Crews Letter #2004 24
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THE DALMATIAN
COAST
September 15 - 23, 2004
Tuesday,
September 21, 2004
Conrad and I paddled the inflatable
dinghy across the glassy water at daylight to the restaurant (Konoba Pipo)
dock. All was still and quiet except for
the far-off bells of unseen sheep or goats.
As he showered I walked again past the restaurant and around the curve
of the swimming beach on the rocky path.
Across the small lagoon another
building revealed itself behind the low scrub.
As I passed the break in the rock wall, just before the tall, rusty iron gate to the fields, I saw a man stirring on the front
terrace of the building, hastily donning pants at my approach. The break in the rock revealed its
construction - wide at the bottom, narrow at the top, flat stones laid dry and
filled between with sandstone rubble. I
passed the man on his porch without speaking - a house with dining terrace
attached, set with picnic tables - another small konoba, closed for the
season. I continued up the rocky path,
gradually climbing the hillside to the sound of distant sheep bells, rock and
brush on both sides, no other buildings.
I walked back and Conrad was having
coffee - the only early-morning customer at Konoba Pipo. We paddled back to Perception as the sun rose
over the high hills, only one other boat anchored and one at the dock taking
water and preparing to leave. The table
in the cabin was set for our breakfast of Vitalis granola with bananas and
milk.
We untied from
the anchor ball, Conrad testing Perception’s bow thrusters, and set off for
Split - no wind, clear, 70F, seas mirror flat, directly west twenty miles along
a broad channel from our harbor on the east edge of the north side of Brač
island to Split on the south coast of the mainland, motoring all the way, and
tracking the way points Fred and Conrad had shown me how to find on the chart
by their longitude and latitude, 016şE20' 43şE17', and enter into
the GPS the night before. Along
the way we passed the huge stone quarry gradually
eating the side of Brač island.
To everyone’s surprise, not the
least mine, my way points brought us just outside Split harbor, after passing miles
of city dominated by tall, grey apartment buildings in a long line that from
afar looked like a long broken row of high grey boulders. About 1:00 p.m. Fred called ahead to the marina as we
passed between the rock breakwaters, and we were directed to dock “C”. As always, we back in stern-to, Fred standing
between the twin wheels and steering, with Phyllis and Conrad on the bow to
pick up with the boat hook the laid-lines to anchor the bow. Fred and I tossed the heavy black stern lines
to the marina man on the dock and we were moored. Fred quickly attached the passerelle
(gangplank). Fred checked us in as I
explored the dock.
We walked from the marina, up a
steep street to the west around the marina, stopping at a marine supply store
to browse, then, deciding we were taking the long route, backtracked down the
hill, through the neighboring marina, and along the busy street toward
town. After a short wait at the bus
stop, we caught a city bus, 8 kuna each ($1.40) and rode the short way around
the harbor to the city, where the driver gestured us off the bus at the
turnaround circle with the word, “polače.”
We wandered along the broad,
waterfront esplanade, busy with pedestrians and lined with the colored
umbrellas of the cafes and restaurants, beneath a long, high Roman wall in
which a high row of stone arches had been brick-filled and punctured with the
small, more modern (800 - 1000 years) shuttered windows of apartments, all
topped with red clay tiles. We had
entered the gates at a small square containing the bronze statue of an unknown
Splicani hero. We plunged into the maze
of cobbled streets and, after asking directions in Dallas Music shop and
stopping for ice cream at a tiny stall, found our way to the “peristyle,” the
center court of Diocletian’s palace, built in 293 A.D. by the Roman emperor who
abdicated the throne in Rome and
retired there in 310 A.D.
The central plaza was dominated by
a huge, high blackened-stone entryway at the west end, two rows of tall red granite
columns topped with white stone Corinthian capitals faced each other on the
longer north and south sides across the uneven polished stone pavement. To the north the columns
were backed by a blackened stone building, to the south by a collonade up stone
steps on the right side of which crouched a polished black stone Egyptian
sphinx and beyond which rose the tall, thin Venetian wedding cake of the carved
stone campanile, and, behind it, the squat, octagonal, shallow-domed cathedral
surrounded by a narrow stone gallery.
In a small office beside the main
entrance, Fred arranged a private two-hour tour for the four of us for the
following day. Then we walked beneath
the huge arch of the entrance into a large, circular beehive-shaped dome, open
to the sky, constructed of seemingly random ranks of rough rock, flat stacked
stones and brick patches, all held together with thick, rough mortar.
From there we went down the steps beneath the entrance into the vaulted
stone cellar, wide and damp, lined with souvenir stalls and out the west
entrance to the harbor, then back to the plaza bustling with tourists, mainly
Austrian, a few English.
While Fred and Phyllis returned to
Perception to meet us back at the bus stop on the esplanade at 8:00 p.m. for dinner, Conrad and I wandered the
narrow, crooked alleyways lined with upscale international boutiques, coffee
bars, pizzarias, some cobbled and some paved with smooth rectangles of white
stone, remnants of the former ceremonial avenues.
In a pink Venetian plaza fronting the harbor, we stopped to look at a
restaurant menu. Then we walked along
the esplanade toward the ferry docks and took a seat under the green umbrellas
of the Restaurant Adriatic, sun low in the west, where Conrad had a beer and I
had a glass of white wine. I went inside
the restaurant to see a menu and quizzed the friendly young waiter, Josep,
about local dishes on the menu. He said
no, it was an international menu designed for the tourists, but the black ink
risotto was good and also the calamari.
For local food he recommended the, “small
fishes, fried,” and the mangol (kale) at either Konoba Varoš or Konoba Hvaronin
on the street behind the pink Venetian palazzo.
We walked up the tiny, steep street
where he directed, checked the chalkboard menus and the ambience and decided on
Konoba Varoš. We wandered back and sat
at a bench on the esplanade watching the sun set over the harbor about 7:00 p.m.
At the far end of the break water we saw cooking smoke and heard accordion
music and singing. We strolled down past
the tiny wooden fishing boats, gently bobbing, to a crowd of locals in yellow
T-shirts grilling “small fishes” and being entertained by a polka trio in
constumes of white shirts, red cummerbunds and black pants playing accordion
squeeze box, violin and mandolin. We
talked to a young fisherman leaning against his
trailered wooden fishing boat, “Ninety-eight years old,” he said.
We ambled back up to the bus stop,
met Fred and Phyllis and led them to the Konoba Varoš, where we were seated at
a bench table in a tiny low-beamed room with paintings of boats on the
walls. We ordered an appetizer of “small
fishes” and beef carpaccio. Delicious
brown and white local bread was brought in a
basket. “Small fishes” turned out to be
very salty anchovies which onion and olives, quickly
rejected by Conrad and Phyllis and just as quickly devoured by me and
Fred. We ordered - lamb chops, mixed
beef grill and seafood risotto accompanied by mangol and delicious mashed potatoes. Sated beyond possibility of dessert, we
watched our neighboring table tuck into filled dessert pancakes and said,
“Maybe tomorrow.” We gathered our foil-wrapped leftovers, caught the bus at the
esplanade stop, walked back over the arched street to the marina, showers and
bed.