Day 71 - Thursday, Entering Trogir
We left the Plitvice House mid-morning after our magnificent hike through Plitvice National Park the day before. Today was primarily a travel daay through the mountains sothwestward toward the sea and our destination of Trogir.
Trogir is a lovely old city, dating back to 300 BC, inhabited by Greeks, Romans, and numerous others. The port today is a tourist destination and charter yacht pickup and drop off port. The old city courtyards become a conglomerate of festive outdoor restaurants in the evenings. The fruitt market, seafood markets, bakeries, super market, ice cream, and souvenier shops selling bething suits, sun hats, and coverups do a lively business. Even the churches looked buy with people chanting as they approached the alter for communion. We have not seen any mosques here, mostly Orthodox and Roman Catholic.
We spent two nights here in an AirBnB, a nice room with comfortable bed overlooking the marina and the city across the river. Once we parked the car, and that was quite tricky, we walked everywhere. When we first arrived, we searched for our accommodation address, having made arrangements with our host to seek out the business below the rooms and have, the propietor call him at his work. He would then come to greet us and show us where to park and our rooms.
The traffic wa slow, bumper to bumper, and the maps we have for the area are sketchy. We could see on the IPad whee our physical location is, but often it placed us a bit off the road. Also the maps when layered down will show a road, but not give a true indication of the width for a car, verses a motor bike. Our first pass of the accommodation indicated no parking across from the rooms, but possibly a space on the oppposite of the road directly under the rooms which would require us to approach from the oppposite direction.
We wound our way slowly up the hill and made a left turn at the top on a street that looked like it had some descending backgroads that would take us to the back of our accommodation. We made a turn down one of the roads. Good idea but the street became narrower and narrower. We had to pull in the sideview mirrors to squeak through one section, hoping it would widen up to the main road, but no, it got even narrower. At this point, motormikes and pencil thin people could not squeak past us.
There had been a tight turn around space where another small road had interscted about 30 meters back, but it meant backing up and doing a tight three point turn. So we backed up ever so slowly as locals scratched their heads in amazement of the lunatics who would try to drive a car down the road. As soon as the street was wide enough for me to open the door, I got out to help direct Russ's backward and forward movement, stopping him frequently to direct motor bkes and pedestrians. At one point Russ was an eyelash from scraping the side off of the car on an old brick wall where jagged pieces protruded.
We finally made it back to the top and and tuned back down the main road from the direction we had originally come. Now we were half a kilometer from the guesthouse moving 1 car length every minute or so. There was no guarantee that we would find parking when we got there so I got out and walked down the road, knocking on stopped cars as I squeezed between them and the stone walls on the passenger side. I just wanted to alert them I was there so I din't wind up getting squished if they needed to move closer to the wall for a truck coming up the road.
It took me about 10 minutes to make my way to the proprietor's shop below the room we were renting. The lady called the owner. He said he would be there in about 15 minutes and that we should just pull up on the sidewalk in front of the store until he arrived. It took Russ another 15 minutes to return to the accommodation where I waved him up on the sidewalk. Really? I could see the question on his face.
Our host arrived at the same time. He helped unload our bags and took them upstairs, then offered to ride in the car to a designated parking place. He recognized the AVIS car and it turnee out he works at the AVIS office at the airport where we will be ultimately return the car. He offered to drive the car through the crazy traffic and streets much to Russ's joy, Kaija did a three point turn on the sidewalk to turn the car completely around, drove backup the main road, and down one of the roads we had not previously taken to a quiet, safe little place to park. Phew! Glad Russ didn't have to do that! We were exhausted.
We rested up a bit then walked through the old city, having great sea bass and veal dinner. Got some nice evening photos and realized we would have to get up early the following morning to get uncluttered street shots before the herds of other tourists jammed the narrow city alleys.
Day 72 - Friday, Hanging out in Trogir
Had a great day, doing much of nothing. We were in and out of our room many times during the day to enjoy respite in air conditioning and the humid warm air of Trogir. We did get up early for some photos, again for shopping, ATM, later a walk through the marinas, and a fourth time back into the city for ice creams. We leave in the morning for Split.
All is Well with the Worrall Travel R's in Trogir, Croatia
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