Croatia

The sun-drenched shores of Croatia seem very far away on this rainy day in Strasbourg, where I sit and munch on tartelettes à la fraise in between attempts to navigate the French laundry system. (They have managed to insert a multi-level bureaucracy even there, which you must admit is impressive.) But I am looking though my photos and remembering that brilliant week on the coast…

Lejla and her friend Minche came with Maddie and I to the coast, so we got a proper Bosnian parent send-off in Sarajevo. Lejla’s adorable mother and both of Minche’s parents took us to the bus station, kissed us all multiple times, shoved huge bags of sandwiches into our hands so we actually had enough food for eight people, and waved and waved and waved as the bus drove away. It was very typical and very lovely. Then, during a six-hour bus ride, we watched the mountains flash by and slowly transform into limestone cliffs as we got closer and closer to the coast.

I did NOT get a stamp at the border upon entering Croatia. I was quite put out. Thankfully, I received an exit stamp a week later in Split, so I was not travelling completely under the radar.

We arrived in Tučepi in the early afternoon (unfortunately on the wrong end, but fortunately Tučepi is tiny). Undeniably, it is a pure beach town; most people never wear anything more than a swimsuit in the summer, and the residents make enough money during that period to survive through the completely deserted colder months. Tučepi is on the Makarska Riviera, just one town south from Makarska itself and about halfway between Split and Dubrovnik, and the scenery is as fantastic as you can imagine.

Having previously spent vacations in Tučepi and knowing the proper way to do it, Lejla and Minche had reserved an apartment at the Hotel Nela for the four of us for six nights. At this point, I must say that travelling in Croatia with Bosnians was immensely helpful. Croatian and Bosnian are basically the same language just with different pronunciations, so Lejla and Minche took care of all the business while Maddie and I said “hvala” (“thank you”) a lot.

We checked in, claimed beds, cleaned off the dust of the road, and proceeded straight to the beach. Maddie and I found child-size beach towels printed with maps of Croatia for 50 kuna each, and once that and a gelato were taken care of, we found Lejla and Minche and luxuriated in the magnificence of the Croatian coast. I am a huge fan. The cliffs tower over all the minute beach villages strung along the coast, often catching clouds on their tips. (If a cloud ever dares to venture near that sunny seashore, that is.) It was my first experience with white pebble beaches, and I now know they are vastly superior to sand. Because the coastline is gradual and dotted with huge islands, the waves are calm and the water is relatively shallow.

We spent a lot of time on that beach, either lounging in the sun amongst all the sun-worshippers and naked children, floating out in the water, or reading in the shade of the trees. (Even after a summer of traveling and being the darkest I have ever been in my life, I was the whitest person on the entire coast. I have come to accept this fact.) It was very sun-filled and hazy and restful. We taught Minche English slang and tried to learn Bosnian words and Maddie spent a solid afternoon reading a French book (Ce que Dominique n’a pas su) with me sentence by sentence. We alternated between naps and dips in the water and laughing at the hordes of small children.

In the evenings, we wrestled with the apartment’s gas stove, which had to be lit with a lighter and pampered very respectfully, and then would go out later on to Tučepi’s one bar. The advantage of having only one bar is that there is no difficulty deciding where to go and also that all the other young people in town automatically go there as well. This was ideal for sustained people-watching purposes because you can see who talks to whom multiple nights in a row. The disadvantage of a single bar, of course, is that you cannot easily avoid those guys who tried to talk to you the night before…We were heartless and selective and had a grand old time.

And Maddie and I alternated each day on Tučepi’s beach with an adventure.

For our first adventure, we stayed local and tried to go to Makarska. After a solid hour of standing by the highway and being denied by the first two (admittedly, entirely full) taxi buses to go by, we finally nabbed a driver and were dropped off in the center of Makarska. (Just in time; we nearly started hitchhiking.) Larger than Tučepi, Makarska had a well-preserved old town we combed for an English bookstore so that Maddie did not have to read French anymore. We eventually found one on the harbor, and while Maddie pondered the selection, I surreptitiously examined a guidebook and discovered that Makarska houses an impressive shell museum in the old monastery. Of course we went, and it was astounding. Not that I’ve ever visited many shell museums, but I think I will never see such a thorough and vast collection. Literally, the museum had shells from every region in the world, and Maddie and I spent an hour in its three little rooms, marveling and trying to choose our favorites.

We decided to walk back along the cliffs to Tučepi, a hike of approximately 5 kilometers, continually astounding views, and deafening cicadas. Just before the path started the descent to Tučepi, we stumbled upon an immense swath of wild blackberry patches and proceeded to indulge in a half-hour wild blackberry orgy. Fingers stained purple, we resolved to leave a few and to return to harvest them on our final day. (They were delicious.)

Our second adventure was Dubrovnik. Here, I must reference George Bernard Shaw because his assertion is entirely appropriate: “Those who seek paradise on Earth should come to Dubrovnik and find it.”

I loved Dubrovnik. It was fascinating and so distinctive and now ranks (along with Heidelberg and Florence) on my list of European Cities with Ultimate Charm. We were only there for a day, but I could have spent a week there quite happily. The old town was a city unlike any I’d ever seen before—it is built on a tall and rocky peninsula that curves out into the sea, and its formidable defensive walls repelled every single attack until the city surrendered to the French to put an end to a Russian siege in the 1800s. Most major European cities have knocked their fortification walls down and used the space for parks or boulevards, but because it exists on a rocky peninsula and there was therefore really no point, Dubrovnik never did. Thank goodness, because the walls are amazing. I endeavored to come up with a method to overtake the city not involving airplanes, and I think the only successful strategy would be a very long war of attrition.

The old town itself, inside the walls, is all bright white stone, red tiles, and narrow crisscrossing streets except for the Stradun, the wide boulevard which runs through the center of the city. I am certain it looked nearly the same 500 years ago. We wandered, we visited the Rector’s Palace to learn a bit of city history, and we ate really fantastic pizza. We spent two hours walking the full circumference of the walls and could have taken much longer if we had not had a bus to catch…

Our final adventure took place after we bid Lejla and Minche farewell in Makarska’s bus station (where they saw us off like our very own set of loving Bosnian parents) and arrived in Split, from which we intended to take an evening ferry to Ancona, Italy. I have always wanted to go to Split purely because of its name.

Maddie and I had been advised to visit Diocletian’s Palace, so we decided that would be our goal for the afternoon. After stashing our backpacks in lockers at the harbor, we tried to find the palace. I had glimpsed a tall tower behind the very ancient and tall buildings that filled the entire street next to the harbor and thought that the tower might be the palace. We ducked into a tourist office to ask directions, and the lady smiled at me and said that those old buildings with ice cream and furniture shops at their bases were Diocletian’s Palace—its south wall, that is.

Apparently Diocletian’s Palace was absolutely colossal—416,000 square feet according to what I just read on the internet—but after it was abandoned by the Romans, it was slowly taken over by the citizens of Split. Over the past 17 centuries, the palace metamorphosed from a perfectly symmetrical Roman palace to an illogical rabbit warren of streets and apartments built on other apartments and ruins of Roman temples. Examining almost any wall, you can see filled-in windows or doors, patched-up sections, or the remains of chimneys—a palimpsest of overlaid centuries. I thought it was excellent—it was as if the city itself had taken over the palace in a slow but steady victory.

We boarded our ferry (the good ship Panama) at 7 pm, ready to sail across the Adriatic. We staked out airplane seats right away, having learned from my spring break Patras-Bari experience. Because I remember the gypsy invasion at Igoumenitsa so vividly (you would too, had you spent the night sleeping under a lounge table for four hours), my heart stopped when I saw a woman wearing an “I Heart Roma” t-shirt until I realized that, in this case, “Roma” almost certainly referred to Rome the city rather than Roma the people! Having never tasted martinis but feeling the moment was propitious for an attempt, Maddie and I ordered two white ones on the rocks, stood by the rail, and toasted Croatia as the sun set and Split disappeared over the horizon.

Pictures.