“Sometimes a feeling is all we humans have to go on.”
-James T. Kirk, “A Taste of Armageddon”
Lesson Learned: You get spoiled by staying in apartments. Large rooms, a kitchenette, often a balcony, they are generally quieter than hotels, and you can make your own meals which not only saves money, but it makes it feel more like home.
Now, when we stay in a hotel we hate it. Well, hate may be too strong of a word, but we prefer the space and amenities provided in an apartment. The best, and maybe only thing we like at a hotel, is when breakfast is included with the bill. The worst is being crammed into a single room, tiny bathrooms, people running up and down the halls, and maids knocking on the door at odd hours when you don’t want them. I much prefer to rent a guest house.
Go-Date: Day 90, Monday, April 22
Sites covered in this post:
- Pazin castle
- The Island of Krk
Moving Down the Coast
From Pula we moved south down the coast to the island of Krk. We really don’t have much to report on this leg of the trip. It’s pretty, and beachy, pretty small old town area, and unless you really enjoy laying on the beach, or shopping, or taking boat rides that’s about all there is.
But, before leaving Istria, we did poke a little around the interior and found nothing much of note, other than beautiful countryside. There was a little castle in Pazin which was built back in 983 AD. [Note: A small castle doesn’t mean its a studio, or a garden home size, it still covered several acres, but it does mean if a Game of Thrones army showed up for a seige they would have probably just opened the gates. These were not massive structures.] This castle wasn’t very important as it kept getting passed around from one noble family to another. At first it belonged to Poreč to a bishop (can you imagine how much power the Catholic church had back then?). In the 12th century the bishop of Poreč ceded it to Germans, the Germans then gave it to a family from Gorizia (Italy), and so on and so on. It’s a nice village and the scenery was worth the trip, but it was time to move on.
We stayed in the Hotel Danzica in Krk for two nights, and that was plenty. Again, like most hotels we’ve encountered on this trip, this room was tiny. It had a balcony which overlooked the sea, but was about the size of a dorm room. What’s to see in Krk? Well, there’s a castle, and an old town and that took all of 30 minutes to soak in. After that, we just chilled at a surf-side bar (there wasn’t much surf). We did find out there were a couple of olive oil trails to investigate the country-side so that’s what we planned for the next morning.
To close out the day, we took a little ride to the town of Baška on the southeast corner of the island. We liked this little beach town more than the city of Krk, but what can you do, we can’t change our reservations? We had a nice dinner and drove back to the hotel at sunset. I shouldn’t gripe about the hotel too much, after all it does have a balcony that overlooks the bay. The biggest problem is you can’t pass by each other in the room or turn around in the bathroom. Its very, very small. In addition, the breakfast buffet stinks. I don’t care if Ellen says the eggs and bacon are very good, I don’t like standing in line behind 80-year old German tourists off a bus, waiting for a very bad coffee machine. This country usually has great coffee, but not here. Hmm, sounds like I don’t like Germans, which isn’t true…..I dislike most people. I’d gripe about Americans, Brits, Swedes, Bolivians, Japanese and Aussies if they are over 70 and belched off a bus or cruise ship. I don’t have an age issue either, 70 sounds like 25 did when I was in college.
Bataan Olive March
We left out the following morning on a 7 km hike through the country-side and olive groves. It looked nice and there was an olive museum promised at the end of the trail in the little village of Kornic’. We weren’t going to hang out on the beach, so why not?
The hike started out poorly, since the road that led to the trail head was under construction. Trenchers, Bobcats, front end loaders, track holes, and dump trucks were parked about every 50 feet. Not only that, it was garbage day and we were dodging a garbage truck all the way up the hill. We came to a road block and were about to turn back when one of the construction workers showed us a way through the barricades to the trail head.
We should have quit while we were ahead.
Hey Greece, You Lost an Island
Once we finally got to the trail head the trail was really nice to start with. This is really lovely country. It really feels more like Greece than Croatia. Krk, is a pretty, arid island, and its covered with rock (I mean more rock than dirt). So there are stone walls everywhere, just like Greece. The first couple of klicks were great, but then the trail markers vanished.
When hiking, when you get to a cross road, and there are no markers you have to take your best guess. Typically, if you don’t see a marker, go straight (sally forth). When it’s a Y branch or T intersection is when it gets interesting. We guessed the yellow and blue spray paint arrows at a cross road meant turn left. Two km later we found out that was a bad decision. A couple of olive grove workers that didn’t speak English tried to pantomime how to get to the town of Kornić, but not very well. We had fun trying to communicate, and we got the gist of the message and did get back on the right trail. That didn’t last long.
The trail markers for this hike must have been the same guys as the Greek Ferry Boat schedulers, because the trail indicators were few and far between, as if they were done as an after-thought (ferries in Greece run if the captains aren’t too hung over….so it seemed). The trail got confusing (can trails get confused?) and we got lost, a lot (as in more than once). Keep in mind that Ellen and I have hiked sections of the Appalachian Trail and have never gotten lost. There were no detailed maps of the trail, and certainly no turn-by-turn instructions. When we finally found the markers again there was more utility construction which muddled the trail. Well, not so much muddled, more like obliterated. A gas line trench took out the complete trail with no indicators on which way to go. So, the only viable route (other than to turn back and retreat 4 or 5 km) was to scramble over a rough field stone path between two stone walls. This trail was so rough even the goats avoided it. Who was the sadistic bastard that laid this out? To get back to Krk, we followed the sound of cars and finally made our way over to the highway and walked back along the shoulder. Our 7 km hike turned into 12 km by the time we got back, and most of it over hills of field stone which are incredibly hard on the soles of your feet and ankles. Damn, I needed a beer.
We made it to a bar and that ended our day in Krk. I can’t say I’m saddened to be sitting under an umbrella with a half-liter of Croatia’s finest as it was lightning and thunder outside with winds gusting over 25 mph. Nobody was laying on the beach that afternoon. I’m sure we’ll have a better time in Zadar.
Can I buy a vowel?
The history of Krk is colorful, but obscure. I mean, I’d never heard any of it from my World History class. The first people on the island belonged to the Illiric tribes – Japodians and Liburnians. Right, I don’t think Japodians are from Japan, and Liburnians aren’t book lenders. I’d never heard of them either. Then came along the Greeks and then Roman conquerors which took the place to the end of the first century. Next came Christianity as the new fad religion, so that by the 5th century a bishopric had been formed, with its center in the city of Krk under the bishop, Andrija (680 AD). The Croatian people inhabited the island in clans (original Clash of Clans), and for that reason, today the island has four different dialects (Southern, Yankee, Italian, and Yiddish). At the end of the 12th century the Frankopan (1118 AD) family emerged, and they moved into the castle that anchors old town in the city of Krk, did some home improvements, and killed a few uppity peasants.
This was the only family within the Adriatic islands to develop any kind of power nearly equal of any of the other medieval European kingdoms. At the height of the Frankopan dynasty they owned about half of Croatia. The last Frankopan, Fran Krsto was executed in 1671 by the emperor and king Leopold Habsburg for being a part of the 17th-century attempt to throw off Habsburg and other foreign influences over Hungary and Croatia. Uprisings always seem to go badly in this country.
Krk fell under Venetian rule in 1480 and this lasted for several hundred years. Since then, Krk has been under control of the French, the Austro-Hungarians, the Italians, the Germans, the Yugoslavians and finally, after five centuries, the island of Krk finally became an integral part of Croatia again. Today, it’s a sleepy little island of rocks, olive trees, lots of grapes, bad hiking trails, and friendly people. We found Krk to be nice but not really engaging. We were happy to move down the coast.