Relaxing on Čiovo, Croatia.
Zagan the motorhome’s getting used to not moving, parked alongside the pale green ocean at Camping Rožac, (N43.50524, E16.25766), Čiovo Island, Croatia.
All in, we’ve spent maybe 30 months travelling in motorhomes over the years, and haven’t stayed anywhere longer than five days. Someone once asked us why we didn’t put down roots in some places; we didn’t have a good answer. I suspect it’s simply been wanderlust – wanting to see what’s over the next hill, to make the most of the time ‘out’ we’d got. Now we’ve engineered life so we can travel as we please (touching something wood, so the gods don’t curse us), I wonder if we’ll finally ease off the gas? I’m certainly happy to hold station here for a while, I’ve gone horizontally relaxed.
Trogir
Trogir’s the nearest famous Croatian town to us, a UNESCO-protected island a 2km walk up over the hill from here. Like a mini-Sicily, everyone’s had a go at owning it over time, including but not limited to: Greeks, Romans, Venetians, Ottomans, Austrians, French, Italians, Yugoslavia (sort of), and now after the War of Independence in the ’90s, Croatia finally, finally holds full sway over the town! It’s a pretty little place, all honey-coloured walls, foot-shined stone walkways and terracotta roofs. It’s no museum piece either, folks live here, as evidenced by a loud chorus of nippers legging it out of the school as we sat and supped a drink yesterday.
This part of Croatia is apparently more influenced by Italy than Austria. Watching this happy helmet-less nipper on his Dad’s scooter, I can believe it!
The bridge between Čiovo and Trogir
Trogir Cathedral
Weirdly, the statue of Jesus is almost brand new, despite it looking as old as the cathedral. There’s some controversy about it being installed, as it might flout the UNESCO protection rules…
Ju has spotted an ice cream shop, and she’s off!
The season’s just starting up again and the cafes are empty.
Our days are being taken up snorkelling (me), reading (both of us), shaving Charlie and me (Ju), cooking (both of us), supping the odd glass of wine (both of us), washing laundry (Ju), sitting in the hazy sunshine (all three of us) and just taking it easy.
Charlie before – furry and panting a lot!
A bag of fur later and he’s like a racing snake!
We’re currently using an open Internet WiFi connection from a restaurant on the other side of the bay. Incredibly, it’s about a 2km line-of-sight distance between us, but we’ve a booster antenna from motorhomewifi.com which picks up the weak signal, even from here.
Our Internet WiFi aerial connecting to a network 2km away!
The post office here also sell Internet SIMs for tourists – a great idea. No hassle, no passport, no address, no need to try and speak anything but badly accented English, you just walk in and ask for one. They hand over ’em for 85 Kuna (about €11) which gives 1GB a day for ten 24 hour periods (in fact it’s badged as unlimited data, but it’s throttled after 1GB per day). We’re not planning to use it while we have WiFi, but once we do we’ll pop it in our 4G Internet system, and give some more info on how well it works.
Had a dark Tomislav yesterday. Tasty, and at over 7%, my face felt rubbery afterwards…
Right, until next time folks, signing off as it’s beer o’clock. Cheers, Jay
You two are leading the life of riley!!
Can you tell me which camera you are using and how you transfer pics from camera to computer.
Thanks so much for your super blog.
Regards
Richard
Hi Richard! We certainly are. I’m feeling a bit guilty about it from time to time. Not too guilty though, we didn’t win the lottery. :-)
We’re using a Sony DSC-HX200V bridge camera. We used to carry a DSLR, but got fed up hauling the kit about, so didn’t take it with us half the time, and desert sand got onto the array at some point, which was the devil’s own job to clean off. I don’t think you can get this model any more, but Ju’s told me in the past there is a newer version. We’re very happy with it.
We just pull the SD from the camera and pop it in the laptop, no wireless SD cards etc here.
Cheers! Jay
Wo,how are your new pals at CoPilot responding ? As soon as you get their app you lay your hat somewhere !!!
Great location,so no surprise really. Also great to see Zagan flashing his rear end whilst sunbathing on the beach. Which reminded me of something I was meaning to source and that’s a screen door.Is Zagan’s a factory fitted jobbie or something that you have fitted yourself ? I’m struggling with my titnet search.
Factory-fitted, and it’s very good. Before we bought one of those ‘hundred strip’ fly screen ones for Dave, but it was much more of a faff with the strips getting everywhere. Cheers, Jay
HI Guys
Great to see you doing well in Croatia. We went to Croatia about this time last year and actually visited that self same cafe that Ju spotted in the pic above and had the best chocolate drink we have ever had in that cafe. We went all the way down to Dubrovnik before turning around to come back home.
Be safe and enjoy Croatia – there are some brilliant spots to see in the country. You must see the Krka waterfalls too :-)
Lots of love from Brian & Mo’. Treasure Hunters you met in Greece in 2013
Hi guys! Did you do any underwater hunting while you were here? Do they allow it here? Sounds like you had a fab run up and down the long old coastline here either way. We didn’t make it to Krka last time, so may well end up that way this time. We’ve gone so relaxed the past few days we’ve not done much forward planning. Will need to pull one’s finger out and do some research I think. One thing we did miss out on last time was the roasted suckling pigs they seem to cook up everywhere on a Sunday. Didn’t see any yesterday, but then I didn’t make it off the campsite either, unless you count a bit of snorkelling! Cheers, Jay
Hi!! Nothing wrong with putting down roots for a while. Larry always wants to move on after a while, whilst I love to really get to know a place well (as long as the weather is ok). Fortunately, we generaly find a compromise…
We have just changed our van and adjusting to living in a Ford Terrier pop top. Initially tricky…..bit like moving to a smaller house, but we love it and I will even drive this one!!!! A sense of greater freedom, ability to go on more inaccessible roads, less scary overall, but much,much less storage…… actually less of an issue than I expected. It really makes one think about what one really needs, as opposed to what one thinks one needs. Of course the needs of the dog comes first!!! Lorraine
And you are getting lazy with the updates too!!
Must be too much sun and snoozing :-)
Haha! We’re chilling out Richard – for once neither of us are feeling the urge to move every day or two. Rather than keep repeating the same photos and text about us sat about taking it easy, even more easy than usual, I’m getting together summaries of some of the finest places we’ve been. Popped one up earlier about 10 beautiful natural locations we’ve been to in Europe. They take a few hours to do though, which to be honest sometimes I’d rather be lazy and spend snorkelling! Cheers, Jay
I would do the same myself:-))