Split and Postira and Molo Lozna

Here we are waiting for the ferry to take us to Postira. The boys are enjoying their first bottle of Pipi, named after the famous Pipi Longstocking character. It's delicious, but Duncan drinks it chiefly because of the name's joke factor.

We left Trieste around 9h30, and upon venturing out into the ring roads around The city, discovered that our GPS was pretty much useless, as Slovenia and Croatia were not well represented in our map database. Fortunately we had a good general map, but as the names of the destination cities are variously in Italian, or Slovenian, it was a challenge until I bought a more detailed map and got some directions from a helpful trilingual gas station clerk.

We have noticed that the road tolls have been more than we expected; we understood about the vignettes in Switzerland (40 euros) and Austria (10 euros) but didn't realize that we'd have to buy one for Slovenia as well for 15, just to pass through 60 kilometers of road! However the quality of the highway is very good, and its construction neccessitated frequent drilling through very rough terrain, at times reminiscent of the drawn backgrounds in the Coyote - Roadrunner cartoons. I kept expecting to see an ACME truck passing us at breakneck speed...

Then followed a long drive through a lot of scrubland, looking a lot like the California hills that stood in for Korea during the filming of the 70's M.A.S.H. TV show. We passed the town of Smiljan, the birthplace of Nikola Tesla, the very famous Serbian-born inventor whose work for Edison and Westinghouse revolutionized electrical engineering, but didn't stop, saving that visit for the return journey.

Rather fitting for Tesla's neighborhood, we saw many dramatic lightning strikes in the distance as we drove through thunderstorms. Twenty minutes later Malcolm remarked that he smelled pizza, and we realized that the lightning had ignited several wildfires in the olive, rosemary and lavender, and the smoke and intermittent rain made visibility very poor. Then suddenly we spotted a yellow Bombardier waterbomber passing just overhead, and then another. They dropped their water onto the wildfires and returned for more... These a called "Kanaders" here, perhaps after the name "Canadair CL-215" which is their other designation.

We arrived in Split, gassed up the car, and then hopped on the ferry. It is nearly an hour's ride, but very pleasant, and we kept the top down on the drive through Supetar and then Postira, to Molo Lozna. It is lovely to smell the various herbal and floral scents on an evening drive. I remember talking on our last trip with a driver who mentioned that his favorite time on Brac is actually springtime, when all sorts of tropical flowers open and the honeybees are everywhere. Still the drive was pleasantly scented enough for us.

The first few days have seen a resumption of our routine from last time; bed by 11h30 or so, sleep until 8h, then up and to the beach until 11h or so when it starts to get too hot and the sun is too intense, then lunch, a beer, a siesta, and then back to the beach at 16h, a beer at the bar, then dinner at 20h. Rinse, repeat.

Sunday evening we had fish together with Nada's family... the fish guy brought them on his vespa at 10h30 or so, after they had been caught and cleaned earlier that morning. We dined on four Orade, or gilt-head bream, and our hosts had brancin, or branzino/sea bass. We grilled them on a big fire of fragrant wood; after washing and drying they were covered in nothing but a salt crust, then roasted for maybe seven minutes a side. Even Maggie said yum.

Today Maggie and I got to the beach early, leaving the boys to sleep in. Now we are back and ready to walk into town for lunch at Bracera, which has cheap draft beer and good grilled scampi and calimari... Maybe we will carry on to Splitska afterwards?

I have also realized that while I have finished two books from my selction of summer reading, I also need to spend some time listening to Don Giovanni and singing it into the voice a little. October performances will come early! I am thinking that the Postira church is open most of the time, so perhaps I will get in some afternoon singing there; they have a piano and in the middle of the day no one is there.