The Wrong Way Round.

Zadar to Split, the quick way.

21/7/12

We were very successful in culling gear from our load. We removed the equivalent of one full bag of stuff from the bike. That's a lot of Kilos gone. We headed off to the Post Office to send the stuff home, and it was closed. I was not a happy chappy. Now we'll carry all the excess gear to Dubrovnik and post it from there.

Zadar is known for it's Sea Organ. Don't be rude! This is a sort of an organ that is "played" by the movement of sea water. It gives off a haunting sound as you walk along the foreshore and it's very soothing to just sit, have a drink, and listen to. You can read more about Zadar's Sea Organ here:

http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/9359/1/Nikola-Baiae-author-of-the-Zadar-Sea-Organ.html

The foreshore where the Sea organ can be found.

Winner winner, chicken dinner. An award winning musical instrument.

This is one thing I would like to see on the Perth foreshore. I reckon the river would have enough movement to make it work. If not Perth, then somewhere in Fremantle, just don't forget the free motorcycle parking, OK?

We decided to take the quick way to Split and headed for the Motorway. The speed limit on the Motorway is 130 kph, I was doing around 150, and cars were passing me all the way there. I don't know why they even bother making speed signs here, they could save a heap on money by not bothering. It was a pretty uninteresting ride with the terrain much like outback Australia in parts. Pretty barren, but with a few hills.

When we got to Split there was a huge long line of cars in a traffic jam, so I adopted the local way of dealing with it. I just crossed over the unbroken white line and rode down the wrong side of the winding road. Whenever a car came the other way, I just pulled back into the slow moving traffic. People move over, or make a space, and let motorcycles in.

Motorcyclists are treated so differently here in Europe. Everywhere we've been car drivers make room for us, even when splitting lanes in a traffic jam. You can see their wheels turn as they part and make room. I feel like Moses parting the cars. When it comes to parking, you can pretty much park where you like. We pulled into the car park at the Plitvice Lakes National Park and stopped a the boom gate to get a ticket. The attendant rushed over and told us it was free for motos. He then motioned for us to ride around the boom and park wherever we liked. There are signs all over the place out the front of bars and accommodation offering "Discount for bikers" and signs like "Bikers, please come in" and "Bikers Welcome". Anyone would think they were trying to encourage, or even reward those who choose to ride a motorcycle. Bloody good job.

We had a few problems finding our hostel - again. We've decided not to pre book from now on, we'll just roll up and find somewhere when we get there. There is accommodation available everywhere, in fact there are even people on the side of the road hawking accommodation. Yes, it's competitive. Anyway, once we found the hostel they had no record of our booking. I stuffed up and had booked the following Saturday (I blame a web site glitch) and they were fully booked. Sonya was super helpful and said she'd sort something out for us. Fifteen minutes later we were shown to our room. The funny thing was all the robes and drawers in the room were full. This is a family run hostel, from Grandma down to the grand kids and I think we stole one of the older sons rooms. I hope he didn't mind too much. Oh yes, free breakfast, free Wi Fi, and they insisted I put my bike in the garage. I could get used to this.

We then met some of the hostels cats, there are seven of them. They were all very cute, and not at all backward in trying to steal our food. They even jumped up on the table and tried to steal it off of our plates.

Suzanne out side our hostel. Two of the cats are under the table, which is about ten feet from the Adriatic sea.

Suzanne really liked having the cats around and was feeding them. Big surprise! Later on they were playing under her seat and one got a good claw hold on Suzanne's dress, and her butt. I didn't laugh much. I decided to call the cat Claude. : ) The next morning Claude scored another victim. This time a young American girl who shrieked when he struck.

Claude also had a very cool cat toy. A crab which he played with for ages.

Claude's cat toy.

Suzanne had put on a load of washing and was waiting to hang it out to dry when Sonja, who "found" us a room, came down and told us she would hang out our washing for us if that was OK. Ah, YES. Thanks for everything Sonja.

So to finish off, here are a few pics from our hostel taken at about 9.30 pm.