Zadar

Zadar has a very family and tourist friendly waterfront park. It features a set of acoustic tubes embedded beneath large marble steps which “sing the song of the city with every lashing wave and burst of wind.” It also features a large circle of solar-powered lights which light up at night (see photos).

Anne went on a long hike in the Paklenica National Park, a place of steep rocky mountains.

We were there on a Sunday, and the waterfront walk was busy with families and couples of all ages just enjoying the space. 

A very large megayacht was tied up on the park wall. It is called Vibrant Curiosity and is owned by German entrepreneur Reinhold Wurth. See Wikipedia.

There were also some Roman ruins.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday in Rome

This day did not go so well. It did start out ok - at 9 AM we got our rapid COVID tests required for reentry to the US ($50), and the results were negative. We got  GREEN PASSes! I'll keep it short. Isaia picked Anne up at 11 AM while I hung back in the hotel room. We planned to meet at 1:30 and go to lunch. I took a cab to the designated meeting place and waited... Eventually Isaia arrived and told me that he was having trouble communicating with Anne who was waiting for him outside a museum where he had left her to tour on her own. He asked me to see if I could connect with her. I tried, but the texts and phone calls were not going through. We waited. Eventually, after 45 minutes, I got a message from Anne - she had walked back to the hotel. So Isaia drove to the hotel and picked Anne up - she had waited outside the museum for him for an hour and was understandably annoyed. He had run into traffic problems. At our request he drove us to a restaurant that he recommended so we coul
Read more

After thoughts

Final photos posted - still readjusting to being home. I am happy that we went ahead with the trip in spite of the known (and always lurking unknown) obstacles that we encountered.  As long as COVID is still a public health concern, travel outside of the US will be more complex and risky. Of course the kind of places that we want to travel to are desperate for the tourists to come back, so we were welcomed everywhere we went. But being on a large, luxurious cruise ship built to host 980 passengers with only 480 on board posed a real challenge for the staff. The captain said that the ratio of crew to passenger was 1:1. Other than constantly cleaning this and that, it seemed that many were really looking for something to do. We received so many ‘good days and thank yous,’ I really wanted to sit them down and hear their stories of life while the cruise ships were idle. During the cruise portion of the trip, I learned a great deal about the tumultuous history of Malta and of the Balkans. A
Read more