Hot days in Postira

It's been a pretty lazy few days since my last post. Our friend Miroslav arrived this past weekend so we have been having some fun spending time with him and Ivana and their friends, but we've also been taking it extremely easy. Unlike our last visit here where we were hungry to do and see everything, we've drastically lowered expectations for this trip, and I'm feeling pretty good about that; it's what a holiday is supposed to be: a break from agendas and pressure to achieve, right?

Here's the obligatory grilled calimari photo... "Doctor Squidface" says hi. We have been hanging around the villa most of the time and so have only eaten out twice so far. The first was a lunch at our local hangout, Bracera, and Maggie had the grilled shrimps, Malcolm the grilled calimari, and I the octopus salad, with Duncan opting for the spaghetti, but we did share things around.

I've bought a pair of goggles and have been going out to swim some "lengths" (to the buoy line and back) with Maggie in the mornings, and then walking in to Postira to warm up and sing at the church. Usually I find a couple of people in there when I arrive but they don't seem to mind that I am singing while they are praying or reflecting on things. The church is quite a bit cooler than being outside and as it is up on a hill it gets a nice breeze, so it's not unpleasant at all in the later morning, although today I went in the afternoon, and was soon very hot indeed. It's good to have a crack at the Don Giovanni, although I am missing my Italian dictionary; internet translators are pretty tiresome. However I am working my way through it and will be very happy to sing it in October. Still I am starting to approach the point where there is little point in doing it without Peter or David, because the accompaniment is very important for helping me get the feel of it, and while I can play chords and so on, it will be much faster and better when I have a real pianist helping me learn it.

I mentioned that Ivana and Miroslav have some friends from Zagreb who were visiting; these friends can come and go on the weekends, as it is maybe 400 kilometers away, and they can drive it for the weekend, much like we would drive from Toronto to go to Maggie's parents' cottage home at Skootamatta. A couple of nights ago we drove up the valley to Dol, and had dinner together at Konoba Toni, which was much the same as we remembered it. We had a great dinner with lots of dalmatian cheese (like parmigiano) and chilled red and white wine, fried smelts, black risotto of cuttlefish cooked in its own ink, grilled vegetables and then some grilled calimari which was really fantastic. Over many glasses of wine and hand-rolled cigarettes (we didn't share those) we talked about many things: economics, religion, politics, philosophy, parenthood, education, history, socialized medicine, Serbia, Belgium, Canada, America, and so on... It was a lot of fun and we shut the place town, only leaving after the lights went out a little after midnight, some people opting to continue the party at Postira harbour where there was a torrid salsa dance party going on.

What else has been happening? We made a trip into Supetar to run some errands, and plan to again. It's ok, but kind of touristic compared with what we have here, which is peaceful and quiet, so I'm perfectly happy to make that a sometime thing.

The nights have been pretty nice, usually very clear and cool, and while most of the time we are content with analog entertainment (like books and cribbage) we made use of a really super cool 'augmented reality' app that lets you use the gps, databas, camera and accelerometer functions of a smartphone or tablet to show you the names and details of the various stars and constellations in the night sky, as you point your device at them. It's really quite amazing, and I filed away a number of important localization tricks for future use, when I don't have a device with me. It's called "star chart", and it blew our minds...

There's been a good wind today and so there have been lots of sailboats. We walked into town and while I was rehearsing, Maggie went to the butcher and picked up a good quantity of lamb, so we will be grilling that in a little while on the wood bbq with some rosemary, lemon and olive oil. I'm also determined to try some foccacia in the bbq, as a sort of test case precursor for pizza. I'm going to start the dough just as soon as I post this...

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.

In Postira again... Recap Switzerland to Italy

It's great to be back here again after our two years away. We arrived last night in the evening and had a drink with Dragan, and then said hello to Nada this morning; they are much the same as we remember. This time around we will have some time to socialize with Miroslav and Ivana and their son as well, which will be super cool!

The weather is fantastic here, clear and sunny, and maybe 27 degrees at 11h. The forecast is for 22 at night to 32 during the day all week, which is ideal. We got up early this morning and hit the beach; Duncan was full of the wiggles until we did so. He also remembers the neighborhood kids very well and wants to get out and meet them again... As a matter of fact I think that he's next door right now...

To catch up on the rest of the trip down here, when last I posted we were in Wassen, Switzerland. The Gotthard Backpacker hotel there is lovely for families passing through, newly renovated by a pair of Swiss twins, and very clean, well appointed and well maintained. There were two Dutch families driving south to Italy, and one Swiss family doing a bike tour of the Gotthard route, with four teenagers. It is highly recommended, and is an ideal spot to stop halfway down from Brussels.

We made it to Trieste in good time, but there was a slight delay in getting into our housekeeping apartment... Without a data plan on my phone I didn't get their note asking that I call ahead. no problem though; we had a drink at the bar on the corner and Duncan played soccer in the street with a Korean kid whose mother works there while we waited. I found parking in a garage for only 15 euros just 100 metres away, which was nice; I forgot that the second language after Italian in this part of the world isn't French or English, but German, so I had to switch gears a bit. It's frustrating to automatically switch to French whenever I am searching for a word, and my German course was a couple of years ago now, but I think it is coming back.

It makes sense that a lot of the older people speak German, not only because of the history of German and Austrian tourists here, but also because Trieste was part of Austro-Hungary until 1920 or so. We had a nice walk around the city, which is really interesting and easy to explore on foot.

The Giusseppe Verdi theatre wasn't originally named for Verdi, but with his great successes in the 19th century it was rededicated to his name. At 1300 seats it is a nice size for a classic european house and is an interesting combination: the architect of La Fenice in Venice desgined the horseshoe-shaped auditorium, but the exterior incorporates elements of Milan's La Scala opera house; in this way the "Nuovo" became a mixture of La Fenice on the inside and La Scala on the exterior. I was sorry not to have a look inside, and happy to learn that they play a big operetta festival all summer... Hmmmmm... Interesting!

We had a lovely time walking around the city centre, admiring the canals, and viewing the largest seaside grand'place in Europe, the Piazza Unità D'Italia. As well we walked along the pier opposite, where Duncan dipped his toes in the Adriatic.

We stopped for a drink, a Prosecco (the town of that name is nearby) with ginger for Maggie, and a delicious Negroni for me, and we did some people watching. Women in beautiful dresses, beautiful shoes and watches and sunglasses... Lots of dogs on leashes... Every mature woman seems to have just visited the hair salon.

We retired to our apartment and had some chianti and salami and bread, then played an epic Milles Bornes Team challenge... Maggie and Duncan managed to win the first three rounds, and they rather suspiciously got the véhicule prioritaire four rounds in a row, but Malcolm had the special 50 mile card for the last round to finish with a 'delayed action', which I don't think I've ever seen happen in about 30 years of playing this very french (and as my sisters will attest, very cut-throat) game. Awesome! They still beat us with the highest score over 5000, but we narrowed their margin of victory to a mere 150 miles. Grudge match imminent!

Next post: Slovenia and Croatian driving...