City Walls and Beaches

7/7/2009

The sunrise the morning we were pulling into Croatia was an early one.  If I remember properly it was 5:20am.  It was really pretty though, and after a few extra hours of sleep, and going to breakfast, it was time to go out and explore Croatia.  Croatia is absolutely gorgeous!  In the morning, I went walking with Jon, Athena, Amanda and Kara, and we just explored near the ship for a while because Athena and Jon had to be back at the ship for the city walls tour.  Amanda, Kara and I made a plan to meet up with them at the beach later in the afternoon, and then we headed back to the ship to change and grab a quick, free lunch.  We decided to walk to the Old City area, instead of taking the bus, and it was the right decision to make.  The walk takes about one hour at a leisurely pace, and goes up over a hill.  When we got to the top of the hill, the bath overlooks a little inlet that is stunning.  Looking down and taking pictures, we saw a stairway going down that ended in a platform and a ladder into the water.  As we continued walking along, we found the top of the staircase, and after exchanging exciting looks, we decided to go down and explore.  It was a long ways down, and when we got to the bottom, we saw a platform carved into the rock with little tables and benches, and even a shade covering.  When we got onto the platform, we realized that “locals only” was painted all over at random around the platform, but there was also a sign saying “guests” on an arrow pointing past the platform.  Upon investigation, we realized it lead to a platform with no shade or tables, and so we decided the best choice would be to leave our bags on that platform.  It was deserted when we got there, and so after setting down our towels and bags, we climbed down the rest of the stairs and crawled down the ladder into the water.  It was so amazing.  The water was the perfect temperature to be refreshing, but not too cold to be comfortable.  We swam for a pretty decent amount of time, and as we were swimming, two more pairs of people showed up and came in.  I think people were seeing us swim from the walkway, and decided it looked like a good idea.  We were kind of worried when they first appeared that they would get mad if they found out we were American (American's have a bad reputation pretty much everywhere), so we made up our own language to sound like we were from another country.  It worked, except we couldn't understand what anyone was saying.
We climbed out, took some pictures and dried off, and then we began the long climb back up to the road.  We continued our walk to old town, and when we got there, all we could see was the large city wall surrounding it.  To the right, there was a tall rock island with a diving board set up probably 70 feet in the air for the diving competition that was part of the summer festival that would begin the day we left Croatia.  SAS has kind of made a habit of having us leave each country a day or two before the festivals start, but it is probably for the best.  We decided to do the city walls tour, because we heard it was well worth it, so we purchased our tickets and climbed up all of the stairs to the top of the wall.  As we reached the top, we just happened to be in the middle of an SAS tour, and there were Jon and Athena.  Looks like we wouldn’t have to worry about our meeting time after all!  We walked around with their tour group for a while, and took in all of the amazing views.  It was gorgeous looking out over the Sea and the City, but it was also really hot.  When we couldn’t handle the temperature anymore, we decided to search for a swimming spot.  From the top of the walls, we had seen a bar nestled into the cliff side, and a bunch of people were cliff jumping from one of the rocks.  That was our goal because Kara really wanted to jump. We wound through some of the streets until we found a little wooden sign pointing at the city wall and reading “cold drinks”.  We followed where it pointed, walking through a gateway in the wall, and popped out at the top of a staircase leading us down to three platforms covered in umbrellas and tables, with a bar on the middle one, and then past that a throng of people on an unsheltered platform, some of whom were climbing over the railing and jumping in.  The cliff was a little higher than I like to jump from, and the audience was a little to big, so I opted out, but Kara went for it.
Next, it was off to the beach, which s crowded, but a lot of the people were other SASers so we knew them.  The water felt so amazingly cool and refreshing.  We came back to the ship for free dinner, and then ended up staying in for the night.  I have been battling a cold since the end of Italy, so I was planning to call it a lazy night anyway, but it seems like all of us were feeling pretty lazy.  We played Apples to Apples, and had a great time.  Day one in Croatia was an overall success!