Preko Take Two

Preko was on the menu again for the last weekend of the program. I had nothing planned for the weekend, and so I decided that I would once again take the boat to Preko, but once I was there I would rent a scooter so I could spend my last Saturday driving around the island of Ugljan. And what an excellent decision this ended up being. I have never ridden on a scooter before, on account of me being only 15 minutes away from campus at KU (and the unmanly stigma attached to the act), so this was my first experience. It was great, and only costed like $25 for the three hours that I did it. I only had one place in particular that I planned to go to, but otherwise I spent most of the three hours just cruising around the island enjoying the sights. It was fantastic.

 That one place that I had in mind was Tvrđava St. Mihovila, or St. Michael's Fortress. I didn't really know what to expect, I just saw it on the map on my first trip to Preko. And it's a fortress, so how could I not go visit that? The scooter offers so much freedom, especially when you are going off the beaten path and during non-tourist heavy late afternoon hours like I was. The roads were mostly empty, the air was fresh, and my scooter could go 50 mph, so I just had a blast cruising by the countryside.

Now just to put you in my mindset, I had no idea what this fortress was like or where is was beyond a point on a map. So as I was driving all I really saw ahead of me was this hill with a radio tower on it. I stopped and cross-examined it with the map. My mental dialogue: "I guess that's sort of in the same direction, but I don't really see any walls-- I guess I'll go anyways and check it out".

As it turns out, my destination was not in another castle and that radio tower and St. Michael's Fortress were one and the same. And talk about being off the map, I have little cause to believe that this is actually a tourist location of any degree. There were no boards detailing the history of the place, no vendors selling St. Michael Fortress merchandise, and most notably of all, no people except for one dude reading on a chair  (and just to set my parents at ease, I understand that there only being one other person there is a red flag-- I had checked my international phone, saw that I still had a signal, and already had the Croatia emergency numbers memorized). In spite of this, or perhaps because of this, this ruined fortress was an awesome place to visit-- crumbling ruins, an impressive cross monument, a great view from the top of a hill, all in all what I felt to be a very unique place to see. But pictures paint the scenery better then I ever could, so following this are a bunch of them.

 After about ten minutes I met the sole inhabitor of the fortress, an exceptionally friendly cat. The cat appeared out of nowhere and started mewing, clearly desiring some food. The strange thing is that there are plenty of cats wandering around Zadar I guess because fish scraps are plentiful enough to support stray cats, but I didn't know what this one did in such an abandoned place. I can only hope that it was taken care of by the radio tower crew and not abandoned or anything. In hindsight, that solitary man in front of the fortress very well may have been an technician who stays at the tower. Either way, the cat, who I ended up naming Shirls after my grandmother, was clearly socialized in some way as she was super friendly coming up to me and laying next to me even when I didn't have any food. She ended up using me for shade as she looked out for prey and played with the wrist strap dangling off of my camera. I was so tempted to take Shirls home, and very well might have if there was any possibility of me getting her to the boat by scooter, to home by boat, to my apartment by 12 hour plane ride, and even then only if my apartment didn't have a no pets rule. It just wasn't meant to be. She went running after something in the grass, so I just let her be. I can only hope that she is happily raised by the radio technicians.

 Really, the rest of that trip is me just cruising around, taking a few shameless selfies and trying to find cool places to ride to. I must say, I finally understand why Alton Brown loves taking cross country motorcycling trips, it's just such a satisfying and fun experience to ride around and stop wherever you please. Probably due to the abundance of freedom that I had, I don't really remember the exact tiny towns that the following pictures are from. If you look at a map of Ugljan, it is just a bunch of small Dalmatian towns all along the coast with very little inland except roads to other towns. I know making all of the pictures small like this makes the formatting go crazy, but if you click on pictures, they should expand out for you to look through more easily. Enjoy!

 And so that is my second trip to the island of Ugljan. I missed the ferry that I planned on taking by about two minutes, so I had to wait another hour and a half for the next one, but it was too cool of a trip for that to get me down. I just walked around and bided my time until the next ferry came and even got to take some cool sunset pictures as a result.

...If only scooters weren't so unmanly...

Preko and Back Again

Diving back into the vaults for this one, the second weekend in Zadar Amber and I took our first trip out of Zadar, deciding to take a ferry to the town of Preko on the island across the water from Zadar. In typical action movie style, Amber and I rushed to buy our tickets and got on the boat literally 20 seconds before it set out. This was my first boat ride of the trip, so it was really cool to see all of the moored boats and coastal harbors that is common in Zadar. 

This was also my first opportunity to see Zadar from the outside. Shown to the right is the popular Sea Organs with Stari Grad in the background. It really is a gorgeous city. But the ferry ride in its entirety only took about 15 minutes, so before we knew it, we were in a new coastal town.

We didn't have anything extraordinary planned for the trip to Preko, but we didn't really need to. Dalmatian towns are generally just beautiful, and our day trip just consisted of walking around this town, trying to get a more sincere and less touristic perspective of the Dalmatian coast. We did see a run down building or two once we stepped away from the shore, probably remnants of past wars, but the entire architectural culture is so attractive nonetheless. And that view of the country is just so much more real to me.

 We saw a high school, gardens, a gorgeous church with a really well maintained cemetery, and just really pretty scenery in general. Even though this historic front is probably greatly maintained through the tourist industry, it's cool to take a step outside of tourist hot spots and see that people live among these historic churches and at the same time go to a modern school building. Also, as you can see by the last picture, we also came across a snake or two, as even the Garden of Eden had snakes.

  

Walking around worked up quite an appetite, so we walked back towards the beach and found a nice restaurant to enjoy what at the time was my best meal yet. I started off with a fish soup appetizer, very simple but still quite good and had a turkey and shrimp gnocchi for the entree. Despite the seemingly strange combination, the sauce was fantastic. So much so that it is probably still tied for my favorite meal here.

Then afterwards we just wasted away the rest of the afternoon chilling at the beach and generally relaxing it up. I also got what at the time were the first pictures of myself in the country. Had to get some for my adoring fans eventually (Mom really wanted some).

 But yeah, that was basically how that trip went. It was the exact opposite of stressful, just walking around the town and soaking in the sights. A good first day trip for Amber and I to take. Below I have some of the miscellaneous photos that I got while we were walking up on the hill behind the town, giving us some great elevated shots of the town and the sea. Overall a great trip to take with great food to eat.