Life Eaters

Our last two days were spent in Split, Croatia’s second largest city next to Zagreb. Split is a much larger and busier town. There is an old town like many of the other places we visited, but much larger and surrounded with more parts of their city that had places to visit.

We did the self tour of Diocletian’s palace, the main historical tourist draw to this city. It was alright, but even though it was larger and perhaps of more historical importance than some other placed we visited, it was a little underwhelming. Maybe we’ve just become desensitized to centuries old palaces?

Our apartment was about a ten minute walk to the city center, and run by a very nice, young Croatian guy named Petar. Petar offered us some wine and some of his family’s homemade grappa and cherry liquor when he checked us in. His shining moment though was when we were about to start our 20 minute walk to Bacvice beach in the hot mid-day sun, and he magically appeared out of nowhere and offered us a ride. Also, little known fact, Petar designs high-tech spear guns that will soon be featured in the US in Spearing Magazine (have you renewed your subscription?). Kindof interesting. While he was driving us to the beach there was a guy crossing the street and he was all like “hey, that’s my partner, and he’s carrying my speargun, and sure enough, there was a guy carrying a spear-gun about the size of a rifle made out of mahogany on the sidewalk.

We spent the afternoon at the beach, and then did a search for a little taste of home that we all missed…Mexican food. We found just one place in Split that served it, a place only a few blocks off the beach named Bistro Toč. The food was mediocre, but switching up the food was priceless. For some strange reason, it’s impossible to get Mexican food anywhere in europe, and I would have killed somebody for a burrito by this time. The greatest thing of all though was that I actually found two local craft beers in the restaurants beverage cooler! A porter and a pale ale made in Zagreb. Yes!

One the walk home we discovered a side of Split that we had not see yet. It was just a couple hours after dark and the small wine bars and restaurants in the northeast corner of old town were spilling out into the alleys with locals and tourists alike drinking, snacking and chatting. The atmosphere had changed to be more boisterous the nightlife was very lively. We were exhausted from our day in the sun so the best we could do was to make a mental note to ourselves to come back the next night and check things out a little more.

The market in Split was pretty standard, but definitely worth a walk-through if you’re into that sort of thing. My favorite part though was just outside of the north gate. One of the streets was lined with vendor tables heaped high with antiques. There were mounds of silver, steel and bronze items, sailing tools like sextants and marine compasses, old Russian and Yugoslavian war medals, Croatian folk music records, army helmets, coins, tools, knick-knacks, do-dads and thingamajigs. We pondered the horde of junk/treasures for a while and fond a few items that had our names on them. Nearby stood a tall, bronze statue of Gregory of Nin. I don’t really know who this dude was, but the statue stood about 50 feet tall, and it’s said that if you rub his big toe, you are granted good fortune and you will someday return to Split. Not wanting to take any chances, we all rubbed his toe, and Alyssa gave her baby bump a good rub too.

Our last evening consisted of some low-key card playing at our apartment, and continuing on out at a few restaurant tables. We re-visited the lively neighborhood we had discovered the night before and found three great stops perfect for foodies. First was Uje Oil Bar, where we ordered an olive oil tasting of five oils and some Dalmatian tapas. Then a stop nearby at a wine bar named Zinfendel, where we had some of the best white wines we’ve had the whole trip. And last at a restaurant named Monzoon, which had beautiful courtyard surrounded by palace walls and bell tower.

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…and I say “unforgettable” not in the sense of like, “it was amazing”, or “it was the best ever!”, but more like “it was a bit awkward and bizarre, and we will not soon forget it”.

Our instructors name was Ivana. She showed up to meet us about 15 minutes late a bit sweaty and disheveled. Her bike lock key had broke so this is totally forgivable, but it was a little foresight into the day ahead. Before I go into detail about the things that were a little weird and off putting about this class, I should say that in many ways some things were actually pretty great. We got to see the local fish market and green market and learn a little bit about it, we got some history and background about the town, we learned how to clean a sardine and an eel, and we made some pretty good food.

The main complaint I’d say we had about this class would be Ivana herself. She was a bit of a nut job. She was bossy, which I think she was trying to pull off in a bossy old grandma in the kitchen that everybody actually loves sort of way, but it came in a mean boss who thinks you do everything wrong sort of way. She would regularly tell us we weren’t doing things right after giving us only one chance, and take kitchen utensils from us and give them to somebody else. She told Bernadette that her photo taking was annoying and she seemed to berate the men. She was overall pretty abrasive, but the confusing part was that we weren’t really sure if she was trying to be that way or if her weird sense of humor was totally lost in translation. This poor retired Belgian couple was with us who barely spoke a lick of English so I can only imagine what they might have been thinking.

A turning point came when we were plating up our dishes and placing them on the table. Ivana accidentally dropped our entire course of fish simmered in olive oil and fig marinade. The dish would have been the star of the entire meal, bet ended up scattered across the ground. At that point I think Ivana was humbled a little bit and things seemed to take a sharp turn for the better. I don’t know, maybes he has a terrible morning with some personal matters an we ended up on the wrong end of her day, but things seemed to be a little lighter near the end. (Yet, still far from comfortable)

Our final menu started with salad, breaded and fried anchovies and eel, fresh baked bread, and the main course (subtracting what ended up on the ground) was a pretty delicious Dalmatian fish stew with tomatoes and polenta.

While I’ll never regret the class because of the story I’ll always have from it, if you’re in Trogir and thinking about taking a cooking class, go to the beach instead.

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We had planned on spending our last four nights in Split, but the word we kept hearing from everybody who had visited there was that a couple nights is all the time one needs to seethe town, so instead of four nights, we booked the first two in the nearby town of Trogir which we had heard great things about.

We had our taxi drop us off at the gate’s of Trogir’s old town and we ventured in to find our AirBnB apartment. As we got close, a server at a restaurant saw the four of us marching along with our noses on our maps and asked us if we needed any help finding somewhere. We just mentioned the name of our apartment or the name of our host and a server shouted to another guy and a local joined in and it seemed as though everybody here knows everybody and in no time one of the servers from the restaurant was leading us up the stairs to our temporary home with key in hand (another server actually described the staff at the restaurant as family a couple days later). This restaurant, Restaurant Capo, would be our home base for the next couple of days. It was a quick stop for some snacks, a table to play cards at, local advice from the staff, a cup of gelato or a pizza delivered to our door.

Now, I feel like a broken record here, but Trogir is yet another quaint and adorable old town. It’s about 20 miles south of Split. The old town is a Unesco world Heritage site, as is the Dalmatian cuisine from the area. It’s small, a person could wandered the length of it in about ten minutes. There is a stretch of waterfront promenade where vendors line their stalls for the tourist crowd, cafés set out umbrella covered patios, and sailboats and yachts pull up to dock. There is a daily fresh fish market and large farmers market where we bought some incredibly juicy, ripe strawberries. Alyssa and I fulfilled our dream of stuffing our mouths with as many fresh strawberries as we could fit.

Our days were mostly filled with wandering and eating, playing cards outside and sampling wine (well, mark, B and I anyway).

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Well, we have completed our week on Gulet boat Andi and are once again on dry land. In a nutshell, the Dalmatian coast is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever traveled to. Aside from the miles of coastline and turquoise blue water, the tiny towns are a straight from a fairy tale, the cuisine, especially the seafood, some of the most delicious, and the people consistently, warm, social and friendly everywhere we’ve been. I would love to come back someday and maybe charter our own board to explore the area, but fora first visit, the 13 of us on this wooden boat was a perfect decision. We especially loved our hard working crew of 3 and appreciate everything they did for us.

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Today was Tom and Cheryl’s 39th wedding anniversary, so all of us on the boat decided that we would throw a second wedding for them so they could renew their vows. The evening before Alyssa and Bernadette went on a bit of a wild goose chase tracking down a bouquet of flowers for the event, and Ken and Linda went on their own adventure to find some cherry sherry (one of their favorites). We had Iviča perform a make-shift ceremony (of course), and the result was a pretty cheeky little play that we all took part in. Bernadette had her camera at the ready and will be putting together a nice digital photo package for them when they get home. It was a lot of fun and actually pretty sweet.

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For our next stop our faithful Gulet Andi anchored off the island do Vis. There were two towns we visited here, the town of Vis, and on the opposite side the town of Kmoviča.

We disembarked at Vis, but we immediately took a taxi over to Kmoviča to check out the opposite side first. Our highlight here was the swim that we had atone of their rocky beaches. Wade about 50 into the water and you’ll have a view of a centuries old church, red-tile roofed houses climbing the hillside, a small harbor where fishermen untangle their nets ansa dock where sailors stop to take a break from the sea. The water has been pretty cold most of the trip since it’s pretty early I the season, but we’re definitely feeling things warm up as the weather stays hot and we move north.

Back in Vis we walked around d a little more. This is a Great town and we Would definitely have liked to spend more time here. Instead of a marina or mooring field for boats, the sailboats here back right up to the Main Street which runs along the waters edge, so if you walk down the main drag you have shops, restaurants and sidewalk cafes on one side, and rows of boats on the other with sailors and crew lounging and drinking on their decks and cockpits.

This island also has an attraction called the “blue cave” which we opted not to because of our limited time, but it’s worth looking into if you ever find yourself here.

That evening on the boat we had our dinner prepared on board rather than eating out in tow. We dubbed this the “Captains dinner”, and Iviča sat and ate with us. Ivan slaved away in his teeny tiny kitchen all afternoon prepared seafood three ways for us, fried calamari, octopus salad, and pan fried whole sea bass (and/or some similar Mediterranean delicious fish).

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Hvar has a reputation for being the party island around these parts. Honestly though, we didn’t see it. We are here still fairly early in tourist season so things haven’t really ramped up yet. We did see a handful of beach bars, clubs and discos, but for the most part they either closed early or were relatively calm. Thing will pick up in a couple of weeks when the people show up for Yacht Week, and continuing on for the rest of the summer. What we did see though was another quaint little Mediterranean town nestled into a hillside overlooking the harbor.

At the very top of the hill, If you walk for about 15 minutes up a steep road, there stands an old fortress that you can still walk around. At the top, the views are amazing. You can imagine 16th century soldiers scanning the horizon keeping guard against enemy ships. The coolest part of the fortress was probably the prison, where there were a half dozen dungeon-like cells carved out of the stone.

There was clearly a lot more to is town than we had time to see, so I would certainly come back and explore more if I had the opportunity. Although I feel as though this is a reoccurring feeling I have for every place I visit along this coast. There never seems to be enough time. As per the usual drill, we spent some time wandering the narrow streets of their old town, had a glass of wine, and finished off with some gelato.

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Instead of parking the boat in a harbor we anchored in a bay at the island of Korčula, had a swim, and were shuttled via dinghy to the town later in the afternoon. The old town of Korčula juts out from the mainland in a small peninsula, and the tile-roofed buildings rise up on a small hill a church and tall bell tower. We did climb that bell tower just after sunset, which provides some stunning views looking down on the tiny town and sidewalk cafés and restaurants, and also out to some of the neighboring islands and the sea beyond. My only regret here was that we arrived a little too later to see the sunset from the tower.

Back up just a little bit. To when we arrived in Korčula. We stopped at an adorable alley wine bar and had a few drinks. Almost everything we had, both wine and some spirits, was grown and made right there on Korčula island or one of the neighboring islands. It’s nor uncommon for a particular bar to be. The only establishment that serves the sine from a specific vineyard because of the small batches some wineries put out, and many of these wineries are tiny, family run operations.. I must say too that it nice to get a glass of delicious wine for about a dollar.

Soon after, we bumped into our crew Iviča and Ivan at one of the local patios having a beer. They invited us to jon them and we got to hang out and talk for a bit while they were not performing their duties of watching after tourists (us). They are really great, hard working people. One of my favorite things so far about this entire trip is the infectious sound if Ivan’s laugh.

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After our first night at Šipan, we motored to the island of Mljet (not a typo). As Iviča said, this was not a very large town… (“You look here , you can see house, house tree, church, house…the is all”). We took a taxi to the other side of the island, then a short boat taxi across an inland lake to a pretty monastery hugging the lake’s edge. The monastery wasn’t spectacular and a tally pretty dull compared to most of the others we’ve seen, but the trip made for a nice walk and some sightseeing.

After the monastery we took the taxi boat to another small, inland salt lake where I took a swim. The interesting thing about this lake is that is connected to the adjoining lake by a small channel, and The current I’d the channel changes directions twice a day depending on the tides. We sat in the sun by the lake for a while watching fish, sea urchins and sea anenomies in the shallow water.

The highlight if this stop was dinner. There was a restaurant near where we docked that serves up a traditional Croation dish called peka. Peka is typically lamb, veal or octopus, cooked in a wine and garlic sauce with potatoes and vegetables. It is cooked on an outside fire or grill under a bell shaped dish, for up to three hours. Mark and Bernadette ordered lamb and Alyssa and I ordered the octopus. The octopus was the most tender, deliciously rich and flavorful I have ever had, and the lamb got similar reviews. If you ever come to Croatia make sure to put this dish on your “must eat” list, and remember to call the restaurant at least three hours ahead of time so they can get it started cooking before you arrive, otherwise you’ll have a very long wait.

Outside the restaurant as we left we met a very cute and spry mustached man at the grill names Stephan who had been our cook. He told us about how he liked to go out and fish by himself and how our fish was caught earlier that day.

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We were not scheduled to arrive at our boat until 3pm, so we had all morning to sight-see in Dubrovnik one last time. Here is one thing that can be said about old town on a weekend, it’s crowded…really crowded. The cruise ships pull on in the morning, and tour busses drop tourists off from anywhere within a few hour’s drive, and the streets were packed with tourist (including us). If you come to this town on the weekend, do everything you can to get get out and about between 8am and 10am, or after 7pm. Of course, everything is relative, it’s probably no worse (or better) than Venice, or Paris, or Times Square, but it was a big change from the relatively calm streets from the day before.

And finally the pearl In the oyster of our Croation getaway, our boat! Our boat is a 22 meter Gulet boat with 6 cabins.

It is a wooden ship with two masts, and loads of space for lounging up top. The stern has a table large enough to comfortably seat eight and two lounging beds able to fit two people each, one I each corner. The bow has a deck with lots of room for lounging in the sun, or if the afternoon is too hot a shade can be unrolled from the boom to create some shade. There are five guest cabins down below (cramped quarters, not unlike camping), and one cabin for the skipper, the other two crew members sleep in a hatch on the bow that they share with some of the boat’s equipment. This is no luxury cruise, but it right up our alley, and the small size and only three crew members means we really get to know everybody really well. Here is a run down of who we will be Sharing our boat with for the next 7days:

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