Ah, nine hours on a ferry. We’re camped out in the bar area, which has padded chairs and couch-type seating, perfect for a little nap. The décor is straight out of the 70’s with dark greens and browns, fake wood paneling and the odor of three decades of smoking. Actually, smoking is still allowed in here so it smells even better. We’re on our way to Dubrovnik, where we will finally have four nights in the same location – no more repacking the bag for a brief spell and we can settle in a little and relax.
So far the trip has been great. Croatia is absolutely gorgeous! After my bleary-eyed bus ride the first day, I was dropped off on the side of the road near the Autocamp Korana. I walked down the road and asked the dour woman working the check-in desk where the cabanas were, as I needed to find my sister (my phone doesn’t work here, cheap POS that it is, so I couldn’t text or call her) and she asked me if I was going to sleep there. I knew that it was only a two-person cabin and one of us would be sleeping on the floor, so I didn’t want to get charged for it and lied to her that I was only visiting. Since she was so bitter, I didn’t even attempt to ask her which cabin my sister was in so I chose to wander aimlessly among the camp, passing tents, RVs (in Europe even the RVs are a reasonable size, not giant monstrosities like in the US) and people sitting out on picnic benches outside their cabanas. By this point I was totally delirious and my bag was getting heavier by the second, so I walked back to the reception and asked the guy at the check-out desk if he could look up my sister’s cabana. He was happy to oblige and didn’t try to charge me anything. So, I sat outside the cabin, taking in the breathtaking scenery – lush green mountains covered in pine and oak trees, small pink flowers on the hillside – until Kendra walked up and asked me if I was Shannon’s sister. After putting my bag in the cabin, we walked down the path to the little outdoor bar and grill, passing families speaking French, Italian, German and any number of other languages I couldn’t recognize. I think that’s what I love most about Europe, that wherever you go, you’ll be exposed to all sorts of languages and people and you can meet folks from all over the world. As multicultural as our nation of immigrants may be, it’s just not the same, even in some of the major cities and tourist destinations. We still expect everyone to speak English all the time and to blend in. And I find that very limiting.
Anyway, I digress. Shannon finally showed up after waiting for me at the park entrance (I was supposed to meet her there but the bus driver let me off at the campground and I didn’t know how far away the park was). After a hamburger of questionable meat origin, fries and a few Croatian beers, I was ready to crash.
Day three was spent at the park. I woke up bright and early so I could get there and beat the crowds. Unfortunately the bus from the campground to the park didn’t come until 9am and I was convinced that I could easily walk the 6km to the park in under an hour. I’m going to chalk that up to not being too familiar with the metric system and not realized that 6km is actually a pretty long trek, especially on an uphill road with no shoulder and steep drop offs. I could have hitchhiked, which is considerably safer to do here, but I every time I felt desperate enough to get up the nerve to do so, I’d be on a stretch of road where no car could possibly pull over. At one point I passed a little pull-out area and a car carrying a Croatian family stopped so the husband could take a piss on the side of the road. The wife spoke English so I asked her where the entrance to the park was.
“Prak?”
“Yes, the park, do you know how far it is to the park?”
“Back that way,” she said, pointing to the direction from which I’d just come.
“Ugg. Really?” How had I missed it? How idiotic am I?
“Yes, Prague, capital of Czech Republic. That way.”
“Uh, no, PARK, the entrance to Plitvice park.” Like I’m going to walk all the way to freakin’ Prague.
“Oh, I do not know. I’m not familiar with this area but I saw a sign that said 7km more.”
Oh dear god. SEVEN MORE KILOMETERS? What had I gotten myself into? Unfortunately with the kids, their car was pretty much already full, so I couldn’t ask them for a ride. Plus I was getting a don’t-ask-for-a-ride, tourist vibe from them. So I soldiered on, encouraging my legs to keep moving with a mantra of “go go go” and “left, left, left right left.” My feet were screaming in pain and my hips were crying for relief. I’ve been working out so much, why was 6km to brutal? Finally I sat down on a rock, sweat streaming down my body, near tears. I ate a few bites of the Luna bar I’d packed and tried to figure out what to do. I felt so desolate, alone, stupid. I looked at my phone to check the time: 8:50. In ten minutes I could have been catching the bus. I’d be fresh and resting for a morning of hiking around the park, but here I was, spent and sore. What was I thinking?? But what could I do? I got up and kept walking and just as I turned the corner, there it was! The park entrance sign. Suddenly I was filled with energy, my pace picked up and I happily trotted toward the path.
The sign looks crooked because I was about to fall over from joy.
There was still a bit of hike to get to the actual entrance, but at least I was marching along a path along the cliff overlooking the river and lakes and waterfalls in the distance and not on the side of the road with cars and trucks zooming past me within inches of hitting me. I could not have been happier. I was also still alone, which gave me hope that I really had beat the crowds…until I found my way to the actual park entrance. Holy mother it was packed! I looked down below to a colorful line of people weaving their way along the wooden bridges over the lakes. After buying my ticket, I set out to fight the crowds, but after the initial trek to the “big waterfall,” I managed to take routes that weren’t quite as crowded.
My sister had said that the lakes didn’t live up to her expectations, but she’s a little jaded from living amongst all the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. I was pretty impressed, though. The park is a series of lakes that start go from Upper to Lower, each one cascading down into the next deep crystal blue lake, punctuated by tall trees and waterfalls bursting out of the rocks. Because I was there so early, the weather was absolutely perfect, due to it being slightly overcast (translation: not hot). The water was perfectly clear and the lakes filled with fish that school all along the sides, so used to the humans that are forbidden to catch them that they don’t even flinch when throngs of tourists walk up and put their cameras right above the water.
I brought my tripod so I could manage a few self portraits, as well as getting the silky waterfall effect. Totally worth lugging that thing with me. You can hike the entire park, but there are also small ferries and trams to get you to certain points faster. As I sat on the ferry, looking out the side at the smooth blue water and the mountains drifting by, I was completely overcome with complete peace and calm. I realized how relaxing and peaceful it is to be in a place with such astounding natural beauty, how I felt that it’s almost all I need. Just the simplicity of being in a place that fills me with such tranquility feels so complete to me. Could I be happy someplace in the mountains, or would that eventually get old and I’d crave a metropolis again?
Self portrait #1:Yeah, so I'm not totally in focus, but then again,
I don't hate this picture.
To read how this river became a series of falling lakes, see the wiki.
My silky waterfall effect. Turns out the exact same photo is on the wiki page.
Crazy Eurocrowds!
I got about halfway through the lakes when I realized that not only was I physically beat, but I was almost an hour late to meet up with Shannon and Kendra, so I hopped on a tram back to the entrance. Soon after we grabbed a bus to Split, assuming foolishly that we were only facing a three hour ride. After about 30 minutes, the bus pulled into a restaurant for a half hour stop at a place with a penchant for disturbing taxidermy. Lots of stuffed bears, stuffed foxes playing poker, stuffed jackrabbits smoking pipes. After that stop, the bus proceeded to stop at every bumfuck town along the way, even pulling into random gas stations so the driver could chat up his bus driver friends. I’d assumed the buses didn’t have bathrooms, but there was a door by the back stairwell that we’d decided must be a little troll bathroom, but the door was locked, so perhaps not. So most of the ride I needed to pee. After the first couple of hours, the a/c broke, so we were at the back of the bus sweating our asses off. Literally. I go t major butt rash from sitting in my own sweat for so long. After a viciously painful seven hours, we finally rolled into Split at sunset. As I tried to regain a bit of humanity after the long day, I felt really bad for Melissa, who would have to deal with an even longer bus ride from Zagreb after a day of flying.
We fought our way through the crowds of grannies at the bus station offering to rent us rooms (there is seriously something slightly disturbing about being mobbed by a crowd of little old ladies) and after arguing with a cab driver about his outrageous fare, decided we could find it on foot. I got even more concerned about Mel meeting up with us after winding our way through the narrow, dark streets of Old Town Split, looking for the unmarked “hostel” I’d reserved. We were looking for it when we ran into a couple of women who recognized us as the three American women expected to arrive. So they took us back through a dimly lit path to backyard area crowded with garden gnomes and piles of laundry, where there was a crowd of men and young children drinking at a table, looking at us like we were aliens. It was very obviously NOT a hostel, but someone’s home. There was some confusion and eventually a woman came out with a computer print out with my name on it. She kept saying, “Three people?” And I’d look at Shannon and Kendra and answer, “Yes, three. There are three of us.” And then there’d be some confused conversations among the adults in Croatian and then she’s ask me again if it was just three. And then she said something about not enough space and I was getting really annoyed.
“I don’t understand what all the confusion is about.”
“But you are just three? Someone else already came. Your friend?”
“Melissa?” The hell? Mel’s plane wasn’t supposed to get in until 6pm. We’d joked that our bus was so slow Mel would probably beat us to Split. She must have gotten one hell of an express bus!
[Real time update: 8am. We just stopped in Stari Grad and this lounge got lousy with tourists. Swarms of them streaming in. It was so quiet before. I totally should have napped while I had the chance. For some reason I woke up at 3am and tossed around til my alarm went off at 5am. I am hurting. Seven more hours of ferry ride left.]
Turns out that Mel’s flight in Cologne was cancelled so she talked them into putting her on a direct flight to Split. Unfortunately her bags didn’t make it, but she was there! Quite the hellish journey, but hey, could’ve been worse! No long, miserable bus ride.
Nedo, the guy who runs the “hostel” took us to the room, which was located a few blocks over in another building, upstairs in what was clearly an attic. The place was a hole and the bathroom was just a toilet and a cordoned off corner with a handheld showerhead and no sink. Awesome. Once we got to the room, Nedo sat his big ass down and eventually broached the subject of charging us for the extra person (the original plan was to sneak Mel in later, but she would have never found us anyway). After overcharging Kendra, he kept sitting there. Awwkward. Buy-bye owner guy. He was very concerned about Mel’s missing bag and kept asking about it. Then he insisted that we come over to his place to drink Schnapp’s with him. We had to promise we would just to get rid of him.
After showering off the stench of 7 hour bus ride, we took off to the center of town to find food and nightlife. The food was both disappointing (my plate of gnocchi) and amazing (Shannon & Kendra’s bacon pizza, which I totally finished off) and the nightlife started off a little lacking. What I failed to notice in the guidebook is that the bars shut down by 1am in Old Town. Also, the pickins were pretty slim at the Old Town bars. We were pretty much stuck with an old local and a potentially lesbian woman with very saggy, unfettered breasts and a fanny pack who we nicknamed The Rezbian (origin in one of Kendra’s stories about someone mispronouncing “lesbian.”) Rezbian and friend popped up at the last Old Town bar we hit and were really excited about partying with us, which we were not down with.
We’d heard there was a better scene in another part of town so we set off walking in a direction I wasn’t too sure about still I heard bass thumping in the distance. We followed the sound of party and eventually got to the beach, where we could clearly see what appeared to be a several story complex of bars overlooking the water. We walked up to what I assumed was the gay bar - I mean, it had male go-go dancers, but it turned out to just be a Euro thing) and out of the blue popped up The Rezbian in all her blue horizontal striped shirt, fanny pack and saggy titted glory. Was she following us or were we just on the Rezbian bar circuit? We managed to dodge her before she latched on to us. Kendra was pretty sure Rezbian was vibing her earlier and wasn’t up to dealing with her and soon Rezbian seemed to move on to the rest of us. Middle aged, leather skinned lesbian was not how we pictured our night on the town.
The drinks at the bar were overpriced, but the dancing was good and we snagged a table right on the balcony. The eye candy was decent and before long we had a succession of strange boys dropping by our table to try to hit on us, buy us drinks and then finally face the rejection and clear out the chair for the next dorky hopeful. Pretty fun, actually. I even ended up with a very intense, albeit ruggedly attractive Croatian stalker type that I spent the rest of the night trying to shake. Seriously, dude, how do you not understand when you’ve been directly told, “Hey, nothing is going to happen here so you should probably move along. I’m just here to be with my sister and my friends and have fun with them, not start up some one-night romance with some Eurostrange. Plus, you know, boyfriend back home.”
We closed out the bar and there at the back table was Rezbian. Just no dodging that one. The night ended up with my first skinny dip in the Adriatic at sunrise. Shannon later commented that she fully expected The Rezbian to pop up in the water next to us snorkel gear and fanny pack and all, and say, “Oh, hi! Let’s party!” Alas, no more Rezbian.
Eventually we trekked back to the room and passed out around 6:30-7ish. My deep sleep was shortly interrupted by Big Pervy Nedo shouting up the stairs. Then HE CAME UP INTO OUR ROOM and started shouting at us to wake up, demanding to know if we were leaving or staying one more night. He was rambling something about “hungry” and “five people come.” I have no idea how he was going to fit five people in that tiny little pit, but I’m sure he was going to overcharge for it. He said, “thirty minutes, you go. 10am.” Oh, and it was eight freakin’ thirty.
I tried to rouse the other three and explain our miserable situation, dizzy from lack of sleep and alcohol haze. Shortly before 9am Nedo came back and continued to gruffly insist we wake up and get the eff out, even SLAPPING MEL ON THE ASS. She was pissed yelled at him. Then he dragged some poor Hungarian woman up to the room to show her the accommodations. Shannon yelled “Don’t stay here!” right in front of Nedo.
By that time we were ready to get the hell away from that horrid situation, still in shock at the inappropriateness of it all. Who expects to rent a room and have the owner come crashing in at 8am? I guess he was pretty pissed we blew off his Schnapp’s offer.
Mel is NOT HAPPY about being hungover and homeless... ...and also sexually molested by a smelly, overweight Croatian man.
We planted ourselves at an outdoor café on the promenade and decided what to do while trying to swallow some bread and jam. Shannon and I set out to find some grannies to rent another place.
[Real time update: 8:40am. I’m listening to my workout mix and yes, I have some crappy poppy ear candy in it. Shut up. I need the upbeat rhythm for the working out, ‘kay? Four minutes with Madonna and JT is playing and all I can think is the unfairness of the video for this song. It’s got Madonna’s old botoxed ass prancing around in her lingerie and absolutely no half-naked JT. Just wrong.]
After looking a couple of apartments and sweating out some alcohol, we finally settled on a musty apartment near the promenade and harbor, which smelled of what I can only best describe as old person medicine + old lady vagina. Crash. Wake up, venture out for food, crash some more, internet café, photo walk, greasy burger and fries followed by gelato on the promenade and then more crashing. Wake up at the asscrack and Kendra, who slept on the fold-out couch in the living room told us that she’d fallen asleep to the Olympics, but apparently after that was over, the hardcore porn started up. Now that’s my kind of public television! We dragged ass to the harbor and found our ferry. And this pretty much brings us up to date. I’m going to grab some fresh air and watch the islands drift by and probably nap.
Slutty bride sighting in outside the cathedral inside the Diocletian's Palace area of Split. Seriously, I can see her labia from here.
Split promenade
Split rooftops/harbor
Real time update: 5:31pm
Arrival in Dubrovnik! Already the town has a better vibe, but oh lord! That throng of grannies trying to sell us rooms when we got off the ferry was intense. By the end of the ferry ride, I was near puking from not eating all day and being on a boat for 9 hours. I could have had overpriced food at the ferry restaurant, but I refused and I could not possibly deal with another ham and cheese sandwich or some of that crusty-ass white bread with gouda. So when the cab pulled up our 16th Century villa, I wanted to cry when we walked in. It's so pretty here! The gardens are amazing and the apartment is so nice, clean and full of amenities. We have a washing machine! TV/DVD! Air conditioning (and not the Split version of a/c, which is a fan)! Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, clean towels and sheets! Dishes of candy! Six pack of cold beer waiting for us when we arrived! Our own private rooftop patio! Wireless internet! I'm in heaven. And our hostess could not be nicer. I am in love with Dubrovnik and this place, the Villa Bruna.
1 comentários:
Thanks for the updates. I feel like I'm there ... smelly Croatian and all. Can't wait to see all the pics on flickr.
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