Friday: July 4
Sibenik Croatia, Waterfalls!
I slept very well last night, although I could have used another hour perhaps.
We were anchored in a Croatian bay. I was out before Amy. We met at the theater, then went down one floor to board the tender (which doubled as a life boat). There was a short ride to the shore, where we greeted our local guide and boarded the bus.
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The guide told us a story about her first trip as a professional guide. She said that she brought a bunch of French tourists somewhere (I forget where), and by the end of the excursion, she had lost three of them, about three years of her life, and probably three kilos of weight. That night, she was wondering if this is what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. But that day was unusual, and years later she is still guiding.
I was going to the Krka National Park to view the waterfalls. I brought my tripod, which was the right thing to do. We spent an hour or two strolling a loop path, and in my case, takings lots of waterfall pictures.
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The loop is intended to descend slowly, and then have a long stair at the end. To make it easier on the frailer clients, our guide opted to do it backwards, so that we went down the long stair instead of going up it, and then had a series of shorter, spaced out stairs to regain our elevation. However, this meant that we kept passing signs saying “wrong way”, and at times it felt like we were spawning salmon, heading up-stream.
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For the most part, I could set up, take a picture or two, and then hurry to catch-up with the group. Some pictures were challenging. About half the route was on boardwalks, and when people went by, the wood tended to shake noticeably. I had not a few pictures ruined by camera shake. I had to guess when there might be a gap in the people for 10 seconds, and try to squeeze a picture in.
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On the second (uphill) half, one of the clients seemed to be having issues. I’m not sure if it was the heat or something else. The guide and a client who was a nurse was tending to the gentleman. As a result, the second half was slower and more drawn out than normal. For me, however, it gave me more time to take pictures. I think the trip was OK from a photography perspective, although if I had been there by myself on my own schedule, I probably would have taken 4 times the time and taken many more photos.
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Then we went to the small town of Skradin, where we had a 15 minute stroll. It was a very small town, without too much of great significance. I think the only reason we visited was that it was at the entrance to the park.
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In the park, there had been a lot of trees and water, and it didn’t seem terribly hot. The town felt warmer, although our guide said that the streets were narrow to provide more shade in the heat and to block the wind in the cold.
It was sort of ironic that she mentioned several times the Croatian wars for independence, and it happened to be our Independence Day.
After a short ride back to the dock, we took a boat back to the ship. I was surprised to see that it had apparently raised anchor while I was gone, and now it was much closer to the dock.
We had to run our bags through an x-ray machine, but they seemed pretty mellow about the metal detector. I didn’t have to put anything (e.g. cellphone) in a bin to run around the metal detector. It was easier than in Venice, but not as easy as on the river boats.
I went up and grabbed a quick lunch. As it is the 4th of July, the theme was “American”, so I had a large plate of BBQ ribs.
Now I need to go back to the room and get organized for the afternoon excursion. Strangely, this will be the first excursion that I will go on together with Amy.
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I had a very strange occurrence at the start of the afternoon excursion. I got to the assembly point a bit early, waiting for the call, got on the boat, and was tendered to the shore. I chatted briefly with the people sitting opposite me. We were bobbing around, waiting for the boat at the dock to pull away. It was warm, and I had eaten not too long ago. I ended up dozing off as I was sitting there.
I didn’t realize that I had dozed off until I jerked awake, looked around, and saw that all of the passengers were already gone! For a moment, I panicked and wondered if I was on my way back to the ship. Fortunately, we were still at the dock, so I quickly got up and got off the tender. I was really shocked that the people next to me didn’t wake me when we docked and people started to leave, and I was apparently asleep.
I met up with Amy, and we joined the group. We got a short bus ride to town, and then spent maybe an hour walking around listening to the guide. Then we got a short ride back to the tender, and caught the boat to the ship.
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At this point, with one exception, the day started going downhill.
We went up to our room to take a shower and change into clean clothes. Amy plugged in her phone to charge, and her phone screamed that there was water in the USB port. We later decided that she must have gotten some in when she was moistening a neck wrap she has. In any event, we tried to clear it out, but whenever we tried to charge it, it complained about water. It was at 1% and basically dead. We left it to dry out.
We went down to the Atrium to listen to the pianist/cellist, but we could only do so for about 10 minutes before we left to hear another story from the same guy that did the Game of Thrones talk. (He describes himself as a story-teller rather than as a lecturer.) His talk, as is apparently usual, was amazing.
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When that was over, we went to Manfretti’s, the fancy Italian restaurant on board. We were about 10 minutes early, but they told us to wait. We ended up waiting about 30-40 minutes, so we were about a half hour late when we finally got in. Then the service ended up being incredibly slow. I think it was an hour or maybe 90 minutes before we got our main course, so it was a very late dinner. I’m seriously considering canceling our other reservation there. Our experiences with the normal Restaurant have been much better, and the food there is more than fine.
While we were waiting for our food, I checked the schedule on the app for the day after tomorrow, and I was shocked to find that I wasn’t scheduled for anything! When dinner was finally over and we got back to the room, I checked, and I should have been scheduled for a hike.
I went down to customer relations, and I found that once again, my excursion had been canceled due to not enough people signing up. For whatever reason, I didn’t get a text message this time. I went back up to the room, sorted through the options, selected one, and once again, I could not select it from the app. So I had to go back down to customer relations and have them book it for me. This pattern is getting repetitive. I really hope that I don’t have to go through this yet again on this trip.
Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day. We have two different things scheduled in the morning, and then (like today) the same thing scheduled in the afternoon. Amy almost certainly won’t have time to get back to the boat for lunch, so she’ll probably have to wing lunch on her own near the pier. I might have barely enough time to get back to the boat for lunch. I’ll have to see when I get back from the morning activity.
One good event is that when we got back from dinner, Amy plugged in her phone, and this time it didn’t complain about water in the USB port, so it is currently charging.
Unfortunately, this is another late night followed by an early morning. Even if I sleep well, I probably won’t sleep enough. I’ll be lucky to be in bed by 11, but it might be closer to 11:30, with a 6:00 or 6:15 alarm time.
I’ve found that if I lower the A/C at bedtime, I can sleep under the comforter, and then I raise it to a more neutral setting during the day.