Friday 4^th May 2018

We are still in the free car park just 10 mins walk in to Zadar, on the Dalmation coast. I found on my research for Zadar that there is a free walking tour (tips normally given) we have done many of these in the past especially in cities in the UK & Europe and the amount of info and humour is normally of a good standard and you see things that normally would go unnoticed. I tell Dave it’s at 5 Wells Square (because it’s got 5 wells) and whilst I’m getting ready would he mind if he gets the map on google maps and walking route, yes folks you know where this is going don’t you, he got the location of the company or the guys address instead of the meeting point, we walked for 20 mins in the opposite direction and it was hot! This is the 2^nd occasion this has happened & I’m grumpy! The tour starts at 10am and its now, yes, 10am and we’re now 15 mins walk to the square, so off we go again.

We’d walked through the park and through one of the Venetian gates called Kopnena Vrata, Zadar is full of Roman and Venetian ruins with a 12^th century St. Anastasia Cathedral, 5 Wells Square was a beautiful but small place, we had 1 ¾ hours to spare  until the next walking tour at 12pm, so we sat and had a couple of coffees macchiato veliki which are lovely and strong just how we like them, we also like the ice cold glass of water which we have been given in most places with our coffees. We sat, and people watched until noon.

There are lots of tourists from Japan & China and they are always in large groups and they love, love, love a selfie and we love watching them as they are always excited about anything and I mean anything!

We spotted Eduardo the guide with the yellow umbrella and introduced ourselves, it’ll be just us two by the look of things, he also tells us he overslept, and he didn’t turn up for the 10am tour, Dave looks relieved!

The tour was very informative, he explained that once Zadar was the capital city and is the oldest continually inhabited Croatian city since 9^th Century. It’s been controlled by the Croatians, Romans, Venetians, Italians, French, Austrian/Hungarian, so much history!

The 1991 Croatian war also known as the home war, meant many were killed and 10,000 left for other parts, he tells us that many Croatians emigrated to Australia, he says that most of the inhabitants now come from other parts and are not initially from Croatia, however there is a small Italian community of just a few hundred from when Italy controlled it.

Zadar was not too crowded even though there is a new cruise port and a very good ferry port for cruises to other islands.

We finished the tour at 2.30pm ending on the waters edge by the sea organs and sun worship monument, the sea organ is built on the beautiful promenade it consists of tubes built into the steps and makes sounds when the water enters them, all you can see are small holes in the promenade, the sounds of the sea organ are very strange sounds like a whale! We will come back at sunset to see the Sun Worship monument which is a solar display, a 22 metre glass disc made up of 300 multi layers of glass which lights up in many colours and powers the lights along the promenade.

Back to Pogo for more blogging! And we need to clean the van inside, but it’ll wait one more day. We couldn’t be bothered cooking, so we ate a punnet of strawberries.

The walk through Zadar streets and back to the huge promenade was relaxing as the heat was reducing in the early evening, the sunset at 8pm was stunning and the film maker and master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock liked to stay in a hotel on the front and proclaimed the sunsets as the most beautiful in the world! A bold quote indeed.

The water was very calm so not much sound from the sea organ. The light solar display was nice but we are told it now interacts with the sounds from the sea organ, so I suppose if you go when it’s breezy or the water is choppy then you get a better display.

We went back to Pogo about 9.pm and there’s not much for dinner, so it was a crackers and cheese fest with little mini bruchetta from Lidl which we love, followed by chocolate washed down with some €2 red wine, got to love a throw together cheap dinner.

We were listening to music on the iPad with the Bose speaker which were all fully charged as we’d had electric hook up at Camp Rozac when we heard a knock on the van and the drivers’ door handle being tried! We were a bit startled I must say. All our blinds are closed, and we’ve lowered the overcab bed already. There is a security company adjoining the car park and they have what look like police vans, the guys wear black T shirt and black caps, we opened the blinds to look out and saw a guy dressed as described above cycling about the car park, we assumed he was telling us to leave, he didn’t return to us but just kept going around and in between all the cars stopping and trying all the door handles and the boot of each car!! Strange we thought? he can’t be security, can he? no, reader he was not! He was a thief, we saw him remove something from one car and stuff it in is pocket! Disappearing into a hedge and then reappearing for another round of the car park, this went on for about 35 mins, we gave up watching and closed the blinds, 15 mins later he tries our door handle again or his mate did, this time I opened the window and shouted  “oi” “ go away” well it might have been something similar, surprisingly we slept well, Dave has the door chained to the drivers wheel and the bed is on top of that so no chance they are getting in!

Cathy