ZADAR - Croatia (Thur 25 June)

We left the cigarette pit in Pula for Zadar today. It was a nice drive down via the coast road (about a six hour drive). The noticeable thing about the countryside here is how green it is, trees everywhere. It seemed very quiet and isolated. Despite being only a few kms away, you could not mistake this place for Italy. As we progressed down through the National Park, the hills turned to stone with clumps of trees sprinkled over them like icing sugar. We stopped at a couple of places on the way. Little fishing villages with the most amazing coloured water, exactly as you imagine it should be.

We got to Zadar with a bit of time to spare and so we had a quick look around the old city to orient ourselves, with a promise to come back tomorrow.

We headed towards our accommodation, and this is where it all got a bit complicated. The address that we had been given, didn’t exist. We knew it was 10km out of town, but which direction? After asking directions of a number of people, interpreting the results, and heading in the wrong direction several times, we finally found ourselves in Sukosan. Sukosan is a little village that has no street names and no house numbers and houses are located by their inhabitant’s names (of which we didn’t have). No wonder no one knew where it was. But somehow we got there. It seems that everyone around here rents out their spare rooms to supplement their incomes. The one that we are staying in is more that adequate, although the ‘bathroom’ looks like it inhabits what was previously the wardrobe. But we do have hot water.

After settling in we went for a walk. There is no such thing as a manicured, or even a mown lawn. Every available space around their houses are filled with vegetable gardens (right up to the wall of the house). And fig trees everywhere, with the fruit just ripening nicely. I relived my childhood habit of relieving the overhanging boundary trees of a few fruit to go with breakfast.

It was nice to see that people around here seem live in their own houses and cultivate their own gardens. You see them in the evenings digging their potatoes and picking their fruit. There seems a very nice small town atmosphere here.