RestlessNatives.net NativeGuide to
CROATIA
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We travelled to Croatia in June 2002, "on our way" from Hong Kong to Sydney the LONG way. Our big "we're homeless" trip started in Hong Kong and included a week in Hanoi, a couple of stops in the USA, about three weeks in Italy, and about two weeks in Croatia, before finally landing us in Sydney. Whew. Much fun was had.
Dalmatia
Croatia takes more time to explore than we imagined. Our travels were limited to Dalmatia, a beautiful region of mountainous coast and numerous islands that separates Bosnia-Herzegovina from the Adriatic Sea. (And yes, we did see some Dalmatian dogs there).
The local language is virtually identical to Serbian/Bosnian (though the Serbs use a Cyrillic alphabet to write their version) but they've been separated out for political reasons. The only thing that stuck in our heads was zdravo, which according to the guidebook means something like "hello", although frankly we pretty much never heard it used. Oh, and hvala, meaning "thank you", which we did hear a few times - kind of amusing when a vendor presents your purchase with what sounds a lot like "voila!" The language here seems like it would be very hard to learn, as there are no points of commonality the way there are in Romance or Germanic languages. To us it sounds like the language that bees would speak if they could talk, lots of "zbszrdzvzbdsz" - not unpleasant, just strange to our ears. Incidentally, some Croatian words on this page are missing diacritical marks (e.g., Moreska has a curvy bit over the "s" so you know to pronounce it "sh"); sorry, but we don't know how to insert those marks.
Getting there
So we're in Venice and want to go to Croatia. Well, finding a travel agency willing to help us proved impossible, so we took matters into our own hands. Cue a morning train trip to Ancona via Bologna, an overpriced taxi ride, and a few hours wait at the ferry terminal. By that night we were on a ferry to Split.
We didn't get out to see any sights in Ancona, but our impression is that there really isn't much reason to visit except to catch the ferry. Lonely Planet seems to concur. And many of the people waiting around the ferry terminal with us were highly creepy Croatian truck driver guys, so we don't recommend spending more time there than necessary either.
The ferry itself runs overnight, about 9 or 10 hours, so we paid for a cabin and got a good night's sleep. Even managed a free upgrade to an outside cabin since the ferry was nowhere near capacity passenger-wise (though they packed a truly astounding number of semis and other vehicles into the lower decks). We got really screwed on cabin assignment on the way back - put WAY belowdecks in the bowels of the ship - so it evens out we suppose.
Split
Lonely Planet can't say enough good things about this city. We have no idea why. Diocletian's Palace is of course worth seeing, but aside from that we found the place dull and the people rude (and this was NOT the case anywhere else in Croatia). Plus it rained on us the whole time and our hotel swindled us.
So, Diocletian's Palace. A World Heritage Site more than 1700 years old, it embodies an important chunk of European history. Essentially it is Emperor Diocletian's summer house, and its fortifications and the conspicuous consumption of its inhabitants formed the early nucleus of Split (still known to Italians as Spalato). The palace district is a sort of "old town", and its walls encircle remnants of the ancient palace's living quarters, barracks, temples, and more. The pantheistic temples were converted to Christian churches in later times, which makes for an interesting overlay of styles. Of particular interest to us was the basement of the palace. There's a main corridor that houses some souvenir shops and provides a handy entrance to the palace area, and a larger area of halls to each side which after many years of neglect is being opened to the public. The vaulted ceilings and stone columns of the chilly basement storerooms transported us to the past far better than the ruins above ground, maybe because (at least during our visit) the side passages were nearly devoid of tourists, modernity, hucksters, and noise.
The other thing that caught our attention in Split was a large statue of the town's patron saint, sculpted by Croatia's most famous sculptor. It is an artful, eye-catching statue anyway, but the intriguing bit is that (at least to those of us who grew up reading fantasy novels) it is a perfect depiction of a wizard casting a spell. We call it Gandalf (a/k/a Gregorius of Nin), and we weren't the only ones. A bit of trivia: it is considered good luck to rub Gandalf's right big toe, and the constant attention from passers-by keeps that toe (and only that toe) shining like polished brass.
Trogir
Trogir is a town an hour's bus ride north of Split. It took us much longer to meander all the way across Split from our hotel to the bus station, lugging heavy packs, in the pouring rain.
Trogir was a step up from Split, and we started to feel better about Croatia. A nice, cozy, well-run, small hotel. An attractive waterfront area with loads of good restaurants that weren't absurdly expensive. And the local sights: the old town and the local fortress. By the time you finish reading this page, you may be sick of the words "old town", because that's the main tourism draw in a lot of Croatian towns, but for us each one held its own appeal (but, yes, we have to admit that we suffered "cathedral fatigue" after a few weeks in Europe). Trogir's is very well-preserved and retains the feel of a medieval town, with narrow alleys zigzagging among stone homes, shops, old churches (with outstanding sculptural works), the town hall, and of course the city walls. The seemingly random zigzag of the streets is intentional, meant to complicate matters for any invading force that tried to conquer or loot the town.
Lonely Planet says the local fortress looks just the way a medieval fortress ought to, and we can't disagree. A great tower topped by battlements dominates Trogir's defenses. We just wish it had been open to visitors.
Did we mention the good food? Everywhere in Croatia, both the local dishes (grilled meats and seafood, and ragout-type things, mainly) and the Italian food (there's an argument to be made that Croatia has better Italian cooking than Italy does) were tasty. There are also several sorts of Croatian wine that ain't half bad. We were even able to continue having the bread-and-pecorino lunches that we got hooked on in Italy, because there was a local cheese that made a fine stand-in.
One other interesting encounter in Trogir - meeting Zeljko Uremovic, a painter in what we think is called a "naive religious" style. We like his work. There's a link at the bottom of this page to a gallery of his stuff (and you can get more info from the "presse" link on that page, but the site is just Google-translated from German, so some of it is nonsense.) Yes, we did buy a small painting (couldn't afford the one we liked best, but the one we got is good too - a surreal take on the Last Supper).
Drvenik
Our guidebook mentioned some barely-inhabited islands nearby, talked about them as a great day trip from Trogir, and used words like "beach". Well, we spent a day out there and decided it was all just a practical joke (ain't no steenkin' beach, for instance). But in the end we decided to just enjoy it as a quiet day away from everything.
The farming methods in the harsher bits of Croatia have to be seen to be believed. It says volumes about the persistence and determination of these people that anyone grows anything in places like Drvenik. The rocky soil is, well, pretty much just rocks. It has to be broken up into smaller rocks, and over the course of God-only-knows-how-many years, they end up with a handful of dirt in which to grow an olive tree. What would, elsewhere, be fields or orchards are, here, a series of little patches of dirt lined with rough stone walls. Cubicles for trees.
We spent the day following farming tracks around this little island, seeing less than a handful of people all day (the population is something like 60, and half of them were probably at work in Trogir). At some point we optimistically tried our luck at the local restaurant. This was basically someone's house, which we suspect is usually only open in the evenings (despite the hours posted on the gate). There was near zero English spoken by the lady who runs the place, and Croatian (unlike Italian) can't be faked at all by Spanglish speakers, but we managed to get ourselves fed with (an unnecesssarily huge portion of) the rustic stew/bread/meat that she apparently had on hand for some of the local laborers, who came in while we were there. Cool in a way, at least we felt like we were a few steps off the beaten track for a change. Oh, and the local felines immediately pegged us as easy marks and spent lunchtime begging for scraps.
After a few tense minutes of thinking we might have missed it, we caught the (only) ferry back to Trogir that evening.
Korcula
Possibly the best part of our trip to Croatia, Korcula (pronounced "Kor'-chew-la") is a large mountainous island separated by a narrow channel from the Peljesac peninsula which juts out from the mainland (see the satellite photo link at bottom of page for orientation). It's full of scenic overlooks, olive orchards, vineyards, winding roads and dirt tracks, little villages and farms, the occasional beach, and the obligatory medieval town center. There were even some friendly local cats (including one who managed to be under Deb's chair at almost every single restaurant we ate at), which made Deb happy since she'd been pining for our cat Piccolo, who was serving a quarantine sentence in Australia at the time.
It took the better part of a day to get from Trogir to Korcula town by bus, ferry, and taxi (the ferry drops you at the far end of the island from the town, which is a pain but does result in a scenic drive to town). It being off-season, we got a decent deal at one of the good(ish) hotels near the harbor. Our room had a nice view of the town and was only a few minutes away by foot.
Most of our time on Korcula was spent walking. First, we walked around the old town, with its battlements, churches, shops, galleries, restaurants, etc. There's a local tourist trap that we didn't visit, which claims to be Marco Polo's childhood home (there's a good argument to be made that he was born in Croatia, and the house was owned by a Polo family for hundreds of years, but the sources we've seen suggest it's unlikely to really be Marco's birthplace - the dates don't quite work for one thing).
One evening we got lucky and caught a performance of the Moreska ("Mor-esh'-ka") sword dance, which was being put on in town for the benefit of a large German tour group that was making its way down the coast by private boats. Mareska tells the story of a princess who is kidnapped by an evil guy and rescued by a good guy. Evil prince and good prince both have soldiers with them, and the dance consists mainly of mock swordfighting, the two groups wheeling around one another, their iron knives rhythmically clashing together and throwing off sparks. Korcula is the only place this old traditional dance is still performed, but it is actually Spanish in origin. A good show, and something of a bonus for us since they normally don't perform it in the off-season. Incidentally, it is easy to see this dance as martial training - aerobics, weapon handling, group precision, etc.
Later, we took a long stroll (a few kilometers each way) down the road to the next town, Lumbarda, which has a little beach once you get past the village and the vineyards. There's even some sand, quite a rarity in Croatia, where most "beaches" are composed of pebbles at best, usually stones, and occasionally just big sharp rocks.
On another day, we took a bus to Pupnat, a tiny village near the middle of the island and spent a few hours walking back along completely empty dirt tracks that generally followed the ridgeline through the local orchards, vineyards, and scrub. The area feels very isolated and peaceful. Towards the center of the island is actually where the first settlements were, because they were less visible and more easily defensible from marauding raiders.
We also took a short ferry ride across to Orebic on the mainland, hiking partway up the mountain to see the sweeping views from the monastery/church above the town. More pebble beaches on this side of the channel.
We were sad to leave Korcula (although Deb was just as happy not to suffer any more "Count Korcula mwahahaha"-type humor from George), but eventually we hopped a bus to Dubrovnik. This bus ride makes "scary" look appealing. Sitting in a big, tall tour bus, we rode along the narrow winding road hewn into the side of the coastal cliffs. Since we were going south, our bus was driving on the side closest to the water, and we couldn't see even a hint of road or shoulder as we peered downward, just a precipitous drop to certain death if a tire should go off the edge for a second.
Dubrovnik
The jewel of Croatia, this is possibly the most beautiful city we've seen. Its old town makes the ones in Korcula and Trogir look like scale models. There are more than 2 kilometers of massive city walls, studded with watchtowers and gatehouses, and further defended by two forbidding fortresses that sit outside the city walls. If we recall correctly, these defenses have never been breached (though they couldn't stop artillery from devastating the old city during the recent three-way conflicts in the former Yugoslavia). It's most impressive.
Inside the walls, the basic layout and major buildings are the same as they have been for hundreds of years. Churches, a monastery, the town hall, the town plaza, the fortresses, and the city walls themselves are among the main attractions. The walk around the walls is not to be missed. You'll see plenty of interesting statuary and architecture just meandering around town, and good restaurants and shops are everywhere. Some of the artwork in the cathedrals is well worth seeing, and the monastery's collection of reliquaries and miscellaneous treasures is intriguing too (incidentally, keeping a dead guy's head in a display box strikes us as pretty bizarre regardless of whether you consider him a saint). On a different artistic note, Star Wars Episode 5 was released during our stay in Dubrovnik, so we saw it on opening night in the local theater. Strange to watch a sci-fi flick in a building that's more than 500 years old (and with Croatian subtitles no less). It was similarly weird to visit the local aquarium, which is housed in a cavernous old granary(?) beneath the city walls. And speaking of fish, we came across a feral cat colony here. Lots of cute kittens frolicking just inside the fence around an old church.
The old town center is the best part of Dubrovnik, but we got out to see a couple of other sights. There's an island just offshore that is a popular daytrip for locals, and a peninsula north of the city, both of which have some nice parkland, ok beaches, and good seaviews. Not bad but not that special either (and we didn't really take full advantage by snorkeling/kayaking/etc.).
Our accomodation in Dubrovnik was a welcome change from the hotel in Korcula. In every good-sized town we went to in Croatia, local ladies (and occasionally their husbands) meet the buses to angle for tourists who need a place to stay. They swoop down as soon as the doors open and spirit travellers away to their b&b's (usually without the breakfast though). We got a decent room and a snack of yummy cherries, and were all squared away in less time than it would've taken to even figure out where the local hotels were.
Hvar
On the way back to Split, we decided we could squeeze in a couple more days in Croatia, and where better than Hvar, a popular day-trip destination for .... umm ... Split-ites? (Splitonians? Splitters? Splitsiders? Splittists!)
It's an island much like Korcula, except that this time the ferry docked at the landward end. The main town was still at the other end of the island though. Go figure. Anyway, after a long but scenic taxi ride to the town, and a few minutes securing a room in a local house, we were ready to explore.
The town is small but has some interesting nooks and crannies, like the abandoned church with a cool statue in the courtyard, and the sundial in front of another chapel, and the narrow alleys that hide incredibly good fish restaurants (not to mention our favorite - the "Slow Food Restaurant"). There's also the Fortress Espanjol (i.e., the Spanish Fortress) that sits on a ridge high above the town, and served as a refuge in times of attack. The worst thing that ever befell the fortress wasn't an attack but the massive explosion that resulted when the ammo/powder stores were ignited by lightning. The place has been restored and now includes a small museum and a restaurant alongside old cannons, battlements, and a grim little dungeon. It's a bit of a walk up the hill from town, but there are amusing little fort symbols to show you the way, and you get a good look at some of the local flora (we had no idea there were cacti in Croatia).
Back to Split
We spent another day in Split while waiting for the ferry. The weather was better and we had some fun exploring more of the Diocletian's Palace area, but basically Split still sucks compared to the rest of Dalmatia (unless, possibly, you're a hip young party person). The ferry back to Ancona was uneventful aside from our quarrels with the staff over our cabin location.
And so we made our way in Adriatic darkness back to Italy.
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