Sun 02.Jun.2013
Zadar, Dalmatia, Croatia
A mostly grey and rainy 4 days so far in Zadar, capital of the ancient Croatian
kingdom, Roman outpost, modern seaport, and an extraorinarily photogenic place when the
sun breaks through. Dalmatia more or less begins here, where I expect to be for
the rest of my time in Croatia this season.
Zadar was a Roman city in Rome's heyday. Part of the old Forum is now a
main plaza, with a medieval church grafted on to one side. The rest is a park and museum,
sloping from the plaza down to the seafront promenade on the south side of the
little peninsula where the old city sits.
My digs are in an uphill residential neighborhood,
an inconvenient distance from the old town, especially because the nearest
available internet connection is down there. Fortunately, the distance is just about right
for my dailly exercise walk, and there is a bus for the other direction. These scarlet
poppies grace an intersection along my regular routes.
Between the many offshore islands and the Zadar Peninsula itself, the bay / harbor must
be one of the best-sheltered havens in the Adriatic. A breakwater extends most of the way
across the harbor entrance.
Completing the crossing - for pedestrians - is a little
row boat service. Five minutes and five kunas gets you into the tip of the old town.
Alternatively, you can take the bus to the commercial district, and cross a
(pedestrians only) bridge into the center of the little peninsula. I usually take that
route in reverse to get home in the evenings, and do the daily walk in the downhill
direction.
When the setting sun breaks through under the cloud cover, even the modern, working
side of the harbor is luminously beautiful.
On the southwestern tip of the old city, facing Uglijan Island, is
a poplur art installation the Greeting To The Sun. Circular arrays of photovoltaic
cells are laid in the ground, proportional in size to the Sun and planets. They are
spaced along the seafront at distances proportional to the spacings of the planets. A night,
the planets twinkle with LEDs powered by those solar cells.
Most visitors don't pay much attention to the twinkling. They just love to dance around
on the Sun itself, like a big shiny outdoor stage.