On to Pula, Croatia August 1

We have a complicated travel day planned for today.  We are going to have to take a bus at 11 am for a half hour ride to Brbinj to catch the noon ferry back to Zadar to catch the 4 pm catamaran to Pula.  It all times out great.  So we are all packed up and our landlord offers to help us go to the bus stop.  And so he did….
                                       with a wheelbarrow
Being as paranoid as I am, I wanted to be at the bus stop at 11:30, and we were.  So we waited in the shade of a bush (did I mention it is amazingly hot, which is why the tourists come here to swim) for 1/2 an hour.  When 11 o’clock passed with no bus, we were, of course, concerned.  The man who lives across the road from our bus stop had just come home on his moped.  He did not approach us, so I asked him if the bus was often late.  He spoke English a little, and he told us that the bus stopped there but not today.  NOT TODAY !!!!!!  What….because it had to go get gas at the other end of “long island”.  Now what….if we waited until tomorrow to get the bus we would be able to get to Zadar without any problem, but the boat to Puna does not run on Thursdays, which is tomorrow.  He is a very clever man.  He waited until the full extent of our problem had sunk in before he offered to take us to Brbinj.  He would only charge us 5 times the bus fare.  What choice did we have. 
What we find very interesting is that the owner of a tourist room would not know the bus schedule.  Anyway, we made it to the ferry
     and made our connection to the catamaran to Pula.

                                                                                         another sunset

And a full moon.   No this is not the Coliseum in Rome,  it is the Arena in Pula.  Nice greeting after a long day, which was not over yet.

Since we have not had internet since we left Zadar, and there it was intermittent, we do not have a room here in Pula.  We were intending to look for a visitor’s center and try to find one.  When we exited the boat, there was an old lady standing with a sign in multiple languages, saying she had a double room to rent.  It was after 11pm by then, so we followed her to her apartment.  It was rather scary walking down dark alleys to her house.  We stayed in her tiny, hot room with a shared bath for one night.