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| Zadar, Croatia |
ZADAR, CROATIA No one reommended I stop in Zadar, but I thought it would be a nice way to break up the five hour bus ride to Zagreb. Zadar lies on the Adriatic between Split and Rijeka and from the little I've seen appears to be a city and area worth exploring. I say "appears to be" because I spent the afternoon trying to find a place to stay. There is just one hotel in Old Town and it charges $200 per night and another outside of Old Town that charges $150. In hindsight, I should have taken one of these hotels. With no taxis in sight, I ended up walking ten kilometers with luggage in tow to end up in a hotel that is close to nothing. Oh well, live and learn. I give Zadar my lowest rating for accessibility, just one star. Actually, of the ten countries I've been to, Croatia, with all of its historical and natural charm, is sadly the least amenable to the traveler; much of its disfunctionality due, I suspect, to the political climate. A curious example of the country's disfunctionality is the phenomenon I noticed on the 110 kilometer bus ride from Split: beautiful scenery, the Adriatic on one side and low mountains on the other, but rocks everywhere; no agriculture, just rocks, shrubs, and stubby trees. Curiously, as far as the eye can see, considerable effort has gone into carefully, but often haphazardly, organizing the rocks into mounds, fences, pyramids, squares, and circles. Often the rocks seem to delineate property lines, but to what end? There aren't any homes or farms; there's nothing grown or raised. Did this happen recently or over thousands of years? I fail to see the functionality.
