Epic European Cycle : 2015-10-01 : To Zadar

Trip Log Trip List Calendar

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Travel
Type Name Service Provider Origin Destination Cost Notes Actions
Bus Rijeka to Zadar Čazmatrans Rijeka Zadar $60.00
Activity
Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total Notes Actions
Sight See Zadar $0.00
Sight See Zadar Sea Organ $0.00
Sight See Zadar Sea Organ - Video $0.00
Accommodation
Type Name Service Provider Confirmation Location Cost Notes Actions
Pension Don Ive Prodana Studio Booking.com Zadar $80.00 Two nights
Ulica Don Ive Prodana 10

Great location - convenient to everything. The room is in a neat old building in Zadar's old town - a fascinating experience for someone like me from the "new world". The proprietor is friendly and helpful and extremely fast at answering e-mails - great communication. She met us out on the street in case we were having trouble finding it (which we were). When there was an issue with the WiFi she addressed it immediately. The electric WC is interesting (albeit a little disturbing).

Bring a flashlight for any late-night WC-visits. The hall light is on a timer which doesn't last very long. The walls are very thin and we had noisy neighbors coming in late at night both nights. Oh well. The proprietor can't control that!


Trip Log

Notes Actions
We left Rijeka and headed for Zadar today on the bus. We went via the evil tunnel that we walked yesterday and it didn't seem to bad at all from a bus! There were some amazing, high off-ramps and other bits of horror leaving Rijeka that made me really happy that we were not trying to cycle through it. Once we were out of Rijeka and heading south along the coast, my feeling about cycling it didn't improve. The highway is narrow with no shoulders, and lots of cliffs and other scary deadly bits that I wouldn't want to be sharing a narrow road with cars on. The countryside south of Rijeka is very mountainous and rugged. It is endless rocks and scrub and scrub and rocks and rocks and scrub and scrub and rocks. The elevation gain and loss is crazy. The islands off the coast look mostly like barren deserts with some scrub and rocks. The coast is much more rugged than I expected. Just before we reached Zadar, the countryside changed a lot. It's not mountainous and it's starting to show the potential for soil and green things.
I liked the Zadar sea organ more than I expected to. I expected to think it was a neat novelty, but the sound it produces is really tranquil and calming and I love it. I think I could just sit near it for hours. Maybe I will.
Before leaving town today, we mailed off a second box of gear (much smaller than yesterday's) and dropped off The Tank, our sleeping bags, and a bag of miscellaneous gear and supplies at Hostel Rijeka. Hopefully they can make good use of our stuff. It's been hard for me to leave Dewey behind, and I know it was tough for Brent to leave The Tank behind.
From Brent: I had never heard of this place. The main attraction on the internet seemed to be The Sea Organ and I wasn't sure about stopping to see a bit of kitchy art but we had the time and we were in the neighbourhood.

It turns out that Zadar is an ancient city with lots of cool history. We got a room in the Old Town and walked passed some massively thick walls. The town isn't walled any more, but was at one time...or maybe 3 times because there seem to be remnants of several walls of different construction about the old town. Zadar was a Roman city at one time and maybe the spot belonged to someone before them.

Some time after the Romans left the Venicians took over and remodelled the city to their tastes (A lot of buildings have dates in the 1500's around the doors). The cool part to me was that the Venicians used the old Roman ruins as raw building materials.

There is a big, 8-sided chappel that everybody says you should see. We went to see it and I found myself more interested in the foundation than the building. It was made of broken pieces of Roman columns and statuary and inscribed stones that had all been thrown down in a jumble and cemented together. There's chunks of broken Roman construction all over town. We spent quite a lot of time at the archaeological museum learning about the area and we wandered past a couple of active dig sites. All very cool.

Also in the Old Town the streets are paved with marble. And when I say streets I mean it in a medieval way. The roads, side walks and cafe dining rooms are all the same thing. Years of shoes, vehicle tires, dog crap and street sweepers have made the streets shine like a smooth lake. When the sun reflects off the roads it's hard to see in that direction, a tiny amount of rain makes the roads slippery as snot. Some of the roads have been deliberately hacked and gouged to make them safer to walk on, a different philosophy from back home.

And the Sea Organ is kinda cool too.


Photos

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