Shivering in Sibenik

Saturday, September 25th
We awoke to a drizzly, cold and windy morning. Reluctantly, we crawled out of our warm sleeping bags, had a quick breakfast and asked the owner of Camping Krka when the bus to Sibenik would be coming by so we could catch a ride to the medieval island town of Trogir. He told us the bus arrived at 11AM, which left us about an hour and a half to pack up our tent and get our things together.

At 10:45AM we headed for the bus stop and waited until noon and still no bus came. The owner drove us a few kilometers up the road to another bus stop and told us (in Croatian) something to the effect of "Wait here, the bus will be right along. I promise." He could have been more truthful and said "Wait here, in the cold, while you're knocked around by gale-force winds, and then the bus will come. I think."

We were not alone at the new bus stop; there were some locals waiting there too which reassured us that we were in a more promising place. However, we began to doubt our situation as each one, cold and tired of waiting, stuck his thumb out and hitched a ride into town. We consulted our travelbook on the status of hitch-hiking in Croatia and, seeing that it was relatively safe, decided to give it a try. Car after car passed us by without even slowing down to see where it was we wanted to go. We even tried flagging down a school bus but the driver simply shook his head and sped on by as the children stared out the windows at the two frozen Americans with the big backpacks.

Another hour passed and finally our bus arrived. We hopped in, plopped down in our seats and began to de-thaw. The moral of the story as we learned is: check the schedule for your return trip before leaving town so you're not stuck relying on someone else's memory of bus times.

Once back in Sibenik we took the 2PM bus to downtown Trogir and walked 2 kilometers to our next home, Camping Seget. In order to have an uninhibited view over the blue-green waters of Splitski Channel we pitched our tent at the edge of the property. We headed back into Trogir to check out the old town which was named a Unesco World Heritage site back in 1997. The dark, winding alleys and side streets of the 15th century city provided us with hours of fun.

Tired from the days events we decided to treat ourselves to our first sit-down dinner in a restaurant (that we actually paid for ourselves). We chose the Fontana Restaurant because it sits right on the harbour and, according to our guide book, is where local Croatians go when dining out. We had a delicious dinner of salted sardines, mixed salads, grilled calimari and Frute di Mari pizza. We left downtown Trogir and walked the 2km back to our tent and settled in for the night.

Just before we said goodnight I decided I wanted to listen to our iPod for a bit. Megan looked in her hand bag (where it's always been kept) but couldn't find it. We tore apart the tent looking for it to no avail - our iPod was gone. We retraced our steps from that day, looked around our tent with flashlights but found nothing. Exhausted and disappointed, we decided to go to sleep and deal with it in the morning.