Monday, September 30th.
When we got up I went around checking out this really interesting and different ‘hotel’, Ethno Houses Plitvica Selo, very interesting place.
We left early and traveled to the Dalmatian coast via Zadar, the ancient capital of Byzantine Dalmatia. This large city has its historic center crowded on a small piece of land jutting into the Adriatic Sea. We entered the city through one of the Venetian gates and proceeded to the Roman Church of St. Donatus and the Cathedral of Anastasius.
When it was occupied by the Germans in 1943, Allied bombings destroyed about 60% of the city as it was an important port. Zadar was rebuilt one more time, as it had been many times over its tumultuous history, it had been invaded or captured by many different countries or empires, including the Romans, Napoleon, the Venetians (who were here for 500 years), the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Italians, among others. It is for this reason that a variety of architectural styles, from Roman Corinthian columns to Romanesque churches and Venetian buildings are all found here. Chaotic reconstruction work was undertaken to repair the devastation Zadar suffered in the Second World War.
The frantic reconstruction turned much of the seafront into an unbroken, monotonous concrete wall. But by the Adriatic we saw two very creative and innovative pieces of art that a local Croatian architec, Nikola Basic, designed to improve the area: the Monument to the Sun and the Sea Organ. The Monument to the Sun, or The Greeting to the Sun, is a monument dedicated to the Sun. It consists of a 22-meter diameter circle representing the Sun, with three hundred, multi-layered glass plates placed on the same level as the stone-paved waterfront, with photovoltaic solar modules underneath. Lighting elements installed in the circle turn on at night and produce a light show. Smaller circles stretching from the big circle represent the planets and are spaced and sized accordingly. The monument symbolizes communication with nature. Basic also created the Sea Organ by placing a system of polyethylene tubes of various sizes and a resonating cavity concealed under the step. The waves interact with the organ and create somewhat random but harmonic sounds to make music which changes based on the size of the waves.
We continued on the bus to Trogir where we visited the 13th century Saint Lawrence Gothic cathedral and had a walking tour around the medieval centre of town.
After that we drove on to Split, the second largest city of Croatia. The historic city center actually lies in the walls of the enormous retirement Palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, built between 295-305 AD. It served as a palace, military fortress, and later, a fortified town. The city is enclosed by huge walls, pierced by 4 main gates, one on each side of the rectangular plan. Through some Adventure Aboard mixup we wound up at a different hotel, with the same name and were not located near the old city as we were supposed to be, so instead of walking into that part of the city we had to get Urska to drive us there. We walked the promenade along the harbour past the locals eating and hanging out along the harbour to our restaurant. Some of us had the specialty lamb or veal dish, but I wasn’t too impressed and Shayna and a couple of others had a disappointing meal of 6 mussels and 5 clams. We were at the end of the big table and talked to Chuck and his wife who were both in the US Navy. Chuck served on submarines! Very interesting. Then we had to take taxis back to our hotel.
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