Blog-aria: Tales of a Semester in Blagoevgrad: The Coast: Croatia Part 2

Since I can't bear to keep you all in further suspense, here's the second installment of my spring break saga. When I left off last time, we had finally caught a bus to Split. Split is the second biggest city in Croatia, and was actually my favorite city that we visited. Our bus got in around 8 pm after a long day of snow and hardship. We had nowhere to stay, since the original plan had been to go to Zadar, where we had booked a hostel. So, the first order of business was to find lodging, since night had already fallen.

An entrance to Diocletian's palace

My guidebook had one hostel recommended, so we went there first but there was a sign indicating that the hostel was closed for the season. Next we tried a bed and breakfast from the book that was open, but the cheapest room was 50 euro a night, which was a little more than we wanted to pay. This is where Kyle and I had a major breakdown in communication: both of us were so tired that we were willing to pay a little extra for one night just to not being walking around with all of our stuff, but we also both thought that the other person wanted to find somewhere cheaper. So I, equipped with a map the clerk at the bed and breakfast gave us, led us on a tortuous trek around the city looking at a total of ten hostels. The whole time I was annoyed at Kyle for not just letting us stay at the bed and breakfast, but apparently he was thinking the same thing about me. Every hostel we went to was closed for the season; both Dubrovnik and Split are considerable tourist destinations during the high season, but at this time of the year a lot of accommodations are closed.

A typical street in Split

Finally, we went back to the bed and breakfast and decided to just stay there. If nothing else, though, our excursion gave us a nice nighttime preview of the city. The next day we got a chance to explore without carrying all of our possessions around with us. Split is the site of Diocletian's summer palace, and it is around the ruins of this palace that the rest of the old city has grown. It's full of tiny polished marble streets that suddenly burst open into sunny plazas. While difficult to navigate with a map, after a little bit of wandering it is easy to get used to. There's something about it, though, that no matter how familiar the route, every walk feels like you've been thrust into a beautiful stone labyrinth from which you emerge, blinking, at the sea's edge.

Riva in Split

Aside from Diocletian's palace, the other main landmark is an enormous pedestrian promenade along the harbor, called Riva. It's a street lined with palm trees and cafes with benches right along the Adriatic Sea. If I ever lived in Split, I would literally sit and have a coffee every day and just stare at the sea. The Adriatic is remarkably clear, and I can't imagine ever getting tired of the smell of salt water (maybe it's due to my generally landlocked Midwest existence, but I love the sea).

Sorry if that last paragraph was a little gushy; I just really liked Split. The first day there, we explored and took pictures. Each of the four facades of the palace is interesting, and west of the palace the old part of the city maintains the labyrinth-like qualities of the palace. The palace itself is interesting because it feels much more alive than other ruins; there are cafes, restaurants, shops, and homes actually in the palace itself, which is primarily made of polished marble and white limestone. The center is a peristyle with a cathedral that used to be Diocletian's mausoleum.

Riva again

Amidst our exploration of the city, we made time to try to find cheaper accommodations. Since hostels were a bust, we next tried private accommodation. We looked a couple of apartments/rooms for rent online (everywhere in Croatia where you go, there are signs that say SOBE/ROOMS/ZIMMER). We were looking for one of them and were about to give up when a tall middle-aged man approached us and asked if we needed accommodation. Now, all of the guidebooks say not to book rooms from people on the street, but the tourist bureau was closed since it was Sunday, so we decided to check it out. It turns out that he was offering one of the places we had been looking for from our online search. He gave us a nice room with our own bathroom and little entry room for cheaper than the hotel, so we took it.

Later that day we had a delicious dinner at a restaurant near the harbor. I ordered pašticada, a regional speciality that I knew about from a project I had to do for my BCS class. It has meat and dumplings, sort of. Kyle had fried squid and both were really good. It was the first of many good meals along the coast.

Me on top of Marjan Hill

The next day, we decided to climb Marjan Hill, a hill just to the west of the old part of the city. It was a considerable hike up to the top, but the view was beautiful. The weather was nice, too. It wasn't as sunny as the day before, which made the climb easier, but it was still mild out. We found a little chapel on the way to the top, and passed a sign for the zoo but decided not to go. We took our time getting to the top, stopping to take pictures and climb around.

Afterwards, we decided to split up (no pun intended, teeheehee) and take a break from each other's company. Kyle wanted to go shopping, but I went and got a coffee along the waterfront (of course). I took my time, and enjoyed watching a little kid near me luring pigeons with bread then chasing after them and trying to kick them (for those about to accuse me of being cruel and unfeeling, he never even came close; those pigeons were some fast little ninja breed). After my coffee, I intended to go shopping too, but instead found myself wandering. I put the maps away and just walked around and enjoyed the solitude.

Overlooking a plaza in Split

That night for dinner, we went to a little konoba (sort of like a tavern) in the palace. When we walked in, it was just a bunch of old men sitting at the bar singing folk songs very loudly in Croatian. The owner, standing behind the bar apologized and said that they were just drunk and happy. One of them, who actually had an amazing baritone voice, shouted to us that it was a family restaurant. He pointed out the grandpa, an even older man sitting at a table in the corner with a glass of wine; the dad, the owner who had first talked to us; and the son, our waiter. Then they continued to sing together for most of the duration of our meal. I had some sort of grilled fish and Kyle had a seafood platter that had all sorts of creatures with claws and faces and shells and whatnot. Somewhere near the middle of the meal, two women came in and we thought that some other patrons had arrived. However, they too were family members; from what I could tell, one was the wife of the owner and the other was the wife of the singing uncle. They brought dogs in with them and tied their leashes to some of the table legs, but the dogs wandered as far around the tiny restaurant as their tethers would allow. It was a very entertaining meal, to say the least. The food was excellent and the atmosphere was even better.

Me, by the sea

The next day, we stopped by the market before taking a ferry to Brač, a nearby island. We actually went to the market every day we were there, but I forgot to mention it until now. One day I bought an antique pocket copy of the New Testament in Croatian as a present for my grandpa (shh Duwa, don't tell him. I want it to be a surprise). The market had everything from antiques to nuts to clothes to homemade wines, but the real star was the fresh produce. On the way to the ferry, we got blood oranges (Ellen!) that were delicious.

The ferry took about 45 minutes and then we got to Brač. Then we took a bus from Supetar, the city where the ferry docks, to Bol, on the other side of the island. Brač is the biggest island along the Dalmatian coast and is the third largest island in the Adriatic, so it took a little while. By the time we got to Bol, it was starting to drizzle. We walked along a seaside path to get to the island's biggest attraction, Zlatni Rat (Golden Cape) beach. It's actually rocks, not sand, which is really cool (and meant that I've been carrying rocks around in my purse for a week). It started to rain kind of hard (foreshadowing), but it was still really beautiful. After the bus back, we had a coffee before catching the ferry back to Split. The ferry was even cooler on the way back because the sea was sort of stormy.

Brač

The next day we caught a midday bus to Dubrovnik, which was a little tricky (although, in comparison to our previous transportation miscues, it was nothing). It was just raining kind of hard that day, and carrying all of our stuff around the city while sheets of rain poured down on us was difficult. In my attempts to keep my backpack under the maximum weight, I had sacrificed my umbrella and I was too stubborn to buy another. So I wrapped my shawl around my head and shuffled through the streets. Kyle ran through the rain, but I was not about to take my chances with the slick wet stones. There were no major casualties, though, save for my serbo-croatian dictionary, which now looks considerably more damaged. My digital camera stopped working properly after our island adventure the day before. Specifically, every picture I tried to take was really light (almost white) with fuzzy stripes. I just decided to buy a disposable camera for Dubrovnik and deal with the digital later.

The bus ride from Split to Dubrovnik was the most beautiful bus ride of my life. The entire route is basically a two-lane highway on a cliff overlooking the sea. I am going to be completely spoiled when I go back to the states and take a bus through eastern Ohio after the scenery of the Dalmatian coast. We got to Dubrovnik around dusk (the bus took a little longer because of a traffic jam).

Dubrovnik

We went into the old city after dropping our stuff off and again got a nocturnal sneak preview of the city's sights. The old city in Dubrovnik is surrounded by walls, but more on that later. We mainly just walked around in search of a restaurant that wasn't too expensive. We found one right on the old harbor and got squid ink risotto (another regional specialty) and octopus salad. Both were really good; the squid ink risotto was really cool because it's basically jet-black (it even turns your tongue sort of black).

Walking the walls in Dubrovnik

In the morning, we took all of our stuff to the other hostel we were staying at (I let Kyle book the hostels for Dubrovnik and we ended up staying in one for 1 night and another one for the next night). After we found it and got rid of our backpacks, we walked back to the old city. First, a little history lesson: Dubrovnik was a powerful port city for several centuries, serving as a major competitor to the Venetian empire that achieved independence as a city-state as early as the 14th century. It's fortified by stone walls that are over 3 km in length (as if I can actually mentally conceptualize a kilometer...). We climbed up to walk the walls by the Pile gate, one of the entrances to the old city. Walking forward, we could see the Adriatic out in front of us. After turning the corner, you walk alongside the sea. After that, the next section of wall sits above the old harbor. The last quarter of the wall looks out over the whole old city with the sea beyond it. The views are absolutely stunning, and it is really neat to walk along them. You sort of feel like you're on top of the city. It was nice that it wasn't high tourism season, because I don't think that it would be as cool if it were crowded, but the weather was still nice.

Stradun

After the walls, we explored the actual old town. It has some really beautiful churches, including the Church of St. Blaise (Sveti Vlaho). Sveti Vlaho is all over Dubrovnik, and he is considered by people from the area to be sort of a patron saint of the city. A common portrayal of Sveti Vlaho shows him holding the city of Dubrovnik in his arms, protecting it. The main street in the old city is called Stradun and is a giant pedestrian walkway paved in polished stone. Tiny side streets wind off of the main walkway, hiding plazas, shops, museums or seafood restaurants around each corner.

After a day of sightseeing, Kyle and I went to an internet cafe to work on our travel plans (aka look up bus schedules to get back to Bulgaria). We decided to split up for more alone time and I did some souvenir shopping for gifts and wandered through the old town. I bought a little present for myself, a little pocket croatian-english dictionary. We met back up for dinner at a mexican restaurant that was gloriously spicy, then went to a bar near our hostel and heard a live rock band. They were pretty good, and sang some in Croatian and some in English. I even recognized one of the Croatian songs from my first language class when we listened to music every week.

Dubrovnik from outside the walls

The next day, we went back to the old city for more exploring and souvenir-buying/seafood eating before we caught a bus at 3. We had to go from Dubrovnik to Montenegro, then take an overnight bus through Montenegro and Kosovo to Macedonia. From Skopje, Macedonia we went took another bus to Sofia and lastly to Blagoevgrad. We got back here at like 4:30 pm the next day, amounting for more than 24 hours of travel. I'll talk more another time about bus travel in the Balkans and border crossings.

So, for some closing thoughts?

Split

Cathedral in Split

George Bernard Shaw said once that "if you want to see heaven on earth, come to Dubrovnik."As far as beauty goes, Dubrovnik does not disappoint. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I'm not sure I quite agree with G.B. Shaw, though. Of all of the cities we visited in Croatia, Split was actually my favorite. It captures that same feeling of light and stone that Dubrovnik is famous for, but it feels more alive somehow. Although the influence of tourism as an important industry is visible in both cities, Split feels like its heart beats whether or not tourists are there. It seems more down-to-earth and even the sea is somehow just more accessible. Now, all of these are intangible personal impressions, so feel free to think that I'm full of...it. But to me, Dubrovnik is a city to visit, absolutely worth seeing. But I could envision myself actually living in Split.

Fingers crossed...maybe someday I will.