bournemouth – curiousgnome

Saturday 1 July

At the time of beginning this post (11 July), if you’d told me two weeks ago that we were about to spend a week in Croatia, I’d hardly have believed it. We found out on Friday 23 June that Ryan had managed to get annual leave for the first week of July and my work confirmed the following Wednesday. This was excellent news, as on Tuesday night we’d booked the cheapest flights we could find from Bournemouth airport – we were off to Zadar, Croatia, that coming Sunday.

We’d had minimal planning time as I was at a conference all week, but in the evenings we’d managed to book flights, accommodation and – with some difficulty – car hire. Ryan picked me up from Salisbury train station on Saturday afternoon and we rushed to Southampton to collect a Croatia climbing book from a friend and buy a pair of 60m half ropes, having discovered that Zadar County is a renowned destination for climbers. To say that packing was stressful is an understatement: the evening was spent – not without argument – trying to squeeze two 3kg ropes, a bunch of climbing equipment (the majority of which is metal), hiking gear and (minimal) clothing into our 20kg hold bag and two small cabin rucksacks.

Sunday 2 July

Our friend Cam picked us up at 9am and dropped us off at the airport, full of nervousness about the weight of the hold bag and size of the cabin bags. Fortunately both were fine, but on realising that I might have left a very much prohibited lighter in a pouch of hiking stuff, I spent the entire two-and-a-half hour flight expecting that our hold bag wouldn’t turn up in Croatia. After a stressful wait, we flew at 1pm, landed at 4:30 local time, and were immensely relieved when our bag appeared on the conveyor belt.

First impressions were good: towards the end of the flight I’d caught glimpses of multitudinous islands, azure sea and sprawling mountains from my aisle seat at the front of the plane, and Zadar airport was pleasantly tiny and clean. We sat on a grassy patch at the front of the airport as we waited until 6pm to pick up our hire car, and I spent the whole time marvelling at lizards, snails, bugs, moths, pine cones, cacti, flowery shrubs and long trains of large ants making their way up and down the pine trees that shaded us from the warm sun.

We picked up our pre-booked car at 6pm, and – although the rental man was very friendly – we were once again racked with anxiety at the revelation of having to put down a €1,100 deposit, at least some of which we’d lose in the event of anything happening to the brand new Renault Clio – even a tiny scratch – due to paying with a debit card. We were quite unlucky in this regard, as we were hard-pressed to find a hire place that accepted debit cards: I have a credit card but unfortunately my driving licence expired a couple of weeks before and I hadn’t yet been able to renew it thanks to DVLA’s hopeless systems, but Ryan only had a debit card, which meant we ended up paying about £100 more than if a) my licence was valid, or b) he had a credit card. I’m waffling on about this because it remains a sore subject. Lesson learnt: use a credit card in the driver’s name to hire cars abroad.

The 45 minute drive through rural Zadar County to Starigrad, the town where we were staying, would have been interesting and far more enjoyable if we weren’t reeling from the pressure of not damaging the car. Ryan had never driven on the “wrong” side of the road before and found it very strange at first, mainly getting the road positioning right – I found the same thing when I drove abroad for the first time in the Alps. Being so new and fancy, the car kept emitting beeps seemingly at random, which we later discovered was an indication that he was straying towards the lines at the edge of the road. Speed limit signs were few and far between, and for the first time in, I believe, his entire life, he welcomed some gentle back-seat driving.

We stopped at a supermarket on the way, parking as far from the entrance as possible in order to preserve the car. We were yet to realise how welcoming and friendly the Croatian people are, and felt very conspicuous and foreign among aisles of unfamiliar cheeses, meats and dry goods. We picked up some supplies, including fruit, pasta, bread, a kilogram of dubious-looking reformed sausage, cheap cheese, cheaper wine, frozen seafood risotto for that evening and crisps of an unidentifiable flavour, and continued our journey to Starigrad.

Screenshot of a video of the fresh counter, found in most supermarkets

We arrived at our accommodation at 8pm and were greeted by our host, a smiling Croatian lady who barely spoke a word of English but welcomed us warmly, showed us into our apartment, taught me how to pronounce “hvala” (thank you) after I clearly failed miserably, indicated that an unlabelled glass bottle of thick, dark red liquid was a gift for us, then returned to the ground floor veranda where she’d been sitting out with her family. On her leaving, we decided that the liquid was a kind of cherry brandy. The apartment was perfect: a simple, clean bedroom with a little kitchen and bathroom in a family home, the first floor of which had been split into three apartments. It felt like an authentic stay in a Croatian house, with the added advantage of privacy – we were free to come and go as we pleased without disturbing anyone, as the first floor had its own staircase and veranda looking down onto the street below, which was quiet except for the constant trill of cicadas. With the car parked safely on the drive, we finally relaxed.

I cooked seafood risotto with chunks of the mysterious sausage for dinner and we crashed on the huge bed, exhausted by the stress of overcoming various travelling hurdles and relieved at the effectiveness of the room’s air conditioning unit. After the last minute planning, rushing around to collect climbing gear, packing stress, airport stress, lighter-in-bag concerns, car anxiety and anticipation of finding our accommodation as we’d hoped it to be, we could scarcely believe that we’d made it to Croatia. Our holiday had begun.

Taken the day we left, hence Ryan’s glum expression

5 – 6 July 2022

Poor planning

I had an extremely stressful evening on Tuesday 5 July. We went indoor climbing as normal and on the way back I decided it’d be a good idea to check the covid requirements for our flight to Spain at 12:25 the following day. It turned out that although we were double vaccinated, we could only enter Spain if our second vaccine had been received within 270 days of the flight, we’d had the booster (which takes up to 5 days to register on covid records), or we had a negative test result. Negative (by about 25 days), negative, and negative, respectively.

After hours of googling, despair at realising most test centres (including the one at Bournemouth airport) had 24-hour turnaround times, and a small degree of extremely sceptical relief at having found a centre in Southampton offering £22.50 lateral flows with 2-hour results and an 8am appointment slot, we packed at 1am, hoping that we weren’t tempting fate. We went to bed at 2am and were up by 6.

Ryan’s dad rushed us into Southampton for 7.30, we had our lateral flows at the test centre – surprisingly busy for 8am – and we went to a nearby walk-in vaccination centre to get our boosters at 9am, just in case the covid app updated on time. Miraculously our negative test results were emailed through as we were queuing, to our immense relief, but we were still slightly anxious that they wouldn’t be accepted at the airport.

On the way to Bournemouth airport I filled out our Spanish government issue entry forms, uploaded our test result documents to our boarding passes, and breathed for the first time in 12 hours. We went through security, had a drink in the bar, bought a phrase book from the shop and boarded our busy flight without any hassle.

Arrival in Girona

We stepped off the plane to that intense, slightly stifling wave of heat that marks the beginning of a hot summer holiday. We left the airport, slightly incredulous that Spain had let us in without batting an eyelid, and waited half an hour for a bus in the searing heat. I was delighted to find a vending machine at the bus stop selling impossibly processed ham and cheese sandwiches and paprika crisps, which kept us going until the bus came.

The 30-minute trip to Girona bus station took us past dry, golden fields, dusty buildings and the industrial southern end of the city, which seemed to be full of car and motorbike dealerships. We left the large, air conditioned station building and were once again hit by the heat of a Spanish summer as we walked out onto a large, open, very clean plaza. We headed east through intermittent, warm rain towards our airbnb past slightly tired-looking offices and flats, then along a long, straight, smooth-cobbled street flanked by tall, six-storeyed buildings with a variety of narrow shops underneath.

Then we reached the river Onyar and realised what Girona was all about. We stopped on the wide stone Pedra bridge to admire the river, which consisted of a barely flowing channel of clear water between two lush green strips of grasses, reeds and wetland plants, set about 15 feet below street level. It was incredibly clean, and large carp swam lazily around the weeds directly below us, to Ryan’s delight. The river was lined on both sides by pretty, flat-fronted buildings two to six storeys high, painted in a striking array of oranges, yellows, reds and creams, and the elegant grey towers of the cathedral and basilica soared above the flat rooves on the right bank. This was the view that came up when we’d google imaged Girona, but it was even more beautiful.

We crossed the bridge and wandered down the cobbled, tree-lined Rambla de la Libertat, which was bustling with pretty shops and little restaurants with tables spilling across one side of the street. We turned right at the end onto a narrower street squeezed between attractive, five storey high buildings, some painted pastel oranges and some bare-stoned, all with pretty balconies and shutters or blinds to keep out the heat. The streets brimmed with all kinds of little shops and restaurants and it was remarkably clean and tidy – not a speck of litter. Old town had delighted us already.

Accommodation

Our airbnb was in a third floor apartment right in the middle of old town, down a narrow alley on the Placa dels Raims, the smallest square in Europe. It took a little bit of finding but we were delighted with it. Our host – despite barely speaking a word of English – was extremely welcoming and our room was along a corridor in a separate part of the apartment to the main bit where she lived with her family. It was high-ceilinged and timeless, with whitewashed walls and a lovely stone feature wall, shelves full of books, towels and trinkets, a tall shuttered window opening out onto a narrow gap between the tall buildings, and our own large, clean private bathroom. It was lovely to be spending the trip in a Catalonian home, rather than a common-or-garden hotel room.

Paella & Chill

We took some time to settle and relax in the room following the stress of our poor-planning-related near miss, then got changed and went to explore a little. We had a little walk around the picture-postcard narrow, cobbled streets, enjoying that distinctive summer smell of warm, fat raindrops (none of that nasty British drizzle) hitting the stone floor. My flip flops were slippery on the smooth slabs so I walked around barefoot with my silky trousers rolled up. We went back to the tree-lined Rambla de la Libertat for dinner and found a reasonably priced (we later found out that most restaurants were reasonable) Catalonian restaurant with street seating under large stone arches and grappled – probably quite poorly – with ordering our dinner in Spanish.

We shared a lovely seafood paella and “fideua”, a similar dish but with noodles and a different sauce. I enjoyed my first ever (!) sangria and we sat people watching, drinking in the unfamiliar and refreshing lack of English-ness. The rain subsided and we went for an evening walk. We crossed back over the Onya, which was equally beautiful under a fading, grey-pink sky, and wandered around the clean, more modern, slightly wider streets on the west side of the river, intrigued by the randomly situated but bustling small eat-and-drinkeries. We found the large, buzzing Placa de la Independencia square, lined on all four sides by long, tall, balconied apartment buildings above a multitude of bars and restaurants, and decided to return for lunch the following day.

We crossed back over a bridge further down the river and returned to our little flat in the middle of old town. We were extremely pleasantly surprised by Girona’s charm and atmosphere and planned to spend the next day exploring the city more thoroughly. My biggest qualm was my aching left arm from the booster jab that morning and the warm temperature, which made getting to sleep difficult, particularly as I was concerned about jab side effects. After some tossing and turning I drifted off, probably thanks to the air con unit in the room and the thin sheet instead of a duvet, excited for the rest of the holiday.

curiousgnome

Tag: bournemouth

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