Healing mud of Nin

I was hesitating somewhat before placing this picture, since I don't know those guys, but decided that their privacy is protected enough by their poses and mud layer. Plus, I turned lady's head away. Plus it is a public beach, of course, it's just I am always very hesitant with photos of strangers.

Anyway, what you see in front of you is one of the beaches of Nin. On the map below is the one to the left from the Nin bay entrance (upper left corner). The dark blue shallow lagoon below it on the map is filled with this black sticky stuff, and as you come to the beach, you see plenty of people smeared with it. It's relatively quiet place at the moment, but I strongly suspect that once this large-ish project I just found about is underway, it'll be lot less accessible and a lot busier.

I don't quite understand what the mud is supposed to be healing, but well. Looks like good fun anyway.

Beaches of Nin are nice, though, mud or not. Visually, they not as striking as ones on Fuerteventura, and not at all as clean, but they have shallow sand access to calm water, and that' a definite plus on most beaches in Croatia I've seen so far.



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last day of holidays

Timur is sitting by the sea organ, looking completely and utterly bored with sun, sea and everything around him

I am not sure whether this is something many people feel, but for us, a lazy week by seaside seems to be some sort of cut-off. After that it gets boring and all everybody wants is to get back home. We stayed for nine nights - two too many, it seems.

From my student (long-gone) days, however, I remember that if you stay by seaside for about two weeks, some sort of "second wind" arrives and it feels like you can stay there forever.

Alas, I didn't have hols that lasted over two weeks for a long time, so I didn't have the opportunity to test whether it feels the same now as it did all those years ago.

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stripes

while in Zadar, we bought a stripy article for everybody, except (sob, sob, sniff) for myself.

Here you can see two of those things, worn by Timur and Yuri on our last day in Zadar, while they converse about something or other. Their conversation tends to consist almost solely of quotes from movies and books known to both. Occasionally those quotes are not even words - that's when they (especially Timur) try to convey the story by sound imitations ("and then he like KAABOOM!")


We stayed in Zadar itself for the last night before going back home. Our flight was in the evening, so we left our bags with the landlord and slooowly went around the town for one last time, with stops for icecreams, long lunch and drinks.

The place for the last night was found via "aquarius" tourist agency in Zadar. It actually proved quite difficult to find accommodation in the area beforehand via the internet, but once you are there, it's easy - just go around asking at tourist agencies that there are a few. If you feel energetic, you can even shop around and look for the right balance of price and quality, but we didn't do that - it was very hot and prospect of walking around with our bags didn't appeal. Incidentally, the trick of easily finding a place to stay while on the spot works in one more place I know of - and it's Scotland of all places. Except in Scotland, you go to one tourist info and they do it for you, while in Dalmatia different tourist agencies seem to hold different lists of properties.

No matter, it all worked out in the end

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olives in the middle of nowhere

this old olive garden is along one of the roads that lead from village called Kozino (I can't put the right accent on "z", so probably the most appropriate spelling is Kozhino) to the sea.

Village itself is not far from Zadar - about 5 km, on the main road to Nin. Looks like the original village didn't came down to the sea, but now there is a strip of new developments next to the seaside and it is joined to the old village by at least two steep-ish short roads. Once you get to the sea it's a bit disappointing - the seabottom is stony, with inevitable sea urchins. There is just one cove where bottom is sandy, but it is still fringed with stones, so you have to negotiate those before you can feel the sand under your feet.

Having said that, the apartment that we rented there via one of tourist agencies in Zadar was the most comfortable of four places we stayed in over those nine nights. Another plus side was that Nin, with its truly sandy beaches, was not very far and local buses did take us where we want to go - not always quite on time, granted, but we were never in a hurry anyways.


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polished street

this is how old street's surface in Zadar looks like. It looked just the same in Rovinj.

One of the things that surprised me in Zadar this year is how busy and touristy it was - maybe not quite as busy as Venice (i.e. you could walk relatively freely without having to squeeze between sweating bodies), but close. Even more surprisingly, Rovinj as I remember it three years ago was almost spookily empty. Considering that Rovinj old town area is more beautiful and has fewer or maybe even none of the new buildings, the explanations I can come up with are : we were there not in the peak of high season and there are a lot more tourists coming now to Croatia in general then it was three years ago.

Back to polished street: they look slippery, but those were uneven stones to start with, so they provide just enough grip to walk safely (although I don't know how it'll be in rain).

But I did manage to fall (and drop my camera!) on stony surface in Zadar - and that was not on old street, but on newly laid edge of a lawn close to the waterfront. Waterfront there serves as town beach, and especially show-off bathers take a loooong run before they dive, so there are always wet patches here and there. And whoever decided on the new layout for the area had a bright idea of making some of the surfaces of completely smooth, flat and polished marble. I truly don't know what possessed him or her. Some water on that marble and it's as slippery as ice, so beware.

Having said that, it's nice area, especially for a evening stroll, and of course "Greeting to the Sun" glowing disk is an absolute highlight.




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Greeting to the Sun

I had big difficulties chosing those two pictures out of dozens taken on "Greeting to the sun" solar panel disk on Zadar's seaside. Zadar has two Nikola Bašić's installations, another one being "Sea organ", which is not very impressive visually, although not less imaginative. This one is visual treat, especially in summer sunset when it reflects the summer skies (and of course at night when it lights up in psychedelic patterns)

I added both pics as entries to Photographer of the Year competition - see them and links to other entries here and here

apple juice and skylight

yesterday we came back home (to a lot of rain) from extremely hot Croatia. We stayed in Zadar area, and for two nights in two different apartments in Zadar itself. The pictured place, in the converted loft of one of the old houses, had two good points - very central position and two roof windows which gave beautiful spotlights in the morning.

When Timur went to have his apple juice on scratched-glass-topped table, it looked like he's having is out of a torch.

On the last night we've left our Rough guide to croatia in the (different) flat, figuring next time we go we'll need a new book. So if you stay in Zadar and find 2007 edition laying around somewhere, it's probably ours