Time to Split
If we needed a down dot on this holiday, today was it. Mladin’s fish stew, while tasting delicious last night in the eating, didn’t taste so good when I was violently throwing it up during the night. Ross and Toby ate it too but they were totally fine this morning. I’m not sure why it didn’t agree with me but I woke up feeling decidedly green around the gills (ooh, still too soon to be making a fish reference).
As I mentioned yesterday, the tourist season is really winding down here in Mljet. The national park officially shuts to tourists on 1 November but it seems that lots of restaurants and hotels have pulled ip stumps a bit early. The front porch of our apartment complex is a festival of tarps, everything, including the icecream fridge, wrapped tightly in layers of plastic and roped securely. Chairs are overturned on tables, shutters are closed and the hatches are all battened down for the winter. Our original plan was to check-out by 10 and meet Aida and Mladin for a (free) hike to a lookout for some stellar views. I certainly didn’t feel hike-ready, Sam and Tobes have caught Ross’ cold and weren’t feeling tip-top so we decided to call it off.
Svetlana, the statuesque cleaning lady from Montenegro, who has been left in charge while Miro resumes his off-season life back in Dubrovnik, (and whose English vocabulary doesn’t extend much beyond “hello”) seemed to be moving in to the apartment Toby and Sam were vacating. This was confirmed by Aida, who informed the boys that she and Svetlana were moving straight in - and I mean straight in. Barely towelled down from his shower, Sam was yet to get all his clothes in his suitcase before Aida wheeled her bag in and started unpacking.
Our ferry wasn’t picking us up from the island until 4:55 this afternoon but we couldn’t see any sense in staying here so we called Miro in Dubrovnik to arrange a taxi to pick us up and take us to Pomena. Mladin came down to see us off and we gave Aida our best wishes and bud her goodbye. Within a few minutes our trusty cab driver from yesterday - Dave Wood’s Croatian doppelgänger- hurled our luggage in his van and dropped us off in the little town.
It was a surprise to see 5 big super yachts/mini cruise ships docked tightly, side-by-side in the bay. Compared to yesterday the place was pumping! The mostly over 50s passengers (a lot with Aussie accents) were buzzing all over the place, filling seats in the 2 cafes that were open and filling the tills of the little gift shops who still had open doors. The lady at the tourism office up the hill was lovely and made space for all our bags to be stashed. Bike hire places were still open here and we did fleetingly consider whether we should get active and explore a bit before deciding to just plant ourselves in our favourite cafe and chill. Yesterday we had breakfast and lunch at this convenient little establishment (‘Forca’) and today we did the same.
We played cards, read our books, drank coffee, people-watched. The friendly waiter told us we could stay there as long as we liked and we felt like old friends by the time we got a selfie with him and finally departed his premises. Come to think of it, he’s probably Mladin’s cousin - everybody on Mljet, apart from Aida and Svetlana -is apparently.
After a wander around the water and some stone skimming, our big, surprisingly modern ferry arrived (a little late) and we started our 3 hour journey to Split. As the sun started to set, the sky was streaked with the most beautiful shades of pink. After a brief stop at Korcula, the swell started to really mount and we were rocking and rolling all over the place. The pitch black out the windows made it impossible to see or know the size of the waves or brace for the boat pitching. There were lots of gasps, plenty of oohs and ahhhs as we rose and fell on the swell and the ferrymen were liberally handing out barf bags. When nature called, I staggered to the Ladies like I’d had a few schooners under my belt and had to hold on like I was riding a bucking bronco.
As soon as we approached our island destination of Split, the sea was instantly calm and everyone was relieved to be on dry ground. We had a cute message from our hotel (best read with your best Croatian accent)
Dear Sarah,
You luggage transfer will be in front of the catamaran. It will be a man with a let's say little vehicle with a
trailer.
Kind regards,
Ivana
Sure enough the ‘let’s say, little vehicle’ was there and the ‘man’ was there to pile our bags into said trailer. Ably assisted by Google maps, Sam led the way through the Bronze Gate into the grand Diocletian’s Palace and to our slightly-hard-to-find hotel. There was a guitarist and singer crooning some chilled tunes in the square with people on cushions around the steps enjoying the show. It was such a great atmosphere! Tobes satisfied his craving for Maccas while the rest of us dined at a pizza place that gave us each a set of scissors to cut our pizzas and had a button on the table that called the waiter. We can’t wait to explore some more tomorrow.
