International Travel

I am finally now, on Hvar, regaining my confidence in ordering dinner. I was almost about to abandon that meal altogether, after my first 3 nights. I’m not sure if you remember, but on the first night I ate all fried food – which is great but not as a whole meal. One other thing I forgot to mention is that if you don’t like smoke – don’t come to Croatia. They smoke everywhere. A man in Zagreb was grabbing his luggage from baggage claim in the airport with a cigarette hanging from his lips. So imagine the restaurants – all smoky.

Friday night, before Stacy arrived I consulted my Lonely Planet guide book and went to a restaurant they recommended. The waiter spoke some English and handed me an English menu. Off to a good start. I ordered a wine and then risotto. He asked me if I wanted a starter and I asked what do you recommend? He said the fresh catch of the day, so I agreed to it.

Then he brought me a small fish – maybe a sardine and it tasted pickled. I figured that it was the starter and happily nawed around the head and bones. Next, he came out with a huge platter of mussels and oysters and such. I thought, maybe risotto is different in Croatia – and figured I was eating my main meal. I filled up and then he came out with the seafood risotto! So I took a deep breath and kept eating. I only ate half and he asked me if I didn’t like it. It was delicious, but come on, how much can one person eat? I said no, just full and smiled brightly. He brought me the bill and the starter was more than my meal – about 20 bucks! Oh well, I then waddled back to the hotel.

The next night, the girl at the hotel in Split told us to go to the old part of town to eat because it was better food – and less tourists. Great idea – eat with the locals! We wandered through the dark and to the pier to find the restaurant. The waiter happily brought us to our table and spoke broken English. Okay, so less tourists = less English.

We first ordered wine, we thought a glass of wine, but no it was a bottle. The waiter was a graying, skinny man right out of a slapstick comedy. He kept trying to speak to us and we to him, but we were not communicating. Fine, whatever, we can deal with this. So I ordered a shrimp cocktail, I know what this is! I pointed at the English menu and he shook his head. This is where it gets fuzzy – did I have my pointer finger and pinky pointing at 2 different things? I’m still not sure. In between our ummms he left for the kitchen. He later came out with a goopy, pink mayonaise (sp?) glass dish with little shrimps in it – okay, not the scampi cocktail I know, but fine. But he also had a dish with meats and olives on it. I looked at the guy and said no, we don’t want that. He said something and pointed at the scampi dish and said something about 5 minutes. I just looked at him and he walked away. Stacy sat calmly, smiling. Remember, she’d been traveling for a couple of weeks before me so she had traveler’s euphoria. She didn’t really care what happened.

We devoured the scampi with some bread and then he came back in 5 minutes with another scampi cocktail. I said no, we just want our risottos (I had ordered seafood risotto, again). I was very flustered then, so I can’t put the whole blame on the waiter. He bounced around the dining room trying to please us and I was just confusing the poor guy!

He bounded away from us, probably just wishing that we would leave. I felt terrible, I couldn’t relax. Stacy then told me that she had ordered the scampi dinner and not the risotto. Oh no! What would he bring out??  Yes, later he brought out 2 risottos, 1 scampi and 1 seafood. Once he set it down, Stacy just sat there and stared at it. Then she started laughing so hard that she cried. This looks good, she exclaimed. Okay, so it was very good and I laughed my ass off about it, too. At least the dining room was fairly empty and other Croatians weren’t pointing and laughing at the stupid Americans!

Lately, I’ve had delicious meals – fish and pizza. The one thing that I’ve taken to heart is to remain calm while I order dinner. And be very clear . . .

I did see some Halloween stuff in Split in the stores – but none here in Hvar Town. It rained here today until mid afternoon so I read for about 5 hours. At least I’m reading a good book or I’d be in trouble. I’ve been fixated to the pages of Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone – about one drug transaction from Vietnam to the US in the 1970s. Of course, the whole thing went wrong. Just left a scene about doing heroin – yikes!

It is so beautiful here – but more on that later!

We basically used Split as a launching point to the islands. We stayed overnight on Saturday night  and then took a ferry to Hvar on Sunday afternoon. There isn’t much to see but  there is the Diocletian’s Palace with is a UNESCO world heritage site. It’s basically a bunch of old walls and narrow alleyways with restaurants and shops. As we sat in the cafe, we once again stared at other tourist with their kids, dogs and listened to other languages and giggled at what some wore. I do love the freedom of expression here!

There is an old church in palace area – they were having church service on Sunday as we wandered around. It was cool to hear the chants and organ music. Lots of tourists around. The shops were closed on Sunday, but maybe that was to my benefit – hah!

Outside the walls of the old city is the port. There are cafes and stores that look out to the Adriatic Sea and the ground is covered in a a white stone – I think it might be limestone – it’s gorgeous. It’s a cute town, with old buildings and modern shopping.

Sorry I’ve been delayed in writing. Ummmm, I’m in off-season on the island of Hvar so not so easy to find places open – except cafes! I’ve been drowning myself in espressos – yum!

I explored Zagreb on Friday. I missed the bus to Plitvice because I slept until almost noon! It was raining anyway and the girl at the hotel said it wouldn’t be a good day to see it, but now I won’t see it at all because I don’t have enough time when I get back to Zagreb.

Zagreb is a cute city – very quaint and easy to explore. I wandered through flower, fruit, veggie and clothing markets. It drizzled all day but I brought my umbrella so I held my umbrella in one hand and camera in the other. It was maybe about 60 degrees but as long as I was walking, I was warm. The stone streets curve up and around the town with lots of cafes – it must be nice enough to sit outside all year round. It’s fun to sit facing the small streets to people watch. A lot of girls wore long boots with their pants tucked in. I’ve seen some layering outfits, very 80s. I went to a museum as I started to get chilled – so interesting but I wished I would have started with the paintings – I had to rush through them because they were closing. I saw ancient artifacts and pieces of old crap from Europe – statues and such. They had paintings by Degas, Rubens, Suerat, H. Bosch, Manet – that’s all I can remember right now. So beautiful – I love paintings because I can see the story in them (even if it’s my own made up story!). I went to dinner that night and back to the hotel. Dining is an experience that will require it’s own blog.

Stacy came in on Friday night. On Saturday, I showed her all the sights I had found on Friday. (Let me tell you, you should be impressed with my typing right now – the keyboard is a little different than ours and I keep making mistakes. And it has cool characters like čćžđš). So back to Stacy – when we went down the the main square there was some kind of rally going on. The first one looked religious by the signs they carried. Then they had this huge video screen up in the center – all this old history, stone buildings and trolleys on wires around the square then then a huge modern TV screen. I found out later that they have elections in a month, so they might have been talking about that.

Most everyone speaks English and people are very friendly. Croatians love their dogs, I’ll talk about that later.

We flew to Split on Saturday afternoon – warm! So beautiful and on the water . . .

But oh my god am I tired right now. So I’m not sure if this will make sense. It’s interesting, I forgot how you really have to go with the flow when traveling. Because the shit flies.

My plane was delayed from Chicago to London, no big deal. It seems as though United flights are always delayed for me. As I got on the plane and wandered through, salivating on first class, business class and then economy plus, I found my seat at the back of the plane. With the other Eliza Doolittles (or Elizer as they say). My first thought was that it sucked because I had gotten used to flying the upper classes with Lynda and Carol when they worked at the airline but then I realized I had a whole row of seats to myself. All six so I could lay down and sleep. I wasn’t ready for that yet, but then after the flight took off a lady sat in the middle, one seat away from me. Then laid down on four seats – what a bitch! I maybe got a couple of hours of sleep on that flight. Then had to run for my flight (went through the wrong security) through Heathrow to Croatian Airlines.

As I sat and waited to board to Zagreb, I got a text message from Stacy saying that she missed her flight! She won’t arrive until tomorrow (Friday) night. I was so bummed. I at least wanted one of us to have brains when we first arrived in Zagreb. Once on the flight, which was also delayed I convinced myself that I needed to be positive. It was hard because I was tired and hungry.

One thing that came to mind was that in Chicago when the flight was delayed, the captain got on the intercom and apologized and such. But in London, there were no excuses and no one pacing getting furious because the flight was delayed – people seemed better equipped to go with the flow. I sometimes feel that I have such a grip on things in my daily life, that when things go wrong I get mad but really should learn to laugh or shrug my shoulders. Just let things happen. I remembered this from traveling, but haven’t traveled in awhile so I wasn’t using it.

Well, I had to remember this when I arrived at the hotel in Zagreb and they told me they didn’t have a room for me.  I had been traveling for good 12 hours or so and that was the last thing I wanted to hear. I did end up getting a room, but had a brief thought, as the lady was looking into it, that there are other hotels. I’ll deal with it.

After I got into my room, I walked over to a restaurant. They didn’t have menus in English, so I told the guy I wanted a vegetarian meal. I thought he said shrimp and cheese. I was wrong. My plate came out with breaded cheese and breaded mushrooms. I almost laughed. Whatever, I dug in.
It’s only about 7:15pm right now (I think I’m 7 hours ahead of Chicago) and it’s time to go relax. See if I can find any English channels on my TV (I can’t believe I have a TV!). I have a big day tomorrow in Plitvice!