Right now we are on a catamaran on the way from Zadar, Croatia to Pula, Croatia. We have a 5 hour ride ahead of us, so I thought I would get a post together for you.
We are doing fine and feeling good, but it has been very hot here (as it has been most of our trip) and we have just spent 2 days without air conditioning at night. We have been on an island in the Adriatic, looking at rocky coasts that are called beaches. I don’t mean beaches made of rocks, I mean huge rocks, where waves break, that are called beaches. Anyway, the water is crystal clear and cool and there are occasional breezes, so the daytime has been lovely. The nights, though, have been hot with no air movement, not in our room anyway, so we slept with wet towels on us to keep us cooler. Needless to say, 2 nights were enough.
So for now, I just want to give you some insight into what our days are like. No pictures, just the ones you see in your mind.
Most of the hotels or hostels that we have stayed at have a buffet breakfast included in the cost of the room. Most of them have been pretty much the same. There is coffee and tea, rolls and pastries, eggs (almost always scrambled, but occasionally fried), one or two kinds of sausage (more like little hot dogs than what we would call sausage, except for Germany where they were sausage), sliced cheese and sliced processed meat and yogurt (either liquid, like a drink, or solid like we are used to), cereal and fruit. Not too shabby. We usually have some eggs, yogurt and cereal with fruit with our coffee. If we need to, we make a sandwich of bread and cheese and meat to take with us for lunch. So our day begins with a good breakfast, which is usually served between 6 and 10 am. So whether we are going out or staying in, we always make it to breakfast.
When we are in a town, after breakfast we head out. Where? Most of the time we have a general direction only. Hopefully the hotel has given us a map and the internet has given us some idea of what there is to see in this town. So off we go with our water bottles and fruit and cameras (and of course batteries). What we find is always a surprise, which is the best part. Sometimes it is finding nice old architecture, sometimes ruins or wonderfully interesting and friendly people, or parks or water or mountains or…..
Anyway, you’ve seen the pictures of what we have found. It seems most days we walk for 5-6 hours. Then we find a place for dinner and make our way back to our hotel. In the evening, depending on whether we are staying in that town or moving on, we would plan where we would like to go back to tomorrow or where we are heading to next.
Most of the places we stay at have internet. That is a requirement. Our requirements have changed as the trip progressed. We now require air conditioning, internet and a lift (elevator to you). We don’t always get what we want (who does). So most evenings, I get on the internet and check our emails, try to figure out where we want to go to next, how to get there (train schedules) and try to find a hotel.
On our travel days, we go to breakfast after packing up, then head off for the train. Some days that means getting a taxi, but most days it means hauling our gear, which include 2 backpacks, 2 pull duffel bags and, our new acquisition, a pull shopping basket on wheels, kind of like what we used to use in the olden days in New York. We sometimes walk a mile to the train station. When we get there we check the schedule and try to figure out where our train is leaving from, since the internet site that gives us the train schedules does not have that info. Then depending on the size of the station, we have to haul our stuff up and down stairs to get to the platform (or peron) we need. We are getting very good at hauling and wait until you see our muscles.
Then we sit. Depending on where we are going, we can sit for 6-8 hours. Thank goodness it is a train and not a plane, because we actually can get up and move about and even eat. Many trains have tables on them so you can use the computer or write. We have met some wonderful people on our train trips.
The scary part of train travel is not knowing when to get off, either to change trains or at the end of our trip. We try to write down the stops before ours, but we have found that some stations only have one sign with its name on it and sometimes you cannot see it until you leave the station…..what if it was your stop. Helpful locals have been god sent. So far we have only gotten on one wrong train and that worked out OK, since we got off at the next station and waited for our correct train to come. whew!.
So, then we get to our next destination and we go to our hotel. It is amazing how tiring train or boat travel is. Maybe it is the lack of something to do. When we have someone to talk to, the trip goes much faster and is less tiring. Finding people who speak English has been interesting. Some people speak well and others try. It is very hard work to understand someone who is trying very hard to communicate, but doesn’t speak any English or doesn’t speak it very well. Most of the time it has been worth the effort.
Some days we try to stop and just rest. What usually happens is we get to do our chores, you know, laundry (which is always an adventure….in the beginning we were able to go to Laundromats and wash our clothes ourselves, but they don’t exist in eastern Europe, so we have had to find other means….in some places we paid $50 to have our clothes cleaned and in another town we had our laundry washed and folded for us for $5, so we never know what doing laundry means), bank reconciliations (which are VERY important since we have to make sure we have enough money to continue), bookkeeping and always answering emails. Then there is blogging. Each blog takes about 3 hours to put together and sometimes, depending on the reliability of the internet at the hotel, up to an hour to post. Yes, we hope it is worth it to you, because it is to us.
We still haven’t actually found a place and time to just “stop”, yet…..we are hoping to do so soon. When we arrive at Pula it will be 9pm and this time, since we did not have internet on the island we stayed on, we do not have a hotel lined up, we will start looking for a place to sleep. More on that after the fact.
We told you about breakfast, so a little about lunch and dinner. Depending on where we are, we try to eat what the locals eat. That meant in Germany and Poland we had a lot of sausage. In Romania and Bulgaria we had chicken and pork cutlets and polenta…..always polenta. Here in Croatia, we are eating lots of calamari and other sea food. We figured out it is better to order one meal and split it. We are still sampling each country’s beers. We have no idea how many beers we have tasted. (it is always cheaper than the water at the restaurant). Then, since we split the meal, we can continue our survey of eastern European gelato. So far the best dark chocolate gelato has been at one place in Zadar, and they give you a nice sized scoop. Duane just samples any flavor that looks appealing. It is hard to choose, since each stand has up to 36 flavors, gorgeously displayed. The cheapest gelato we found was in Pirot, Serbia……about 10 cents a scoop…OK the scoops were small, but you could get 3 flavors for 30 cents….and we did. Each scoop in Zadar was about $ 1.25.
So far we have traveled by car, train, ship, “train” like in a zoo, with wheels, taxi, private car, rental car, catamaran, ferry and by foot. Our luggage traveled by wheel barrow, we didn’t. We plan on adding a river boat to this list later this month.
