international driving permits and were the only ones on the rental agreement who could drive the van. I expected to do maybe 30-40% of the driving. But Michelle insisted upon doing 99% of it. She prefers it, she says. The only time I was behind the wheel was when we needed to dock the beast and when that involved backing up and negotiating tight turns. Except for the couple of minor trips when Michelle wasn't even on the adventure, I don't think I ever drove Luka in anything but first gear and reverse. So that meant I was always the navigator. It was a job I took very seriously. Google-maps took it less seriously. It was always suggesting alternate routes, unless I actually needed one because the primary route meant going on a goat-path or the wrong way down a one-way street. Without it, we would have been lost most of the time. With it, I was just frustrated most of the time. But we made it, and I am the better man for it.

I also grew as a researcher. Normally Carol does the bulk of that. It is in her actual job-description after all. It is what she does for a living. She excels at it. I do not. But she had to work most of the trip, so I had to do most of the planning. Mark helped a lot. But I planned the entire route. It was my brain-child from the get-go. We were seeing what I wanted to see. We were taking the route that I had plotted out. And the details of what to find and where to find it in each town was left to me and to Mark as well. I still stink at it. But I am growing up slowly in that regard.

I grew in empathy for the people touched by war. And not just those in the Balkans, but everywhere and in every time. War has always been an academic curiosity of mine. But I have never felt personally touched by it. It was always something that happened elsewhere and before my time. I know a lot about the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War, and WWI, and WWII and Vietnam, based on what I learned in school. I probably know more than most, not including actual historians and Civil War buffs and such. But learning about it was all dispassionate for me, other than maybe the Holocaust, which is difficult not to get emotional about, with all of the stories of the horrors being drilled into me as a good little Jewish boy. But seeing the war damage first-hand, and hearing stories from people who lived through it, and remembering events from my young adulthood, when they were actually happening, brought the atrocities of war to me and into the here and now, more than I ever had experienced it before. 

I can't speak for the other five people in my group on this trip. They seemed less interested in the history and less moved by the stories. Though I am pretty sure everyone who visited the Museum of War and Genocide in Mostar with me was pretty substantially moved that day. But for me, this was a large part of the reason for taking this trip to Sarajevo and Kosovo and Mostar; places I've heard of in the context of war and genocide, but needed to experience for myself. I guess I purposefully put myself in the necessary frame-of-mind to get the most out of that part of the experience, whereas my five traveling companions were in different mindsets. There is nothing wrong with that. Nobody was forcing them to entrench themselves in the history of the places we were visiting. Mark, for example, got much more out of visiting the Greek and Roman ruins than I did. That was where his focus was. We all grew in different ways. But this is my blog, so all I can do is share my own growth.

That brings me to words of wisdom. Not easy for a guy who cannot take himself seriously. But I'll try. Do not follow Google Maps blindly. If it takes you across a border, research the hell out of that particular border crossing. If you rent a car, be sure to ask about the spare tire situation including the whereabouts of the jack and the lug-wrench. If you aren't sure about a certain road, don't take it. And no, you won't fit in that space, don't even try it. Triple check that you and your spouse have not double-booked yourselves in the same city for the same nights. When paying with PayPal, be sure to check the friends and family option if you don't want to get destroyed by fees. Never attempt to match wits with a Sicilian when death is on the line...

Eight countries. Twenty different lodgings. 3525 km of driving. Almost as many bureks (a savory pastry thingy that is ubiquitous in the region). Four planes, five trains, a kayak, a funicular, maybe ten boats, five or six buses, a dozen or so trams, a towed raft, one scooter, dozens of elevators, an underground slide, and around 600,000 steps, at least a few thousand of which were of the up or down variety. What else could I possibly have gleaned along the way?

I guess what I came away with is the same thing I always come away with. Travel is expensive. Travel is exhausting. Travel is stressful. Travel can be scary. But travel is always, always, always worth it. I came away with more lasting memories in six weeks than I do from six years of sitting at home. The good memories are great. The bad ones are sometimes even better, knowing that I lived through them and can now laugh about them from a distance. Being high up in the mountains can be an almost religious experience. Taking in the mountain air. Seeing all of creation laid out before you. Being near the sea can feel the same. It makes you feel so small. But at the same time it makes you feel like a real part of something so large. Being in a place like the Balkans where you get the mountains and the sea all at once, can be transformative. And watching people of different cultures and backgrounds and religions all thriving in their own ways, is eye-opening. Feeling the distant past seamlessly meshing with the present and being a part of all that, well, it's enough.

Thanks for going on the journey with me, even if only vicariously through words and pictures. Being able to share it brings it even more alive for me, and helps solidify it in my failing memory. I hope you enjoyed reading. If you didn't, well, sorry, that was an awful lot to read. If you did, perhaps, just perhaps, I will have inspired you to share some of your own travels to places I've so far only been able to dream about. Until the next adventure!

The view from Ljubljana airport, and the last bit of nature on the trip. Tears well up...

All Croatia, all the time.

 Split, Krka NP, Zadar, Plitvice NP

Our first view in Split included a cruise ship. That never bodes well.

Unlike for Dubrovnik, I had high expectations of Split. I’m not sure why. I’d read stuff, I’d heard stuff. Whatever it was, I was excited to see Split. I was underwhelmed. It’s a huge city. We only saw a small fraction of it. But we saw what were supposed to be the best parts to see, and nothing wowed us. The old town felt pretty generic. Even the parts you had to pay to see were ho-hum. I guess that's not fair. I'm just hard to impress at this point. Carol and I were the very first two people up the bell tower in the morning, so that we could skip the crowds. The ticket office didn't open for fifteen minutes after the time that it was supposed to be open. So that meant we were waiting at the door. The one guy who was waiting ahead of us decided to use the entire fifteen minutes to give us a history lesson of the place. It was interesting. He was a bit eccentric, but hey, free tour! So we were second in line to buy tickets, but he lingered a bit, so we were first in line to climb the tower! The steps were incredibly steep in parts. It was slow going. We were glad not to be behind a crowd of even slower goers. The views from the top were fine, but nothing like those in Dubrovnik, Kotor, or even Budva, which didn't even have a bell tower; we just climbed the fortress there. In Split, we saw the cathedral and the Roman ruins, but nothing felt up to snuff, versus my expectations. Oh well. Every place can't be the greatest place we've visited. 

Cool crypt

The main courtyard. Dude sitting on the steps on the right is our impromptu history professor. Bell tower is up to the left. Tunnels down to the crypt and the treasury are straight ahead and down.

View of the marina from the bell tower.

View of modern Split from the bell tower.

One more shot from on high.

Okay, maybe two more. Perhaps the views were better than I remember.

The bell tower was by far the best part of old town.

Some cool sculptures on the side of a random building in old town.

Tunnels underground led to a crypt.

More of the tunnels. Not sure why the lights were green through the camera lens. They weren't through our eyeball lenses.

We took a boat tour out to the islands, and they were absolutely fine, or as Josh would say, meh. Period. Even the Blue Lagoon, which is advertised everywhere as a must-see, was only okay. Mostly because there were maybe fifty other tour boats anchored simultaneously in the same small patch of water. The swimming was good, but the overabundance of people and boats detracted from the atmosphere of the place. It is too bad, because the water was super clear.

On the boat. Michelle wasn't feeling well. So she didn't join us on this excursion.

The water was pretty awesome.

The blue lagoon. Tried to get a shot with fewer boats in it. There were way more than that.

The boat ride also took us, for only one hour, to Trogir, a small walled town, a bit north from Split, up the mainland. Trogir, I liked. The walled city felt a lot like Budva, a labyrinth of shops and apartments among the very old remains of a medieval city. Even the modern town outside the walls felt more down-to-earth and accessible than Split. I could live in Trogir. Split just felt too big, too impersonal, and, well, not for me. 

Approaching Trogir from the tour boat.

Trogir promenade.

Typical old town street in Trogir.

The super cool fortress in Trogir.

From the top of the fortress, looking down on the promenade and the old town.

The one thing we did in Split that I did enjoy was hiking up the Marjanske Scale (over 600 steps, with much non-stepped uphill climbing in between) to Telegrin Peak for fantastic views of the city and the surrounding waters. From a distance, Split is quite beautiful. To be fair, it is beautiful in many areas from up close as well. I am just so spoiled after five weeks of visiting so many gorgeous places, that it takes quite a bit to impress me at this point. Michelle and Remy didn’t do the steps. They chose the wine. It was excellent, I hear.

I still say I chose the correct option.

Sweaty, but happy at the top.

Incredible views on the way back down as well.

We had a kitchen in Split, and prices are so high that we never went out for a meal, unless you count the falafel sandwich I got “to go”. So in that way, we didn’t give Split much of a chance at competing with the other cities either. Plus it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for most of our stay, so that didn’t help. But I just don't feel like Split was trying very hard to compete for my favor with the rest of our Balkan adventure. Honey-badger don’t care. 

Chillin' on the beach on one of the islands from the boat tour.

We left Split and visited Krka National Park to check out the waterfalls. They were amazing. But the park was overflowing with tourists as much as it was with river water. And it was still over 100 degrees. So only so much fun could be had before we had to seek out air-conditioning. It is too bad that we got so little out of what appears to be an enormous and fantastic national park. But the heat can spoil anything. It is what we get for planning a Balkan vacation in August. But that is the only month the students in our group could go. And the park could try a little harder to make its patrons feel welcome. Want to take a boat ride? That’ll cost extra. Want to use a restroom? That’s extra too. Want to catch the shuttle bus? Be ready to play “Lord of the Flies” with hundreds of others with the same idea, as no structure is provided for queueing up at the shuttle stop. It is like they wanted us all to get cranky in the heat. Mark did. He and Remy and Quincy decided to hike the half hour back up the hill to the parking lot, rather than wait to shove their way on the bus. Carol and I braved the free-for-all onto the bus. Can't say I blame him, but in the end, I had a much more positive experience with Krka than Mark. For him, it was all bad. For me, it was mostly good. I just wish I could have visited in February or something, when the crowds and the heat were M.I.A.

Just getting started on the hike through Krka National Park.

Lots of falls-in-the-distance type views.

Everything was beautiful. Not just the falls.

But they were pretty amazing.

See what I mean?

You were allowed to swim in them until about five years ago. Probably better that you can't now. All you would see is people, instead of nature, like back at Kravice Falls. This is better. 

One last shot of Krka.

That brings us to Zadar. Another shot at a big city on the water in Croatia. Since Split left us wanting, Zadar was Croatia’s best chance at redemption. It came through. The old town was hopping. The restaurant was awesome. (More complimentary hooch!) The tourist information center was super fancy and the woman inside was extra helpful. We watched the fantastic sunset from the peninsula edge. We hung out at the “sea organ” listening to the Adriatic blow gentle tunes through a series of thoughtfully engineered pipes under the pier. We saw Roman ruins. And we did it all in the span of a few hours on the only evening we were there. So, "Yay Zadar!"

First look at Zadar

Cool church - 1300s

Cooler convent with bell tower - 1200s

Even the detail are cool in Zadar

Old dude in a sculpture garden.

Older dude in same garden.

Can you imagine spelling bees in Croatia?

The sunset in Zadar was pretty spectacular.

The next morning, Mark, with the help of our tourist info gal the night before, had a carefully crafted plan all set go, involving a boat ride to one of the many islands just off-shore. We all know how carefully crafted plans go. They do not go well. After dropping Remy off at the Zadar airport, we drove back to town intending to park Luka in the free lot near the ferry terminal. It was FULL! (see the "Badges" post about Durmitor N.P. for why I choose all caps.) So we went to the pay lot. FULL! We drove around some more. We finally found a spot on the street, and went looking for the kiosk to pay. We found someone who warned us that there was no kiosk, despite the dozens of other illegally parked cards and that we would be towed if we parked there. She watches the tow truck every day, coming back and forth. “Everybody back in the car! How about we park up in the lot behind last night’s apartment? There were multiple spots when we left. Who’s gonna know we checked out? It is not as if the spots are numbered.” FULL! We drive around some more, at one point going the wrong way down a one-way street, but still finding no parking.

After more than half an hour of this, we admit defeat, and decide to leave Zadar before it left a sour taste in our mouths. We wanted to remember Zadar for the feeling it gave us the night before. So instead we drove to the small town of Nin, specifically Queen’s Beach, which is ranked in the top 100 beaches around the world. Seemed like an excellent plan B. And indeed it was. Even Carol, who was having a tough time letting go of the plans to storm Ugljan island, eventually warmed to the whole beach experience. The water was warmer than any place we’d been on the trip, but still cool enough to be refreshing. The beach was sandy, not rocky! The water was clear and without seaweed. It was a popular beach to be sure, but it was so massive, that it wasn’t hard to find some personal space. We even found a spot under a tree growing right on the beach, so we had some much coveted shade.

Our shady spot.

Didn't need to pay for an umbrella like these suckers.

It was crowded, no doubt. But there was plenty of space on the sand, and in the water.

Yet all of this still wasn’t quite enough to cheer Carol up. Normally she is at her happiest when in the water. But expectations and bast-laid plans can be a bitch. But then we learned of the local tradition to cover yourself in the "healing" mud in the marsh behind the beach. Dozens of beachgoers were walking around looking like they were midway through a spa treatment, covered head to toe in the stuff. The signs claimed that among other things, the local mud heals ailing muscle and spine injuries, that it increases fertility, and that it relieves arthritis. Carol was not buying any of that, not just because she actually listened in science class, but because she didn’t have any spine injuries or arthritis, and was not looking forward to reversing menopause just in time to go through all of that again. But she did figure that the mud would be a good exfoliator if nothing else. So she lathered up. Then when Quincy saw Carol looking like a competitor on Survivor, she decided to get in on the action as well. I took photos. The two of them basked in the sun long enough for the mud to dry. Mark and Michelle raised one eyebrow each and rolled over on their beach towels. 

Now she's smiling.

Quincy gets in on the action.

Taking that as a hint, the girls washed off in the bay, and then the three of us who were not already horizontal walked down the beach in search of fun. We had all sorts of options like jet skis and paddle boats, but we opted for the “aquatic park” which was basically an inflatable American Ninja style obstacle course on the water. We paid for our participation bracelets and climbed aboard with the forty or so other takers of the moment, trying to see what we were made of. Apparently I am made of blubber, pudge, and a bit of paunch. That thing was tough. It tested your balance (only Quincy had any) on extremely slippery footing. It tested your strength in pulling your own weight up onto different elements with nothing much to grip. And it tested your agility with constantly moving targets as your landing pads. Again, Q could dabble, Carol and I were useless.

The juggernaut. It looked harmless from the beach.

People were biffing left and right. The burlier the dude, the more spectacular the fall. I couldn’t believe we didn’t need to sign a waiver. For example as to why, while I was climbing up to the top of a slide, a toddler would be toddling along directly beneath me. One ill-timed slip and the kid would be chevapi (see local delicacies/minced meat). We paid for half an hour of climbing around on this thing, but we were done before they even told us time was up. Not that they seemed to care if we stayed all day. Apparently nobody could. It wears you out. We were exhausted. But none of us had ever done anything like this before, so we gave it six thumbs up. You can’t really go wrong with water slides and trampolines. 

After we were beached out, we finished the drive to our apartment in Plitvice Jezera, the national park that I have been looking forward to all trip. This was the number one destination for me on a spreadsheet list of about a hundred destinations that we have covered on this trip. By all accounts, it was supposed to be fantastic. The night before, we spent about twenty minutes with our host, Marko, mapping out the ultimate route, to get the most out of our day. We set our alarms so that we could be the first ones into the park in the morning. We made sandwiches, and placed water bottles in the freezer, ready to be packed up and hauled off on what was going to be a five-star adventure. You know where this is going. What went wrong this time?

The mapped-out route that got us to every highlight of the park. Thank you Marko!

Nothing. Absolutely nothing went wrong. I had one of the best days of my life. Top twenty anyway. And I’ve had some pretty epic days. If the crowds could have been cut by a factor of ten, it would have been a top ten day. This place is simply awe-inspiring. I took 165 photos today. I just counted. My average on the trip is about forty on any given day. I am not one of those people who snaps four or five of the same shot, waiting to pick a favorite later on. If I do take more than one, I immediately pick my favorite and delete the rest. So that is 165 completely different nature shots, with nothing left to cull. Not a man-made subject in the bunch. Plenty of people, but those are only either selfies or shots of Carol with a wow-level background, or a tourist who wouldn’t get the hell out of my shot! Just kidding. There were so many people that it was impossible to take a photo of some things without having an accidental tourist or two in the frame. But that did very little to quell our spirits. Too much beauty.

Not gonna bother with captions. Everything here is from that one day in Plitvice National Park.

The waterfalls numbered in the thousands. No exaggeration. Dozens of them were international-level quality. It felt like we were back in Costa Rica. Only the water was so blue that it couldn't have been. It just had to be fake. Water is never that blue. The cliffs were majestic. The greenery was lush. The flowers were ostentatious. Even the birds seemed birdier, and the butterflies, more buttery. “Look at that!” “I can’t!” ”Why not?” “Because I can’t stop looking at this!” The word “beautiful” does not begin to describe even a small corner of Plitvice National Park. And although we didn’t see every corner, we definitely saw the top twenty thanks to our very thorough and thoughtful host, and apparently we saw at least 145 others. When finally someone does coin a word for the “wow-factor” of this place, that word will be rendered verboten by some religious outfit who feels it blasphemous. So I will stop attempting to use words and let some pictures do the talking. But know that my low-end cell phone camera does not do the scenery justice. I would blame my photography skills (lack thereof) but it would be impossible to frame a poor shot here. So I blame the camera.

Sweaty. But happy.

We did some pre-park sightseeing and then entered the park at 8:00, with enough time to catch the very first boat that would take us to the most popular spots first, so we could beat the crowds. Sadly, so did almost two hundred other people. So we waited in line and caught, barely, the second boat a half hour later. Then we winded our way through the masses and walked the boardwalks. Carol’s favorite part of the journey was that many of the staircase and ramped boardwalks were actually built right on top of rushing waterfalls. So you couldn’t see too much through the cracks, but you could hear the water rushing inches below your feet. My favorite part, and Carol’s close second, was the color of the water in most of the lakes. We’d never seen water so blue except for maybe a few spots in the Caribbean and Fiji. And it is impossible to compare a distant memory with what is staring you in the face, but I’d say this beat both of those spots as well. Again, the camera is insufficient to truly convey what we saw. Sorry.

And no, I didn't photoshop the color. That is the real deal.

We hiked twenty kilometers in all from 7:30 to 3:15. If we didn’t have to shuffle along because of crowds at some points, and if we didn’t have to stop every minute to snap another photo, we might have covered even more distance, as there were other paths that we chose to ignore. The weather cooperated, as it only got up to about 82°F. That sounds hot, but when you compare it to the 102°F we experienced in Split and in Krka national park, it was more than welcome. We did decide to brave the busiest boardwalk a second time, just to get our fill of the coolest spots. But the second time we went in the reverse direction, hoping to see things we hadn’t seen the first time. I’m not certain it was worth it, as we felt like salmon swimming upstream for maybe half an hour. The tour groups all take these walks in the same direction, to avoid what we did not. But the waterfalls were still epic even the second time around.

This is the view we came back for a second time.

Anyway, can you tell I liked Plitvice? Our lodging situation was perfect. With a stunning twenty minute walk to the least used entrance to the park, it was optimally located. Our host was very friendly. The top floor of the house was all ours with a separate kitchen just for us. The beds were comfy. The dinner they served us was excellent. Two nights just weren't enough. But we have to move on this morning. I refuse to budge until they physically kick me out at check out time. We fly home the day after tomorrow, so only one wrap-up post is left to come. I'll write that one when I'm home and have had some time to gather my thoughts about the whole trip. 

We definitely saved the best for last. Nice planning, Stevo.