We arrived in Croatia, called our apartment guy and he came to pick us up. Here begins a theme: Croatians are gruff, sometimes they warm up to lovably gruff, sometimes not. He was lovably gruff, he cheerfully informed us that his daughter studies in the US, she plays basketball for New Jersey Tech. Ha.
Split is a cute town, although when we got there we had some trouble grasping it, we realized hours later (when we suddenly liked it much more) that apparently the cruise ships leave around 6. Here begins a theme. Croatia is PLAGUED by cruise ships. We’ve been in two towns, Split and Dubruvnik which are both mainly walled old cities with populations around 20,000, and a bit outside the walls. However, each has no fewer than 2, sometimes more like 4 large scale cruise ships a day, even now, at the outside edge of tourist season. This means that tiny cities swell, primarily with tours with yelling guides, numbered stickers and ladies wandering off to take pictures of… nothing.
So, once the cruise ships peaced out, Split was lovely. We spent two days enjoying, mucking about, figuring out the oddities (the guidebook said that Croatia has a great ‘Café culture’ by which they mean there are HUNDREDS of café/bars that serve beer, wine, spirits and coffee and NO FOOD. There is an occasional restaurant, but they are sort of few and far between and generally expensive. Your option generally for breakfast and lunch is to stop at a bakery or pizza by the slice place and take it to a café where you can get a drink, weird? YUP). My favorite? When we spent 2 dollars to climb the bell tower of the cathedral. What was at the top? 3 tourists taking pictures and 2 Croatian 20-somethings smoking an ENORMOUS blunt (for those of you not from California, a blunt is essentially a cigar-sized mix of marijuana and tobacco, for the two of them it looked like enough to make a mid-sized horse high for 2 days). It was a genius plan, clearly they would never know anyone up there and it’s dead in the middle of town, and with a nice view. Smart for potheads, really, and what is a tourist going to do or care about it? Genius. Our last day it raaaained, so we took shelter in a café, enjoyed the day off and uploaded about 400 pictures to our flickr account (thanks free Split wireless!).
The following morning in a storm that can only be described as wrathful, we hopped on a bus to Dubrovnik hoping for better weather. Little did we know, to get to Dubrovnik you have to drive through like a half hour of Bosnia! Random right? They check your passports and everything. We got out both times hoping for a Bosnia souvenir, but apparently no one has jumped on that market yet…
For the most part the weather was better (although still sort of gloomy with a chance of crazy pants rain for the better part of our time there), what wasn’t better? Cruiseshippers. I almost punched a couple…. No joke, the tours are just so invasive in small places. We were in a teeny tiny museum and twice a tour guide came up with her little number sign, set up riiiiight next to my face and beckoned in 40+ people to talk about something only vaguely related to the museum at all. There were definite highlights, the city walls were lovely, the Franciscan monastery has the oldest public pharmacy in Europe (cool, they still run one too), we also went to a war photo museum which was interesting and not just about the Yugoslavian conflicts, it put things in good context. There was lovely seafood and we met some great people (Thanks for hanging out Nanci & Steve!), but Croatia only made an okay in our book.
Next time we do it, we would rent a car and go to smaller places (well, small places that tours don’t go), although we did end up spending 6 hours in Zagreb and decided that was more our kind of town. It felt homey and European and grand in a nice Austrio-hungarian way. Oh, also? For all of you who put like 3 extra packets in when you make hot chocolate? Head to the former Yugoslavian nations, their hot chocolate ranges somewhere from extra packet to hot chocolate pudding. Wowza.
Tune in soon for a much cheerier Slovenia post, and lots of wrap up bits before we get back in a few days!
