I am up at sunrise, the streets are quiet save for the occasional person sweeping up and the continual cries of the sparrows and buzz of the grasshoppers. I find the one early café for a cup of coffee. Every town has one early cafe, kind of a secret, since all the regular ones open at 8:00. But what about the local workers who start early? So I walk till I find the quiet gathering of 3-10 men, quietly talking, reading the papers, and I just grab a seat and listen in.
Mornings are the best, that warm light slanting in, lighting the bell towers, snaking up crooked alleys with a river of gold, leaving others still black.
The early crowd is always laughing, while others sit quietly staring in their coffee.
I awoke at 3:30 last night and the last waiters at the café out our window had just stacked the last chair and were sitting enjoying a quiet cigarette together.
So as I write this now at 7:00 I am listening in on a conversation of four friends, and they talk in a rambling mix of Croatian, German, Italian and English. Really interesting (and good practice) to try to follow. My main problem with languages is the tempo and speed. This evesdropping helps. (I still remember the breakthrough day in France when the phrasing suddenly came, and I could pick the words up in the blur going by.) It is fascinating how everyone is so multi-lingual, so naturally, and also explains how I can get away with mixing my poor Italian with only slightly better German when I run out of words. Everyone knows a few essential English words, which helps: yes, no, there, coffee, Hotel California: always with a huge grin, sometimes a kind of air-guitar motion, some even sing that part and hum the "what a lovely place" part. 'otel Kahleeforneeyah! Very excited that they know where we live. Everyone, seriously everyone loves California. They may think Americans are nuts, some confide to you, in conversations, resentment towards the EU and the US, but they LOVE California. Better than being Canadian. Wish we had our own California passports- that would be a real cool thing.
After Gail gets up we head to the bakery, then the café, and are very entertained when the waiter changes out the keg of dark beer (Yes, beer. 9:00 and the lady behind us orders a beer for breakfast), the keg hose has a small leak, and when he tries to fix it, it turns into a power geyser! It was raining beer inches in front of us, as he bravely bent right into the jet to turn it off. Within five minutes word had spread and people from all over town were coming by to cluck, laugh, offer advice. We run a few errands then we pack up and are off on the windy road to Sahara Beach, up by Paradise. Driving in Croatia, like most of Europe, takes real nerve. The roads are in excellent shape, almost appearing newly paved, but they are narrow. Really narrow. As in two cars heading at each other at 90kmh seem to barely miss kind of narrow. You have to be good at knowing where you are on the road as there usually are no real shoulders, and you have to hold steady, and you have to be able to judge which places you really cannot pass (example, meeting a bus on a curving little bridge; either cross before or after, but not with) and so adjust your speed.
We get to Lopar, grab a map, follow a one lane road winding between houses and farms, which then turns into a bumpy rock and dirt track. We find parking beneath a pine, and walk out to the beach through the pine forest. It is about a km hike down to the beach, which is beautiful and isolated but has no shade. None. The trees end well back and there is just pointy tough saw grass. No shade on these hot days would be suicide, so we drink a swig of water, hike back out (the grasshoppers are so loud we have to shout and my ears are ringing) and drive around back to Paradise. Could be worse.
“What did you have to do today?”
“Damn it all. We had to go to Paradise. Hell of a time.”
Tonight we are eating under the tallest bell tower, at Tapas Bar Kampanel (bell towers in Italy are Campanile), with a view out over the harbour. Good red wine to complement our tapas: Olives, mozzarella layer with tomatoes, a scallop, smoked salmon, cheese and asparagus bruschetta, chicken grilled on a skewer, cheese from the island of Pag in olive oil (especially complementary to the wine!), mussels au gratin, chicken nuggets, and breaded mushrooms.
I love small food. I mean I really really L-O-V-E it. You get a whole lot of different tastes, textures, you eat slow and each thing brings out differences and subtleties in the wine... like a wine and food pairing, and the potions are all just the right size. I mean, I got to try ten different things.
I wonder if this would fly in Redding? Maybe SF.
So, if we were here a third night, I would be really hard pressed to pick which place to go to next. Two nights of fantastic food, two great days sitting in Paradise... 23:00 (11PM) and I am sitting in shorts, flip flops, cool breeze blowing...
Rab Croatia is a pretty sweet place.
Tomorrow we island hop on the ferries across three islands (Rab, Krk, and Cres, cutting out a loooong drive up and around the Adriatic) to reach the Istria Peninsula and Rovinj, right across from Venice, Italy.