After dinner and a stroll around the city of Zadar, we headed back to our apartment for a bit of blogging and photo editing before we rested our very weary selves for the night. With the exception of being awoken at about 4:00 in the a.m. by the sudden downpour and the screams and laughter of the couple that were caught in it, we slept until the all church bells went off at 7:00 am.

Get your coffee, juice, beer and fruit here.

Get your coffee, juice, beer and fruit here.

We got some breakfast in a cafe down their main street and set off for some daytime exploring. We had to meet our host at 10 to turn in the keys, then jumped into the car and headed north up the small local coastal road (or the “original road” as our host called it). Our journey marked by water on our left and very high rocky mountains covered in all shades of ecru and khaki with a bit of red umber splashed in here and there on our right. There were lots of little villages and produce stands along the roadway and the ever present bus stops always standing ready to whisk the locals away to the cities.

croatia coastWe made our way to the top of the peninsula to take the ferry back to the mainland. The landscape changed as we made our way there. The olive green scrubby coastal land became a mountain of rock of the same sort that has been off to our right. Here we saw many long walls constructed of the same rock a the mountian. We wondered about this for a good long while. Someone had tried to tame this rocky, seemly mostly barren landscape. Then we started to notice some shelters. These were built low and disappeared into the landscape. We could not imagine what could be living there. At last we noticed sheep sleeping on some of the rocks. They had all blended in with the rocky landscape. That mystery solved, we wound our away around the final mountain curve and down to the coast to join the line on the ferry’s loading dock where we will wait for about an hour before we are transported to the other side to continue our journey north.

example of rock walls on the hillsides that blended into the mountain landscape.

example of rock walls on the hillsides that blended into the mountain landscape.

We reached Rijecki for in the late afternoon and stopped for a late lunch early dinner. Nourished and revived, latte take-aways in hand, we hit the road again, this time heading south east to Pula. Another harbor city with many Roman ruins.
The landscape changed dramatically once we were pointing south east. The mountains became more green and less rocky. The curving, dangerous roads continued on as before so no stopping for photos. We will have to keep these views in our minds eye.

We rolled into town at sunset got our place right away near the well-preserved Roman arena and no church with ringing bells in sight or earshot, then hit the pavement for a stroll around town and a beer. Once we have the lay of the land mapped out, we heaedd back to our hotel for another beer and work on this blog post.

More adventures tomorrow as we head north to Slovenia and maybe beyond.