This post is brought to you by the letter Z…and all the other consonants
Zadar, Croatia.
Our last few days in Italy were pretty uneventful. It kept raining. I got over my cold with the help of lots of naps. We ate a lot of pizza and salads and drank yummy wine. It was cold, but we still tried different gelato combinations (blackberry and lemon was my favorite). We never went to a museum or did anything cultural. It was a nice vacation from our vacation.
We ended up getting very cheap train tickets to Ancona (port town on the Italian coast where you get ferries to Croatia and Greece). They were only 14 euros each for the 5 hour trip and compared to the 25 euros each for the 2 hour ride from Milan to Florence, that was a great deal. We left at around ten in the morning. We had a nice walk from our guest house (it was called Losanna and was near the synagogue. That whole area of town was really nice and quiet with a wonderful daily market and a cute little park nearby) to the train station, stopping to buy sandwiches on the way. The closer we got to the coast the clearer the skies got. By the time we reached the sea it was sunny and warm. We walked from the train station to the ferry. It was a short walk but pretty confusing. Eventually someone pointed us in the right direction. We might have been lost forever among the docks and different buildings. We easily bought tickets (55 euros each for the cheapest beds) and had a five hour wait before we could board our boat (the Marko Polo) at eight. They had a shuttle bus from the ticket office to the boats and a man told us we could leave our bags there. We got on the shuttle bus and it did a loop around and then stopped back at the ticket office where we started. We giggled and looked confused and finally let the driver know where we wanted to go. He said, yes, that’s where he goes next. We were the only ones on the bus and I wonder if he was messing with us or if the loop served any purpose. We made it to our stop but couldn’t find the place to leave our bags, so we just sat in a waiting room reading and relaxing.
We bought our wedding rings while we were in Florence on the gold bridge (they’re so pretty!) and we needed to get a form stamped by customs in order to not have to pay the taxes on the rings. So we decided to spend some time figuring out where that was. We found it with some help and had more help in the office where another patron spoke English and translated for us. We were wearing our rings because we didn’t want to leave them in our bags for fear that they might get snatched and it turns out that you have to show the items at customs and they have to be new and in their boxes. The customs guy let it go since they were wedding rings and special, but if I would’ve known I could’ve just gotten the boxes out of my bag and showed them to him like that. Funny rule, I think. It makes sense for consumables, but not really for jewelry. But it worked out okay and I mailed the form, so that’s a big relief.
We walked around Ancona trying to find a place to eat. We eventually sat down at a nice place and ordered salads and drinks and munched for the hour before they started serving dinner. I got gnocchi with a saffron cream sauce, prosciutto, and asparagus. It was incredibly rich and absolutely delicious. Stephen had penne with a cream sauce, little mushrooms, and sausage. I coveted his a little bit since mine was so heavy, but I was happy in the end with my meal. Ancona was surprisingly pretty. Not what I’d expect from a port town.
When we boarded the ship at eight I started getting a little concerned. It was a big ship and my only visual reference to big passenger ships is the Titanic and that’s not really what you want to start thinking about when getting on a boat for an overnight trip. We had to go in through the butt of the ship where they were also driving on big trucks. We were sort of left to our own devices once we got inside. We found our cabin but then realized we needed to figure out how to get our key. When we found the check in desk we got two tickets for breakfast and were upgraded for free to a nicer private cabin with our own bathroom. It was so fun! Such a nice little surprise when we didn’t know what to expect. The cabin was very much like the sleeping cars on trains (except for the bathroom). We had two hours to sit before we were on the move and we were both tired from getting up early to get the train so we quickly went to sleep. Steve did okay with the rocking. He ended up taking a Dramamine just in case and I guess he woke up a few times in the night when the water got rough. I slept through it all on the top bunk. I’m just glad I didn’t fall out!
We woke up at six, had our little breakfast and were docked in Zadar at seven. Finding a room was a little stressful. We’re meeting Bozidar from Linden Tree tomorrow in Gospic, but we decided that after the train and ferry ride of the day before it was better to stay in Zadar and go to Gospic in the morning then try to figure that out today. We wrote down the names and addresses of guest houses in Zadar but we couldn’t find any of them! The old part of town where we are is on a little peninsula and it’s just beautiful with marble streets and old buildings and churches. But if the guest houses were where they were supposed to be they weren’t marked, which isn’t surprising since the place we ended up getting (with the very nice help of the tourist office lady who called a woman to come get us) isn’t marked either. Sobe apparently means room, and if you go up the steps of the building we’re in then there’s a sign that says Sobe above the lady’s door. But we would never think to just randomly walk up the steps of apartment buildings!
The room is a little expensive (at 200 krona it’s about $40) and not much, but we were tired and desperate and not willing to try to look for something else. And in the end it’s about the same price as our room in Florence and we’re only staying one night. We took naps and showers and went back out into the world to find lunch. But I’ve decided that they have coffee lunches in Croatia because it was incredibly difficult to find food and all the people were crowded in coffee shops. Liquid lunches. But we found a sandwich place eventually and ate tasty chicken sandwiches with mystery juice (cranberry? red plum? something new?) by the water while watching little Croatian children happily throwing rocks at each other and playing tag. Then we wandered back to a pastry place we saw and had the most delicious chocolate filled doughnut I’ve ever eaten. It was heaven. Thick but not cakey and the chocolate volcanoed out a little hole in the top as a promise of yummy things to come.
So far we’re just two little mute kids wandering around the city. A lot of people seem to speak English, though, but we’re just doing lots of pointing and smiling. We’ll have to figure out this language thing soon. I’m sure they can help us at Linden Tree. The most striking thing so far about Croatia is the incredible use of consonants. Z is so big in their vocabulary that it’s taken the place of the y on the keyboard and is making tzping verz difficult. There’s actually a city named something like zrblik. We saw a poster for it on the ferry. Now how do you pronounce that? I’m convinced that Croatia is trying to make up for Italy’s amazing overuse of vowels. We played a game in Florence trying to find words that didn’t end in a vowel. It was difficult.
We’re off to enjoy the sun and walk around town. I’m excited about checking out the sea organ and maybe eating another doughnut. I hope the next two months of working includes lots of physical labor or I might not fit into my dress! Girdle here I come!
Side note: I couldn’t get my camera fixed. We walked all the way across Florence to go to the Panasonic repair shop and they said they had to special order the part and they couldn’t fix it before we were leaving. Sad. They also looked into Panasonic shops in Croatia and there aren’t any, apparently. Hopefully with some help I can find someone who can fix it while we’re here. Otherwise I might ship it back to the States to be fixed and sent back to me since we’ll be here two months. I can’t really take pictures with it now anyway, so it won’t matter if it’s here broken or there being repaired. Such a bummer.
Tags: croatia, Ferry from Ancona Italy to Zadar Croatia
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