The front was cheerfully devoid of character and adorned with the bog standard sweets, coffee and crisps for sale. The middle was similarly mundane, with a cafeteria style restuarant. But then. Its claim to fame lurked somewhere near the toliets. Because this rest stop happened to have Croatia's.largest.collection.of.taxidermied.animals.
We were simultaneously appalled and transfixed. It was like staring at a train wreck--the vegetarians in us shrieked out in horror and yet, we still took photos.
strangely assembled into poker playing dead animals.
the last thing you need is a fox playing the accordian
there's a coin collection basket just left of the deer; apparently this takes a lot of money for upkeep. who knew?
Is it possible for anything to be as exciting as this ever again?
---------------------------------------------------------
We arrived into Zadar's bus station after our quirky rest stop and a long drive along the stunning Dalmation Coast. After declining offers to bungee jump off of ridiculous bridges, Jen and I opted to do something similarly dangerous and got into another stranger's rusting BMW. yes, this is possible. This time we were driven by an 70-year-old man to a house in the middle of nowhere. And yet again, the two girls who speak English, a bit of broken Spanish and some French between us, communicated in broken German, with the phrase "ein bisshen" thrown around quite a bit.
we ended up walking and walking towards the centre of Zadar looking for city walls that didn't seem to exist until we were walking through them. Our first glimpse of a city that used to be the capital of the Dalmatian region.
Cappy apple juice=brilliant! Jen and I arrived around siesta time and ended up sitting in the central square with juice under the shade of umbrellas.
Zadar feels very medeival meets modern with little cobbled streets and a completely pedestrian centre
St. Donatus church, built in the 9th century and a stone's throw away from the bluest, bluest sea
there's a lot of roman/italian influence in Zadar, as is evident in the food, architecture and general style of life
this looks like nothing special, but it's called the Sea Organ and is the most peacefully beautiful thing we found on the entire trip. It does what it says on the tin: there's a series of underwater polyethelene tubes located under marble steps of the sea wall, and as the waves rise and fall and hit the wall the pipes resonate and sound comes out. wave music!
Jen sitting by the sea organ
the adriatic
i was going for adventurous because i was tired of eating the same pasta with tomato sauce over and over again. thus, i opted to order spaghetti with cuttlefish. so food lesson number 1: cuttlefish is black. and squidgy like squid. on the upside, the restaurant had ten tiny tables right in the middle of a pedestrian side-street.
so jen and i were impressed and contemplated staying in Zadar for another morning/afternoon. but bus/ferry schedules permitted us not and we packed our things early the next morning for a journey to the illustrious isle of Pag.
No comments:
Post a Comment