Watson Sushi: Croatia: Zadar

I am going to give myself a pat on the back for keeping up with this blog and documenting our stories. I am swamped with all sorts of activities and events, and cutting out time to sit down and blog is such a difficult task these days. But I love it when I write it, and I know how much our kids love reading it…so I must persevere and finish telling the story of our Croatian trip! I keep asking Robert to pitch in, and he will…but at the moment he is in the kitchen creating our outfits for the Ugly Sweater Christmas party this weekend, my Mr.Creative.

All right. So after the waterfalls, we drove back towards the coast, to Zadar. Zadar is an ancient city located in the Northern part of Dalmatia. During the war in the 90s, Zadar was shelled sporadically for several years. Its connections with Zagreb were severed for over year, many buildings in the city were damaged, including some very important UNESCO sights.

We were not planning to stay in Zadar for a long time. We arrived around 4 pm to the city, got settled in our apartment, and ventured out to find something to eat. I must mention here that back when we were in Trogir we got an email about the fact that the apartment that we booked in Zadar had water pipes problems, and that we were offered another apartment for our stay. This alternative apartment turned out to be a much better, bigger and better located (and normally more expensive) one than the original place. So it all worked out in the end.

This is a quick picture of our place—living room plus two big bedrooms.

And this is how I dried our laundry that afternoon! Good thing I had lots of practice of this sort of stuff living in Ukraine (although ours was on a much smaller scale).

Oh wait, now I remember that we didn’t just go straight to find something to eat. We first went to the beach! Well, technically, it was not a real sandy beach, but that’s where the locals swim in the warmer months. What we went to look for were Zadar’s famous Sea Organ and the Greeting to the Sun.

It is a bit difficult to describe, but the way that Sea Organ works is that with the help of the waves pushing air into the reeds, the organ produces sound. The sound comes out from the pipes insde the stairs on which you can sit and that go down all the way into the water. Does it make sense?

As you can imagine, the kids loved that. They waited for boats to go by so that bigger waves would be created and the organ would play louder. It was COOL! And it was even more impressive because it was in the dark.

Alex wanted to be right at the bottom of the stairs, but he got soaked pretty quickly when the waves unexpectedly decided to make some music.

Now, The Greeting to the Sun is a different attraction, located right next to the Sea Organ. This is how it is described what it is on its website (much better than my explanation): “The Greetings to the Sun consists of three hundred multi-layered glass plates placed on the same level with the stone-paved waterfront in the shape of a 22-meter diameter circle. Under the glass conduction plates there are photo-voltage solar modules through which symbolic communication with nature is made, with the aim to communicate with light, just like the Sea Organs do with sound.

Simultaneously with the „most beautiful sunset in the world" the lighting elements installed in a circle turn on, and, following a particularly programmed scenario, they produce a marvelous, exceptionally impressive show of light in the rhythm of the waves and the sounds of the Sea organs”. Sounds like fun, right?

After a peaceful stroll along the promenade (a newly rebuilt one since it was destroyed in the war), we found a place that someone recommended to us.

This is where Robert had his huge meat dish he shared with Alex, trying all sorts of Croatian meat.

This is also where Mark said he wanted octopus stew, and nothing would change his mind. This kid ate the whole thing!

One thing I really appreciated about most of the restaurants we went to was that they let us buy a half-size portion of any dish for a kid for half-price. So because our kids eat the same food as grown ups do (no kids’ meals required), it was so helpful!

After dinner we walked around the city a bit (we might or we might not have bought more gelato that night). The city was not nearly as architecturally unique as Dubrovnik and Trogir. We could tell that many buildings were quite damaged, sadly….

We came home around 9 in the evening, tucked the kids in bed and continued watching “Once Upon A Time”. Is this random? Have I mentioned this before? Yes, Robert and I checked out “Once Upon A Time” Season 1 before our trip and decided to marathon-watch it. We still need to finish Season 2 now.

Anyway.

The next morning we headed straight to the Glass Museum. All I wanted to see was a glass blowing demonstration that was part of the admission. Yes, we saw it—took about 5 minutes (with loud music blaring in the glass shop, so the kids could hardly understand what the guy was saying).

And then it took us another twenty minutes to walk through two stories of the museum and see all kinds of glass artifacts discovered in this area. Robert and I could have spent a bit more time there reading all the explanations, but the kids were definitely ready to move on. My advice—skip the museum.

This is what Mark looked like when we exited the building. That’s not a happy face Winking smile

Of course! Who wants to walk around the glass museum when there such a nice “beach” to explore! Since we didn’t have to check out till whenever that day (courtesy of the owner of the apartment since we were in the low season), we decided to go back to the Sea Organ.