As I stepped off the shuttle bus in Zadar old town I realised that I had done exactly zero research about Croatia. I like to be able to say ‘Hello, Goodbye, Thanks, No Thanks, Please’ and ‘Can you direct me to the nearest toilet’ in the local language but I had nothing. We didn’t even have any of the local currency. The kuna if you were wondering, and not the zloty (Polish) which is the first thing my brain latched onto and refused to let go of. Quite frankly they should now change the name just to help me out.
Zadar had a very familiar look and feel
to it. Despite having done no reading the Venetian influence was everywhere as it is all over the Med. You could quite easily mistake Zadar for almost any other port town we’ve been to in the last 5 years (with a couple of notable exceptions). It doesn’t make it any less picturesque but it’s definitely time to start going to destinations outside of southern Europe.
Like the UK there’s a bit of a ‘rundown’ feel to it. I then reminded myself that Croatia had fought a war of independence not that long ago and prior to that it had been part of Cold War era Yugoslavia so it’s probably doing quite good. Not sure what our excuse is. The rain shower probably didn’t help and made the stone pavements lethal. If it was the UK the boomer generation would be up in arms demanding it was all ripped up and some nice tarmac laid down in its place to ease the passage of their oversized mobility scooters.
We had a walk around, got a painting, a plate and had a coffee. There were quite a few pastry shops so we popped into one of those and because I couldn’t be bothered to read the descriptions (the writing was quite small) I just randomly started pointing at things until the bag was full and then we made our way to a bench to see what we had got.
While sat there we saw a lady who had been at the wine tasting the day before on her own. We’d also seen her eating alone in the restaurant yesterday evening. Obviously a solo traveler we’ve now invented a new game called “Spinster, Widower or Divorcee”. I’m not sure either of us will be brave (or drunk) enough to find out who the winner is.
It was a pity I didn’t pay attention to the pastries because the last one I popped in my mouth was amazing and I have no idea what it was. Short of repeating the whole random process again and hoping to get lucky I’ll never find out what it was. That should be some sort of parable ‘The Plonker and the Pastry’.
In the evening we booked ourselves into Beech Cove restaurant to have the giant kebab ‘espetada’ we’d had on our last cruise. It tasted even better without covid. Lyn was particularly delighted with the wheel of desserts.
Trieste tomorrow.
P.S. I’m pretty sure ‘Wee Jimmy Krankie’ is onboard… No I haven’t been drinking (today) and yes I will try and get a picture.
留言