Saturday 21st August

 

21-05-04 Day 49

It was gone midnight before I had washed my T-shirt, washed my body, packed my bag, and fallen thankfully into bed, and it was a mere 5 hours later when my new and hated early alarm pulled me from my restful slumber. We struggled down to the port, buying provisions enroute, where we boarded our ship and took up position on a prime spot on the port deck, which is where you find me now. Although a flat calm in the adriatic today, I am finding it as hard to write as any train ride due to a wind of about force 8 equivalent that, if I don't end up red from sun burn, threatens to leave me blue and purple from its constant buffeting. Yet I do not complain as it has created the rare and much cherished situation (circumstances in which I can sit and enjoy the sunshine without getting hot and bothered. Loads of the flying sundacks and a good ration of seven pillows, interspersed with regular sun tan lotion sessions (nursed precisely by my much hated 'really skip' star-watch) have kept me amused, while we sit and watch the Croatian adriatic coast slide past only 300 metres in front of us.

So now would seem a fitting time to express my opinion on the Croatian countryside. It is much like Split: you expect perfection but are surprisingly (and usually secretly) disappointed. After the weeks of lush central Europe, this barren dry mediterranean scrubland is stark and parched on the eyes. Even the densely wooded bits are so captivating dark green to the shimmering of the sea that they seem all the more wasteland-ish.

The two mountains do not rise majestically, but loom imposingly. The towns do not nestle cutely (as they by right should), but seem to cling to a parched and barren inhospitality, wholly unattractive. Perhaps I am being a stranger too harsh - official, it is a PERFECT stay, and the countless yachts bring tears to these eyes from the spotless and serene way they glide between the islands. I suppose its just notwhat I expected, and possibly not my description. 'stunning' - and I was never one for liking something because I was told to!

I've never felt angry at somebody for waking me up before but at 5am nothing could have been more painful. I could have quite happily stayed there forever. And I was having a nice dream. The walk to the ferry seemed an age but it was broken up by many shops at barrieros and fruit stalls and a mini market. I couldn't believe they were up so early - there's a lot of people who work very hard in Split. It also connected to our memories on the fact that England has been taken over by all-in-one supermarkets and there's not enough cake bakeries and markets anymore. Is this good or bad for society? Discuss. We did not find an answer for this but we did agree that Split market is the poor so far and it was comforting to see a bit of tradition and people who have made successful 'home-grown' businesses. By the time we reached the ferry I was suffering from up-too-early syndrome. We managed to get prime position seats on the port side of top deck so that we could watch the sun rise over Split so that you couldn't see the skyscrapers, which was a nice change. And we also got to follow the Dalmatian coastline down to Dubrovnik. The coast was all pretty much the same - dry and rocky with green back (area trees) up the side and small clumps of houses. The islands were pretty much the same and we made a couple of stops - one at Hvar and one on Korcula which looked really nice (and a boat toured passed us with 2 women playing The Wild Rover on a bagpipe and accordion-very bizarre...) But the highlight of the journey was the vista of wide open blue sea and endless blue skies. We became very envious of the many sailing boats which were ploughing on into the distance until nothing surrounded them but bright blue, glittering sea. I spent most of the journey with the wind trying to rip the hair off my head and braving into the sun with no sun cream so I now have a very tanned forehead (and a sunglasses line). At about 1pm it became a tad windy and we retreated inside to find it had got a bit louicer still when we got on. We found a space on the floor and had an hours kip. We thought we'd be arriving in Dubrovnik at the old town but we weren't and so missed out on all the views you see that advertise the city. We stepped into a mass of old ladies waving pieces of paper at us (making us feel like professors in a way) and in our tiredness we grabbed the first one who passed us on to a young english-speaking girl who offered us a double room with shared (but at the time we implied private) bathroom and kitchen, for 811 a night for soon a we heard the 'K' wait our minds turned to fresh vegetables and cheap living and the fact it was a 10 min bus ride from the old town didn't matter to Ana made us (while a bus (£50p) and then walked us along a very exposed highway, down some dodgy steps and eventually to our room, which is very spacious. No blankets but the sheet has sufficed. The shower is annoying. And then she told us two guys were sleepingin the kitchen so we mustn't cook there late and if he wanted to put anything in the fridge we had to pass it to them. Interesting. The big supermarket just so happened to be at the bottom of the steps (which in fact took us down to where we got off the ferry anyway so we could have walked there). And on the way to centrum we became acquainted with the local tortoise which seems to have got itself stuck on a pathway and can't go up or down because of the huge steps (like the cranky, nerdy steps down in between the houses - it felt like we were one of the locals but I think if I have to go down/or up them one more time I might collapse. Konsum didn't offer us very nice fresh fruit (but we're a bit worried we're got too used to fresh market) but it came out cheaper than we thought at £3 a each meal for a meals. And so we rushed back to stuff our faces with a vegetable stres hype thing which was very tasty and felt like all g the veg we would have eaten in the last 2 weeks. The other 4 people turned up and we all switched stories about how we'd seen tied to by the girl (ie they'd been told nobody would use the latiszen). They were very nice (from Holland) and slightly crazy (climbing mountains at 8 in the morning). They had only intended for about a month and didn't seem to have much of a plan or to be using their visas wisely which made me feel rather chuffed. I'm taking the icons of people's faces me more time we travel for as they can't believe how many places we've been to or me actually it was 60 Euros a meal, was 60 Euros a meal because thecially attracties!I'm an to reasoning that I'm hungry so I shall finishes this entry by saying we were tired and went to bad. And now I'll go and slave over a hot stove...