The ferry ride to Split was our longest ferry ride yet: 2 hours. It left from Stalingrad, I mean, Stari Grad, which meant we had another hair-raising drive across the mountain to get to it. Ante steered us well! While Ante went to park the car in line with all the other cars, Rachel and I went to a nearby cafe to get some coffee. (Note: it wasn’t as good as the coffee in Trpanj. Nothing was.) We sat there, sipping coffee, watching the sea, watching the cars line up, and … watching the motorcycle gang roar in again, lining up in their own separate groupings. There were even more of them than before.

I don’t know why I was so fascinated by them – all I can say is they were clearly such a well-defined and tight sub-culture, people you would clearly not see hiking the wall in Dubrovnik, etc. (Nothing against tourists. We were tourists, and happily so! But you don’t want to ONLY hang out with visitors. You want to be in local places, you want to get a glimpse of people’s real lives.) So with these bikers, it’s hard to even grasp what all of the varying connections might be among all the different clubs, separated out by nationalities. There were women among them, what my pal Mike would call “tough chicks”, and it was clear the established couples. Again, maybe because we were visiting slightly off-season, but in a lot of places we visited, tourists did not dominate. (In Dubrovnik and Split, they did, but in a lot of other places, we were clearly the only Americans.) This was certainly true on the ferry to Split. You didn’t hear much English being spoken. And the bikers far out-numbered the regular passengers. The noise on that upper deck was deafening, laughter, conversation, cigarette smoke, beers.

It was hot, sun shining, and Rachel and I – in our matching hats – found shelter under a little roof on the main level (which, unfortunately, acted like a greenhouse). Once the boat got far out into the sea, the wind picked up, a gorgeous cool wind. Around Hvar are all these little islands, but once we passed that area, it was a huge open sea, with the mountainous mainland far far away, like a mirage.

I sat in my seat, and watched the Biker Show.

The ride was so long and the movement of the ship so soothing there was something almost sleepy about it. We wandered off downstairs to buy some sandwiches, came back up to sit down amongst the motorcycle gang. We went off to find railings where we could look into the distance, cool our faces.

I was mostly filled with a sense of anticipation that was almost … scary? … because Split was approaching.

What I knew about Split: the Roman emperor Diocletian “retired” there (which was amazing in and of itself, because Roman emperors didn’t tend to retire. They tended to be murdered.) Diocletian grew up in the surrounding areas. He built a palace (which is really more of a small city), down on the waterfront. After the Roman Empire fell, the palace went into ruins over the following centuries. But unlike other areas, which were deserted, emptied out of people, the people of Split never left. They basically just moved into the abandoned palace. They built structures on top of its walls, rickety little buildings – some of which are still there. But since the Roman knowledge of architecture and engineering died with the Romans, the people left behind had no idea how to build things. So you have this gorgeous elaborate palace, with little buildings perching on the walls, huddled in the corners, from later eras. Time collapses here. You have different eras existing simultaneously. And now? There are nightclubs, markets, banks, book shops, bars … all built into the palace walls.

This is all what I have learned about the place. I have had vivid pictures of it in my mind.

For some reason, though, I had it in my mind that it was on the cliffs. Wrong. I have refused to even Google pictures of this palace. For two decades! How did I manage it? I’ve been so poor, people. I knew I’d never get to see Diocletian’s Palace, come on, I can’t even buy new sneakers. This is what “operating from scarcity” looks like. I’m not complaining. I’m in the same boat as many others, I’m just explaining my own personal experience of constant nagging scarcity. But as long as I DIDN’T look up pictures of Diocletian’s Palace, I held out hope that I’d actually get to see it with my own eyes. If this makes sense. If I “caved” and perused photo albums of the palace, it was like admitting: “Okay, I’m never gonna get there myself.” I actually have never put this into words until now, but that’s what was going on.

I had no fear that the experience would be a disappointment after so many years of wanting to go there. Not possible.

Diocletian’s Palace has always been “the substance of things hoped for” and now I was about to see it.

Finally, Split came into view. I stood at the railing, surrounded by bikers, staring at the city as we approached from the sea. A white city on the waterfront, coming into view. It was a very emotional moment for me. People have been living there for thousands of years.

The long-deferred moment was finally here.

Rachel and I walked into Hvar from our hotel, along the stone walkway curving along the shore. The weather was humid, almost tropical. There was a high soaring moon. It’s intense. Beauty like this. (I heard from someone that she was unable to see the pictures. They were downloading huge into WordPress and I had trouble sizing them down. I think I figured it out – if you click on the photos, they SHOULD show up bigger. Please let me know if they do not, if you get some kind of weird message when you do click on them.)

As a side note: Rachel and I, of course, have known each other all our lives. We are part of a huge raucous family, devoted to seeing one another, keeping up with one another, including one another. We are scattered about, but we participate in group chats, we have private Facebook groups, we all text one another during the World Series. This is a CLOSE family. And yet … there are things we learned, from talking to each other. Our fathers were brothers. So the stories we got are not necessarily the stories they got, although there are the mythical stories everyone knows. “Oh, so that was the night they got in a fight and Joe broke his leg?” My uncle Jimmy was a wild man (and my godfather) and every time he got in trouble, when the cops would ask for his name, he would say “Terrence” – Rachel’s dad’s name. JIMMY. MY GOD WHAT THE HELL. This story is legendary in O’Malley Lore. And uncle Terry was a quiet bookish kid with an eyepatch over one eye who never got in trouble. The cops would show up at the door, and they would say to my grandmother, “Is Terrence here?” This happened many many times, and my grandmother would say, “I think Jimmy is the one you’re looking for.” I am laughing out loud as I type this. My grandmother knew the score. Rachel said, “And Mummy Gina would be like, ‘Yes, Terrence is in his room reading The Scarlet Letter for the 10th time, what seems to be the trouble?” She and I have never spent this much time one on one, so we caught each other up on our lives, our men, our book preferences, our goals for when we got back (we made very specific ones, and told them to each other). And she told me stuff I had never heard. Uncle Terry commenting, “The O’Malleys have always had a strain of hysteria.” I was DYING. And Terry is such a quiet white-haired man, a lawyer, who spends his retirement traveling to different state capitols so he can tour the buildings, visiting as many former President’s homes as possible, and reading 8 volume biographies of Napoleon. So to hear he admitted to having a “strain of hysteria” is the best thing I’ve ever heard.

Oh, and we tried to get Ante to come out for a drink with us. I called him and he picked up the phone, already laughing, because we had said, “We’re going out, we’re gonna call you!” And here I was calling. He was comfortable on the terrace of his friend’s house in Hvar, where he was staying, so he demurred, telling us to have fun. There are probably rules about not going out and getting drunk with your clients, but still, we so wanted to go to a nightclub with Ante.

One other cool fact about Hvar: it has one of the oldest (maybe THE oldest) public theatres in Europe. Here it is, and I loved the marking on door:

We had dinner at a restaurant in the main square, with an INSANE sunset going on behind us. Blaring neon pinks. We walked along the shore, gawking at the huge yachts parked there. “So … is this like Brad Pitt’s yacht or something?” The entire square is marble – super slippery – and the architecture is Venetian, which we were starting to be able to differentiate. More ornate, with arches and points and doo-hickeys.

And then we turned and looked up at the Venetian fort where we had gone earlier that morning with Ante.

A sleeping fire-breathing dragon. On guard for threats. Waiting. Ready.

We woke up the next morning. It would be another busy day, with a drive over the island to Stari Grad (“Stalingrad??” said Rachel. “Stari. Grad,” clarified Ante), where we would pick up the ferry to go to Split … Split, my entire reason for coming here in the first place, although I was thrilled to see everything else. But Split was the hook. Thank you, Rebecca West. I was almost NERVOUS to see Split. I’ve avoided even looking at pictures of Split, and of Diocletian’s palace, because I wanted to “save it” for whenever I visited. I’ve been “saving it” for 20 years. I am nothing if not patient.

We both woke up early and headed down to the beach for a goodbye swim. Nobody was there.

Morning light in Hvar. Heaven.

Ante picked us up in the morning, and we headed up the hill to check out the Venetian fort/dragon. We were slightly off-season, or maybe it was because it wasn’t midday but morning – but there were very few people there. Us, and a couple of hikers. The fort is even more impressive up close. WALLS of impenetrable stone. There are these huge plants that look like aloe plants on steroids: the skin is so thick that people have carved their initials into it. This is the agave plant, and Ante ripped off one of the hard string-like threads that make up the interior of the leaves (once you tear a bit of it off). He told us how they make lace from this plant, these strings, and there was a convent just over there – he pointed vaguely at the town below – where the Benedictine nuns sit and make the lace from agave leaves.

Speaking of “the town below”: it really gives a sense of the serial-killer-in-the-watch-tower POV of that fort. You’re staring straight down into Hvar below, the steeples, the boats, you can clearly see people. It’s incredibly awe-inspiring – plus out into the bay and the little string of islands beyond. The Venetians manning this fort were NOT MESSING AROUND.

You can’t go into the fort but you can wander around the periphery. There is no guardrail to keep you from plummeting down the nearly vertical hill. We hung out up there for a while, walking around, or just sitting on one of the benches perched on the cliff, looking out at the view, and it was a hell of a view.

That’s Rachel and Ante. We loved Ante.

Speaking of loving Ante: after we got our fill hanging out at the fort, he said, “I can take you to a spot even higher. One of the highest spots on the island. You have to know how to get there.” Because of our by this point well-known height-issues, we were like, “Higher than this??” But what are we gonna do? Say no to ANTE? Hell no! Besides, this is why we went with these guys. They know the good places, and they are not beholden to 1. a schedule and 2. the size of a tour bus. A tour bus for SURE could not go where we ended up going. Ante careened up a back road, one of the old roads of Hvar. Even narrower than the normal Croatian roads. Granted, the cars are smaller there, no honking SUVs, but still … there were places where you definitely had to pull over to let someone else go by. But THIS road? It was basically a one-way road. There were moments where we zoomed around the side of a hill, with a precipitous drop down to the sea, and there was no guardrail. My God, what have we gotten ourselves into.

At a small plateau-type area, with a small shrine, Ante pulled over. We got out. This was NOT our final destination but he wanted to show us something. The shrine was put up there in 1937, put up by a Croatian man who returned from America. It’s dedicated to Saint Dominic. People leave little gifts, and make little towering rock piles around it. But what Ante wanted to show us was the remnants of “Napoleon’s Road.” Again, with the Napoleon love … Napoleon who made the trains run on time. Napoleon only occupied this coastline for a brief period, but his impact can still be felt. He built a road, up and over the mountainous Hvar landscape, connecting two of the main towns (if I recall correctly). His whole thing was increasing the possibility of communication. It was pretty incredible to see.

Living history.

Rick Steves was an ongoing running joke. I never heard of the guy. Rachel and Ante (and Davor, later) were well-versed and shocked at my ignorance. Ante was pissed because the first edition of Steves’ book on Croatia put that famous bridge in MOSTAR on the cover. Which is in BOSNIA, NOT Croatia Later, one of Steves’ writers ended up taking a tour with Ante, and Ante said, “You know that that book on Croatia has a picture of Bosnia on the cover.” The next edition? It was fixed. Go, Ante. (Ante pulled up on his phone the two different covers.) The fact that I didn’t know about Rick Steves seemed suddenly like a faux pas of the highest order. How on earth had I MISSED him? Ante said, “It’s like not knowing what McDonalds is” and I gave him a look and he burst out laughing. Rachel and Ante so ganged up on me. It’s too late now for me learn about Rick Steves. (What kind of name is that, by the way?) There are only so many hours in the day.

After our brief pitstop, we got back in the car and continued our climb, up and up and up. Finally, we reached the top. We saw no one on our way up. No other cars approaching us, no cars behind us. We DID see one of our bikers whiz by, but besides him, emptiness. At the top, there was a little family-owned restaurant and a woman behind a little stand, selling the products she and her husband grow together. Ante took us over to talk to her. (I had told him I had wanted to buy some lavender products grown on the island.) She sold lavendar, rosemary, olive oil, essential oils all made from herbs on the island, all grown/prepared by her and her husband. She was very nice and was talking with me and Rachel about all of the things her oils were good for. (Rachel murmured to me after, “Is there anything lavendar CAN’T do?”) Ante – this big huge guy, manly and unembarrassed about it (“Do you cook Ante?” “No. But I grill. You know. Man stuff.” I love you, Ante.) was is standing there with us, listening. The woman says, “Rosemary oil is good for headaches, for this, for that, it cures this, it cures that … it is also good for woman problems, for menstrual cramps … or you can put some of the oil on your tampon —” Ante turned and walked away. He did it silently, with no fuss, did not make a big deal about it, he just basically dissolved into thin air. I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing – and the woman – who had been pitching us HARD on her products (and you can bet I bought some) – also started laughing – a little womanly moment like, “Oh, the fragility of men …” we kept it fairly quiet, because nobody wants to make fun of Ante, but it was so funny imagining Ante’s thought process: “This is nice, hearing all the nice things this oil does, this local oil, this is so nice, oh my God, tampon, goodbye.” Poof.

Then we had an incredible lunch in this empty restaurant with an outdoor terrace, shaded by little slatted roof. We drank wine. Lots of it. Well, three glasses for me is a lot. Ante did not drink, it should go without saying. Rachel and I were like, “Wow. We’re kind of buzzed. And this wine is awesome. And what time is it again? And oh my God this food is so good. We have matching hats. We love you, Ante. More wine.”

It was my favorite trip thus far, on that winding back road up the mountain, past a road Napoleon built two centuries ago.

After departing from Trpanj, we drove on the Adriatic Road to get to Drvenik to catch the ferry out to Hvar. The Adriatic Road, y’all. It has an interesting history – especially the one section of it which belongs to Bosnia – a tiny little stretch of road where you have to go through a border crossing and then back out – look it up, it’s fascinating – a remnant of Austria-Hungary’s policies from a century ago and Bosnia’s only access to the Adriatic Sea (we did not go through the border, we scooped around it). The road goes through mountains, looking down on salt water lakes, careening around the curves, abysses dropping off into the ocean, it was … hair-raising. I took videos out the window, just to put one level of distance between myself and the experience. Don’t get me wrong. It was beautiful!! But it was a roller coaster. Deep breathing required.

We arrived in Drvenik with maybe 45 minutes until the ferry. Rachel and I wandered around and decided to get some lunch. We over-estimated our time. We sat down at a pizzeria, right on the beach, ordered two beers and a pizza. The beers were enormous and we burst out laughing when they arrived. STEINS. As we sat there, we saw the cars lining up for the ferry. Our pizza arrived. We ate one slice, before we suddenly realized, with a bolt of stress, WE HAVE TO LEAVE. NOW. We quickly paid and – having only drank one half of our huge steins – RAN to the ferry, each of us holding 3 leftover pieces of pizza wrapped in napkins. We were a spectacle. In our matching hats. Rachel was ahead of me and she said she saw Ante standing by the car, and he saw our frenzied approach and shook his head at us, calmly, reassuringly, like “No. That is not necessary.” (Yet another thing we laughed about for the whole trip.)

Our car was surrounded by snorting huffing motorcycles, and … about 80 guys in motorcycle gear, with leather jackets covered in patches, bandanas around heads, leather fingerless gloves, motorcycle boots, cigarettes, sunglasses, a gigantic stomping motorcycle gang. They were everywhere. The ferry passengers were Ante, me, Rachel and …. the Balkan chapter of the Hell’s Angels.

There appeared to be some not-hostile “segregation” going on: the Bosnia-Herzegovina bikers stuck together, and the Croatia bikers holed up with each other, but they were all headed to the same place: Hvar Island. (As a matter of fact, once out on Hvar, we kept catching glimpses of them, one time we saw them riding in a procession across the bay. The best moment was: we were driving over some huge mountain on Hvar, a tiny swerving road with a huge drop on one side, and a motorcyclist zipped by in the opposite lane – and Rachel said that he was staring at his phone. AS he was careening over the abyss. INSANE. SO BUTCH.) I murmured to Rachel, “I want to crash whatever party they’re having tonight, but I fear it is an uncrashable party.”

Once out on Hvar, we had a pretty long drive over the hilly interior of the country to get to Hvar proper. Hvar. (Pronounced Hwar, FYI. Ante corrected our pronunciation immediately.) Hvar is this gigantic island, covered in green trees, and towering mountainous hills, giving a dizzying endless view of the surrounding sea, the mainland like a mirage. Pictures don’t do it justice. You can’t really get the scale, or the sense of how high up we were.

Like Dubrovnik, like most towns along the coastline, Hvar is down at the bottom of the mountains, perched on the edge of the sea. So you have to climb up the mountains, go over the top and come on back down to get to it. It was a hell of a ride. Green almost vertical fields, and vineyards, and lavender fields (one of the things grown on the island, it’s known for its lavender – all along the road are signs saying “Lavenda”, indicating some person down that lane has lavenda for sale), with sun hitting the slopes. Stunning. As we approached Hvar, a gigantic structure loomed in sight on an opposite hill.

I mean …

Hvar was an important port, and an essential part of the Venetian Empire. A lot of trade came through here. Its importance can be seen in that fort, which hovers directly above the town below. Like a dragon standing watch. It’s incredible. We visited the fortress later. At night, it’s lit up, so it’s almost orange, which makes it look even MORE like a dragon.

Our hotel was amazing. It was a quick walk along a stone path curving around the coast to downtown Hvar. The hotel had a pool, but also a beach down at the end of a slanting path. We split our time between the pool and the beach. Boats bobbed in the water. There was a restaurant along the beach, a blazing white structure which took the light, making the whole scene appear magical, like something out of a myth.

Rachel and I swam, we did laps, we bobbed in the salty buoyance, we lay on deck chairs, we swam again. The hotel was clearly a family friendly place, overrun with kids having a blast.

For example, I don’t think in the history of the planet anyone has ever had more fun than this gaggle of 10/11-year-old girls, all crammed onto one paddle board, as one girl attempted to paddle them around.

The screams and laughter, the constant capsizing, the clambering back up on the board … it went on for an hour straight. It’s the kind of fun these kids will remember 45 years later as they reminisce. Like me and my cousins remembering our childhood summer vacations at the lake in New Hampshire (where we still vacation). “Member that time the rowboat capsized next to the dock and none of us were wearing life preservers?” And etc.

It had been a really long day. We had traveled a long way, on multiple boats. We would be hanging in Hvar for a couple of days, so we settled in.

Sometimes things strike me as funny and there’s no use explaining why.

I wake up at 5:30 in the morning no matter what I do. I go to bed early, too, so that’s why, but even if I stay up later (like 11 p.m. – wow, that’s SO. LATE.), I wake up at 5:30. It’s hard to force myself to go back to sleep. This was true throughout our trip as well. I woke up in Korčula, tiptoed around making coffee, and then sat out on our balcony watching the dawn rise, the sun come up. I watched Korčula transform. It almost brought tears to my eyes. If you turned away for one second, you missed some essential part of the transformation. It was riveting.

So it went from this …

… to THIS. Goooooood morning Korčula!

This day was super busy: we had to take three ferries, so I imagine it was slightly stressful for Ante. If you miss a ferry, you have hours to wait for the next one. We were headed to Hvar Island, an enormous island (bigger than Manhattan, which is my only perspective), and we had to take a ferry to the mainland, drive a bit, hop on another ferry, drive a bit more, and then get on our final ferry to Hvar Island. I am going to try to piece together the place-names. We line up to get on the first ferry. I remember my time on Block Island back in 2010. The life of the island is tuned in to the times of the ferry. It’s a specific mindset. You live your life, you go about your day, but you know – in your heartbeat there’s a clock with the ferry times – when the ferry is coming, bringing mail, friends, supplies – and so you know when to drive down to the harbor to wait. It was yet another gorgeous day, and we approached the mainland again, its wall of green and stony cliffs.

We then drove a little bit to the sleepy port of Trpanj to wait for our next ferry. It was, again, a quiet beautiful place, with a pebbly little beach, protected from the open sea by a jetty, jutting out into the water, with a statue and a lighthouse and a walkway. There was a dude out in the water attempting to windsurf. He stayed in the same spot though. Rachel and I kept looking out at him, checking on his progress. “Still there. Hasn’t really gone very far, has he.” “Hope he’s okay.” We walked out onto the jetty, and then back. I put my feet in the water, sat under a tree. Rachel walked around. It’s a little fishing village, quiet and peaceful. Boats everywhere.

We met up with Ante at a little cafe (randomly: we were walking by and he called out to us), and we had two cups of amazing coffee that we kept talking about for the rest of the trip and referencing every time we had another cup of coffee. “It was good, but it wasn’t as good as that coffee in Trpanj.” “I wonder if they make coffee here like the one we had in Trpanj?” and etc. and so forth. As we sat there, a woman with a unicorn floatie around her waist strolled by. We kept seeing her – or the unicorn – as she browsed in a little open-air market. We kept getting glimpses of her, the unicorn head bobbing in the distance. I suppose you “had to be there” but every time we caught a glimpse of her, we started laughing. It was like she had forgotten she was basically wearing a gigantic inflated unicorn.

Here’s a view of the harbor from the ferry. The color of the water … we couldn’t get over it.

Ante drove us up the coast. And what a coast it is. The road is a winding switchback nightmare-beauty, clinging to the sides of cliffs, with a dizzying endless drop on one side, down to the sea. You look out the window and all you see is SEA. This is why I don’t think I could drive in Croatia. I have to get into a Zen mode just to drive over the George Washington Bridge.

One of the best parts of this kind of tour is it involves just hanging out, one on one with the tour guide. You get better information that way, but you also just get to know another human being. My favorite part. I love talking to people. For instance, Ante loves Freddie Mercury, calls him “Freddie” (as I do), and isn’t really into the fact that “Queen” still tours but with another singer. “Queen without Freddie?” says Ante. “No.” So, you know. This is one of the perks. You discuss Fiddler on the Roof, you discuss the Walls of Dubrovnik, you discuss different kinds of Croatian wine, you talk about Freddie. I can’t imagine our trip at all without Ante (and Davor, later).

Before getting to Ston, a small town on the coast, the northern end of the Dubrovnik Republic, Ante pulled off the road to a little family-run oyster farm. I was so excited we were doing this, since my brother-in-law is an oyster salesman, works for an oyster company, and also gets side gigs shucking oysters for parties, weddings, food fests, whatever. He calls it “shucking a few” – but “a few” means thousands. It’s a skill, shucking 1,000 oysters in 5 hours, or whatever. Not everyone can do it. Oysters are a big part of my family’s life. Pat always brings them whenever we get together. He knows everything about them. I was thinking about Pat our whole time there. This was a quiet little outfit, perched on the side of a river. Again, not a tourist spot. There were no signs leading us there. If you know what oyster farms look like – then even just driving through the area, you’d know what was being done.

Unmistakable oyster farm “look,” all up and down this stretch of the sea, and its little bays and inlets. (There’s a reason why the Dubrovnik Republic centuries ago chose to put their northern border ABOVE this stretch. They needed the oyster farms.) You climb down a couple stone steps, past a little stone shrine with a statue of Jesus in it, and there you are. There’s a little floating dock, there’s a woman there, who reaches down into the sea and pulls out the crate filled with oysters. She “shucks a few,” while you’re standing there, and you slurp them down. They taste literally like you’re gulping down salty sea water. Eating about 8 oysters at 10 a.m. was quite a novelty experience.

We were the only ones there. It was a quiet morning. Beautiful.

Then onto Ston! As we approached, we could see the wall, rising almost vertically up the cliff, all the way to the very top. The thought of building that thing … The mind boggles. At the top (not open to the public), waves a Croatian flag. This was where the Dubrovnik Republic held their border against Venetian (and maybe Ottoman? Not sure) incursion.

The other thing going on in Ston, besides the wall and oyster farms, is salt harvesting. This goes back to antiquity. I read about the history of salt in the fascinating book Salt: A World History – highly recommended! Who had the salt determined the health of the empire. Wars were fought. Borders drawn. Empires rose, fell, based on salt. Humans need salt. It’s as essential as water. So there were oyster farms dotting the bay, but also these large white salt pans, which you could see, but you really couldn’t grasp what was going on until you climbed up the wall and looked down on them. There they were, gleaming white “fields”, marked off, in the water. So fascinating. So the Republic placed the wall at this point, so they would own the oysters and the salt.

It was still relatively early. Nobody was around. Ston is a quiet small village, probably overrun at the height of summer by tourists. But now … zzzzz. It was beautiful. Ante dropped us off at the entrance to the wall, which climbed up above our heads to a parapet perched on the side of the mountain, before dropping down again. A lookout. It looked daunting.

First of all, because of our shared height-fear. But also because … wow, that’s a lot of stairs. But at least we had matching hats now. We started up. It was endless. Occasionally I’d stop and glance out, and see the landscape unfurling below, I’d get that vertigo and turn almost grimly back to the task at hand. Step after step. By the time we reached the top, we were drenched in sweat.

That’s me down there.

Once we got to that little fort-like structure, we paused to catch our breath and enjoy the view. There’s those salt pans!

Aren’t they amazing? Ante said to us, “Those salt pans have been there for thousands of years.” Gives me chills.

Then we headed back down. You look at all these things, the crenellated walls, the lookouts, the “decks,” the pure fortress-like structure climbing up a vertical cliff, and you think, “Good luck eradicating war.” Or that’s what I think anyway. Human beings have been suspicious of one another and warring one another since the jump. I’m not saying that’s a good or a bad thing. I’m just saying that it IS.

Ante took us to lunch in Ston after we staggered down from our wall climb. He knew the place to go. He told us what to order. He was not wrong. It was one of the most delicious meals I’ve ever had. Black risotto. “You can’t get this anywhere else,” Ante said to me. “This is this family’s specialty.” (I ordered black risotto later in the trip and it was okay, but NOT LIKE THAT FIRST ONE. I told Ante about it and he said, “No, no, no, you buy it anywhere else, it’s fake.” Yes. I hear what you’re saying. Cats slinked around underfoot. We sat outside. It was just perfect.

Then, for even more decadence, Ante drove us into wine country. I suppose all of the coastline is wine country. He gave us a history lesson, as well as an agricultural lesson. The vines grow out of the rocks. The only thing Croatia really exports is wine. Even the “house reds” or whatever in Croatia are superb. We went to a family-owned winery, again perched on the side of a cliff. Rachel and I toured the wine cellar, this dark cold cellar with stone walls, and the guy explained to us about the barrels, how long things have to age, and why. Then we tasted the wines. There were a couple wine-types there. We had already had wine with our lunch. We drank more. It was like 2 p.m. What the hell has happened to us. The last wine we tasted was, hands down, the best wine I’ve ever had. I’m not a connoisseur but even I can tell “Oh. Okay. This wine is on ANOTHER LEVEL.” Ante watched us tasting the wine, waiting for our reactions. I looked at him after I took a sip of the last glass, and he saw the look on my face and nodded. “That is my favorite too.”

It was early afternoon. But maybe because of our rigorous (understatement) hike, plus the huge lunch we had had (Ante told us: “We do big lunch, small dinner.” That’s for damn sure.) … we didn’t get drunk. It was just a nice buzzy glow. I don’t really drink anymore. Last year I think I had two glasses of wine, all together. It’s just not a part of my life. But when in Rome … or Dalmatia … That wine was out of this world.

We then went to go pick up the ferry, which was taking us out to Korčula Island (the birthplace of Marco Polo, if you must know.) There’s just something about the way the wooded cliffs rise up out of the water, the sea dotted with big green islands, and the color of the water itself – so so blue, but also green – translucent at times – shifting hues … I mean, come on:

… all of that combined is so stunning, so specific to this place, its magic and appeal. I love ferries. Listen, I grew up in Rhode Island where the Block Island ferry was a part of our lives. I live in the New York area, with ferries criss-crossing the Hudson. There’s something about a ferry. We took many ferry rides while we were in Croatia – I think five? Each one had its own feel. But there’s nothing like your first.

Korčula is this little gem, perched out on an outcropping of land. A self-contained place, with – of course – forts and lookouts placed strategically, a marina, and a warren of stone streets and alleys, plus a stone walkway all around the town, in a circle, lined with restaurants, where you can sit on a stool hovering above the sea. It’s to die for. Marco Polo is everywhere. Marco Polo shops, murals, restaurants, the whole nine yards. You can walk around the periphery of Korčula in about 20 minutes. Ante did that with us, and then we went into the maze of streets and alleys. At the end of each alley, you can glimpse the sea. It was heaven. And all along the walkway, there are little steps down into the water. So you can eat dinner, and then just step into the sea for a quick swim if you want. There’s no filter on that first picture. That’s literally the color(s) of the water there.

Our hotel was across the little bay. You could basically swim across to the town. There was a salt water infinity pool, as well as a little stone beach, with treacherous mossy “steps” into the water. After our awkward entries/exits into the water, we bobbed around in the salty translucent buoyancy for what felt like forever, with the cliffs rising up on the mainland, and Korčula perched there, peacefully, across the bay. I mean, there was literally nothing. wrong.

After our swim, we walked into the town for dinner. It takes about 10 minutes. We strolled around and found a restaurant. Slowly, it became dark, and we spent some time wandering around the town, watching it transform, watching the coastline and the mainland disappear, except for the lights …

A string of lights through the darkness. On our walk back, we tried to re-trace our steps. We got horribly lost. Everything was dark. We didn’t recognize where we were. We found ourselves on a pitch-black road, and had zero idea where we were, and even what direction we were going in. We were trying to GPS our way back to the hotel (hilarity), and kept making jokes about how this is how such stories always end: “and the two American women were never seen again after leaving the restaurant.” Rachel used her flashlight app so we could at least see the damn road. We eventually made our way back and I still have no idea how we got so lost. It’s like one pathway from the hotel to the town.

Here’s the view of Korčula from our balcony.

It’s a magical place. Ante told us that Croatians and Italians argue about who “owns” Marco Polo. Croatians claim him because Korčula is in Croatia. Italians claim him because Marco Polo lived in Korčula when it was part of the Venetian empire. I have a feeling this is a fight neither side can win.

There were a couple things scheduled for our first day

–Walk the gigantic wall surrounding the old city of Dubrovnik. (Game of Thrones fans, take note.)
–Take the cable car up to the top of the cliff over Dubrovnik, where Napoleon built a fort during his brief but productive occupation.
–Lunch.
–Swim for hours back at the hotel.

Even though I had seen the wall around red-roofed Dubrovnik, the gigantic fortress-like wall facing the sea, I really had no concept of the wall itself – how big it was, how it was a city in and of itself, until we got there.

Before we went to climb the wall, though, we walked around in the old city. Ante took us into the main entranceway of the walled city, stopping to point things out, giving us the bare bones of what we were looking at, contextualizing it for us. There was so much to take in, especially in our addled-brains, we whose bodies still felt like it should be 3 o’clock in the morning. But never mind. Ante was awesome. He did assume SOME basis of understanding. Like, you need to know what he means when he says “Ottomans” or “Venetians.” If you don’t know what those things signify, you may feel like he was speaking gibberish, you could never keep up. If you don’t know history, well … I don’t know what to tell you, crack a book? I was grateful for my own fascination with this whole Balkan area, so I am familiar with the conflicts and the timeline. But still! It was so much to absorb!

Also, we didn’t bring hats to Croatia with us, which was such a huge problem for us during the wall-walk in Dubrovnik that the second we came off the wall, drenched in sweat with sunscreen melting off our faces, we went into an overpriced tourist shop and bought big straw hats. It was a struggle for us to find hats that fit our large Irish heads (see: Conan O’Brien. And all O’Malleys) and we ended up buying the same hat, even though wearing matching hats made us look like nerds, or – as Rachel observed – members of a cult. (When Ante met up with us later, after we walked the wall, he stood by the car, smiling when he saw us, and Rachel heard him murmur to himself as he got behind the wheel: “Matching hats …” We ended up saying this ad nauseum to each other through the whole trip, murmuring just like he did, “Matching hats …” Pre-hat, we were two extremely pale women of Irish descent, slathering sunscreen on, sweating it off, slathering it on more, all as we tried to take in Ante’s introductory remarks.

The walls are these huge unbroken structures, with little crenels way way up top, spaces in the stone to shoot … arrows or stone catapults or whatever the hell the people back then did, to ward off invaders. Dubrovnik was an independent Republic back in the day, the only place on the Dalmatian coast to resist the Venetian occupation and stay independent. The Venetians provided protection, which I suppose was necessary for smaller towns and ports, especially with such prime real estate as that coastline, but Dubrovnik was like, “Thanks, but no thanks, we’re good.” From the likes of it, the Dubrovnik people were industrious, slightly obsessive, hard workers, and determined. They had to rebuild so many times. The city was practically destroyed by an earthquake in the 17th century and the people rebuilt it just exactly as it had been before. They liked their city exactly the way it was, as it had always been. A specific building or church was destroyed? They rebuilt it with the exact same dimensions, same steeple height, same everything. I find this fascinating.

Even more fascinating: over every single entrance through the wall, a statue of St. Blaise stands in a little alcove.

Every square, every church, every building … became like a game of “Where’s Waldo?” St. Blaise is not just over every entrance. He is everywhere, in general. He perches on top of churches. He lingers in stone alcoves. He hovers over buildings. The patron saint. Ante told us to look carefully at him: In his left hand, Blaise holds a model of Dubrovnik, a perfectly rendered miniature, like a Dubrovnik in a snow-globe. The Dubrovnik people were so into themselves and their city and I just love this. They had reason to be proud: this was their place, their safe haven, a world in and of itself. Ante pointed out that when the city was destroyed in the earthquake, only one building remained. It’s this building here at the end of this little street.

(Side note: On the top of the hill above in that photo is the fort Napoleon built. Just FYI. It also shows, as I mentioned in the first post, the vulnerability of Dubrovnik to attack from above.)

If you peer at that building in the photo, you can see Mr. Blaise, in an alcove over the front door. He’s always in the same pose, he’s always holding that little replica of Dubrovnik’s buildings. So when the earthquake leveled Dubrovnik, except for that building, the smartypants Dubrovnik builders/planners/whoever used Blaise’s model as a guide to reconstruct their city exactly as it had been before. And they did. It took a lifetime, practically. But they did it. Same thing when the Serbs destroyed 75% of the city. They’re still working on that reconstruction. There are still remnants of the war in the 1990s. For example, look at this statue of Marin Držić, a famous Renaissance-era playwright, born and bred in Debrovnik. (There’s a legend – well, among tourists – Croatians are like, “Uhm, we’ve never heard of this” – that if you rub his nose, you’ll be lucky, or whatever, something dumb. Hence: his golden nose.) If you look at his collar, you can see the hole from a Serb bullet.

Ante walked us around inside the walled city. I have been all over the United States which, I would remind snotty Europeans who say Americans never go anywhere, is a continent. It would take a lifetime to explore every corner of America. I’ve been to Ireland a million times. But I have never seen a place like this in person: those stone cities from the Dark Ages, from the Renaissance, with leftover Roman elements, waterworks and sewers, and tiny “streets,” and alleys coming off from the streets – all the things you see in movies taking place in Italy and Greece, or described in books. We just don’t have anything like this in the States. Our history as a nation doesn’t go back that far. So it was a weird thing. I was in Dubrovnik for the first time, but I’ve SEEN such spaces so many times in movies, described in books, in my own dreamspace, that it felt like deja vu. I was like: “Oh. Yes. This kind of street. I know about this kind of street.”

I felt the same way when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time. We all know about the Grand Canyon. We can picture it in our minds, even if we’ve never been there. Same with the Eiffel Tower. The Coliseum. The Great Wall. The Pyramids. They already exist in our minds. They are already THERE. So when you see them for the first time, it’s like seeing an old friend, an old friend you’ve never met. I was like, “Oh. Hello, Grand Canyon. Yes. I know you. You’ve been with me always. It’s so so good to see you.”

That’s how it felt walking around through Dubrovnik.

Ante would stop every now and then to point stuff out. Give a little background. Answer questions. I felt instantly, from the second he picked me up and we talked on the way to the hotel from the airport, that this was an amusing and personable man. He got excited when we understood something, when we grasped the larger concept of what he was saying. I said something like, “Wow, so the people in Dubrovnik were … really obsessed with their own city, it seems like.” He said, “YES. YES” happily and hugely. I got it, in other words. He had done his job as a guide.

Now I am not going to weigh in or take sides in the 1990s war, let me say that straight up. And I was only in Croatia for a short time. But I will say that the scars are still fresh, and there’s still a lot of bitterness.

“Do you think there will be another Balkan War, Ante?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes. But not right now. Everyone remember the last one and are tired. But people who come later will have forgotten and it will start up again.”

Rachel is a huge Game of Thrones fan, and much of it is filmed in Croatia. It became a running joke, because neither Ante, nor Davor, nor myself, watch the show. Rachel would explain to us the significance of each site we saw. She became the tour guide. Croatia appears to have mixed feelings about Game of Thrones although it’s been a boon for tourism. There are Game of Thrones tours, etc. Ante was like, “I don’t watch the show but there are some stairs where a big scene was filmed …” Rachel said, “The ‘Shame Shame Shame’ stairs?” Ante started laughing, because he had heard that before, “Yes. Shame. Shame.” He took us there. Rachel murmured to herself, “Shame. Shame. Shame.”

There are open-air markets, cafes, wine bars. People still live in the walled city (no cars allowed … I mean, the streets are too narrow anyway). Inhabitants had strung their laundry up, where it flapped in the breeze over our heads. It’s extremely expensive to live there, obviously, and it must be kind of a nightmare, like living in the middle of Times Square. But we did get glimpses of the ordinary life people lived, surrounded by history: a basketball court, seen from above as we walked the wall, a high school with open windows and you could hear the cacophony of 100s of teenagers talking and laughing, small shuttered windows high up in the walls.

Finally, Ante dropped us off at the entrance to the wall itself, and told us to meet him at the entrance at such and such a time. Up we climbed. It was only once we were up there that the two of us – height-phobic – realized that this walk might be a little bit challenging if you are afraid of heights. There were moments where we tried to hug the inner wall, away from the sheer drop to the sea on the other side, moments where we had to keep our heads down. But then, when you peek up, all you saw were these extraordinary vistas, of sea, and mountains, the surrounding areas, the places where the Serbs shot down on the city, the ocean, a bunch of kayakers filling the little bay, headed out for a long journey, the boats, the nearby island – uninhabited except for a Franciscan monastery, the views we got of the city inside the walls, its steeples, domes, red roofs, its warren of alleys and streets. It was astonishing. Even though we were baking in the sun, and nervously applying sunscreen, sweating it off, applying again, wash/rinse/repeat … even though at every pausing spot, we huddled together in the tiny patch of shade … these walls were really something to see.

The first half is a gradual incline. Endless stairways up. Then you dip back down, descending. Then you climb and climb and climb again to get to the wall facing the sea. We did pretty well, all things considered, even though we were hat-less and jetlagged. It was the highest part of the wall, facing the wide sea, no land in sight, that was the most dizzying, the most spectacular. I got vertigo, I had that unmistakable sensation that I might not be able to control myself and jump off into the abyss. As an East Coast person, the Atlantic doesn’t really have vistas like this. The Pacific does. Highway 1 gives you a wide view of the ocean from on high, and so does this wall. The sea looks END.LESS.

When we came back down, we were exhilarated, sweaty, and in dire need of hats. On our way to find a rando place that sold hats, we came across an Irish pub, hidden down an alley. The whole “let’s find an Irish pub” thing became an ongoing joke. We didn’t go INTO any of these pubs, but the decor was the same as any Irish pub you find anywhere in the world. We had to take a picture.

With all that we did, as far as we went, we managed to meet up with Ante at exactly the proposed time. He was right where he said he would be. (“Matching hats …”)

Our bodies ached, but it felt great, all that climbing. I don’t know what I will do now that I’m back, I’m so used to climbing stairs up mountains. It feels like that’s all we did. The subway stairs just aren’t going to cut it.

Next up: riding a terrifying cable car up the side of the mountain, to where Napoleon’s fort was at the top. Ante assured us it was only 4 minutes long. This also became a running joke, our fear of heights, and Ante’s insistence in bringing us to the highest places possible. “I am afraid of heights.” “Let me drive you on a narrow switchback road with no guardrail up a mountain. At 80 miles an hour.” It was awesome.

Once inside the cable car, this annoying American woman was jabbering on about literally nothing. “God, it’s so airless in here. Do these windows open? I wonder if we can open a window. I really need some air. WHOO. It’s hot.” There are like 15 people in this cable car and nobody else is talking because we’re getting ready to have an experience, right? We are all literally on top of each other. Rachel and I heard a low adult male voice say to the woman, “Mom? Let’s practice something called Quiet Time.” Oh my God, it was so hilarious. But she was incapable of practicing Quiet Time. Halfway up the mountain (only a 4-minute ride), she started talking about how she packed and how one bag is in the other bag and my God, how fascinating, thank you so much for sharing. We are flying through the air looking down on Dubrovnik all to the accompaniment of the banal chatter of this wretched woman. (Rachel and I kept saying, “Mom, let’s practice something called Quiet Time” for the rest of the trip.)

But besides THAT, it was beautiful. And it required deep Zen-like breathing to not freak the fuck out about being up so high.

At the top is an observation deck, and a restaurant, with Napoleon’s fort off to the side, still damaged from the war in the 90s. If I’m remembering right, the Croat soldiers used Napoleon’s fort to ward off the Serbs, who were in the surrounding mountains. I remember some of those stories. The fort is not open to the public, and the masses of tourists were hanging out on the observation deck, so when Rachel and I moved off to go check out the fort we found ourselves almost alone, which was kind of extraordinary. There isn’t even an official cement path to the fort. It’s just dirt and pebbles. The fort is not in great shape, and there are wild flowers growing out of its battle-scarred walls.

Ante said earlier, when he first pointed out the fort: “Before Napoleon came, we had been living in dirt and filth for hundreds of years. We tossed our slop out the windows. Balkan culture. We had not good air, and we were very dirty.” (His words, not mine.) “But he came, and he built roads, and he cleaned everything …”
“He whipped you all into shape?” I asked.
“Yes. This is why we love Napoleon here. He was very good for us.”

The other person they love there, even more than Napoleon, is Bill Clinton, for obvious reasons if you remember the 90s. (The bomber jacket he wore on his visit to Croatia became a popular and coveted item. Everyone was wearing them after his visit. Everyone wanted the exact same model. This is all according to Ante. “We wanted Hillary to win just because the last name Clinton means so much to us here.” He pulled up pictures of Clinton in that bomber jacket to show us.)

Standing on the cliff outside the fort, you can see for miles and miles and miles. Down the coast, down onto Dubrovnik, up the coast, and then inland as well: a long valley, with big grey mountains beyond it. That’s Bosnia-Herzegovina.

I’ll get to Bosnia next time. I want to go to Sarajevo. But at least I got to “see” the country.

Ante refused to let us eat in the tourist restaurant. “No. I know better place. Good place. No crowds.”

We got back in the car and careened down this mountain road, so narrow that cars have to basically pull over in the strip of grass on the side to let each other pass. At a random point, Ante took a left, and we drove down this dirt road into what appeared to be a forest, and there in a glade was this small restaurant. We were the only ones there. Ante ordered for us, in Croatian. He ordered wine. The place was quiet, cool, with cool tiles, sunlight outside, dappled shade. We were so so glad we weren’t eating in that tourist trap next to the observation deck. This was much MUCH better, and would be how we ate for our entire trip. This is the good thing about hiring these guys. They’re locals, and they weren’t trailing 40 tourists behind them who all had to eat in the same spot. It was just me and Rachel. The food was delicious. (I did not have one piece of processed food the entire time we were there. Okay, we did buy a bag of pretzels once when we were desperate. But other than that …)

It had been a long long day and it was only 2 p.m. or whatever. Ante drove us back to the hotel. We were crazy out of it. Dehydrated, jetlagged … and inordinately proud of the fact that neither of us were sunburned at all. We kept talking about it. We had trouble with the elevators. We went to the wrong floor. Twice.

We then swam, and lay on deck chairs (shaded by an umbrella, of course), and tried out the hot tub next to the infinity pool, and swam again in the Adriatic. We ordered wine and carried it out to our deck chairs on the big stone slabs cut out of the coastline. We dozed off. We woke up. We swam again.

I mean, come on. It was heaven.