Welcome to Croatia…now get lost!

Rise and shine after a good night of "not" sleeping in our car

6.26.10
On the Road Between Dubrovnik and the place that we are supposed to be sleeping tonight.

We are hopelessly lost. We will probably be sleeping in our car tonight. Or we will run out of gas alongside a dark and deserted highway in a formerly war-torn country. Both are distinct possibilities. Our vacation of a lifetime is off to an auspicious start. But…let me explain.

So we left La Cala this morning with a bit of sadness in our hearts, but that is to be expected and is a normal emotion. Our destination today is the Crotian coast near Dubrovnik…yes, the very same Dubrovink that we bombed the crap out of only a few short decades ago. Apparently they have re-built since then as it is now quite the destination resort area for the European set.

We have rented a beautiful villa set up in the hills overlooking the Adriatic Sea. It has a swimming pool for the kids and a wine cellar for the adults. We have also arranged a great surprise for the kids. We are sharing the house with 2 neighbor families from the US…and the kids don’t have a clue. It sounds perfect. It is perfect. But first we have to get there.

To get to Dubrovnik on a budget, you have to fly through Gatwick…near London. The flights from Malaga to Dubrovnik, which are actually really close to each other, would have cost north of E300. If you don’t mind flying West for 2 ½ hours to then turn around and fly back east for 2 ½ hours on EasyJet, you can get there for about E180. We chose to fly West.

The flight to Gatwick was uneventful and we got a great tour through the Gatwick airport…first the 45 minute walking tour we took to collect our checked bag, then the 15 minute bus tour to the other terminal, and then another 15 minute walking tour to find the check in counter. It was a nice time…but it all worked out in the end as we saved a lot of money and got to see the sights of the Gatwick airport at the same time…my version of a win-win situation.

In Gatwick, as in many other European airports, the flight information display system only tells you which gate your plane is going to be at once the plane actually lands. As the time for our flight approached, all the other flights that were to leave in the same time frame popped up one by one. Rome gate 35, Ibiza gate 29, Warsaw gate 12…you can actually learn a lot about European geography by taking one of the route maps from an airline magazine and then watching the departures board in any big international airport…beats the hell out of learning in a 5th grade textbook.

So all the other flights were boarding. Ours finally changed too. But, instead of telling us to proceed to gate 34, it said “please wait”. Please Wait? Like I have another choice? WTF? I took this to be a bad sign. I was right. Had we been going to any other city in greater Europe, we would have been fine. Apparently Dubrovnik had been placed on some random british “do not fly” list. We were stuck. So we took the information we had at hand…please wait…and we waited…and we waited…and we waited.

To make a long story shorter, we finally did get on the plane but we were at least 2 hours late. We arrived in Dubrovnik at about 9:30, in the dark. After having a nice chat with Ivan, the rental car guy, we were able to get our car and a 1: 1,000,000 scale map of Croatia. Oh yes, and his parting words to us as we drove off into the dark with a map of the world with a tiny circle on it around Croatia that said “you are here” was..”oh yeah, you might have enough gas to get to Dubrovnik as I didn’t have time to fill ‘er up”.

Might have enough gas to get to Dubrovnik? Dubrovnik is about 25 kilometers away! I used to be able to run that far. I checked the gas gauge and it was on “E”…I took that to mean “Enough” and we headed out into the dark Croation night.

Our first stop was to get some fuel for ourselves…and to catch the end of the Spain / Chile match on the tele. We had a great first meal in Croatia without a red pepper, tomato, or fried fish part to be found.  We might like it here! So it is now pushing 11:00 and we really don’t have any idea exactly where our hotel is, and if it will be open when we get there. But it isn’t that far and the directions are really simple. “Drive on the E65 for 27.3 k and we’re on the left side of the road.

I reset the odometer to 0.0 and we’re off on another adventure! Things are going along swimmingly as the gas gage is still moving around as I take the many curves and hills in the road. I took this to mean that was still gas in the tank as it was splashing around in there as we drove through the Croatian countryside. As we approached kilometer 12.4 things took a turn for the worse.

The Croatian equivalent of the Highway Patrol was in the middle of the road with lots of blue flashing lights and waving us off the main road onto a side road. I stopped and asked if we could get to our hotel using this detour. He said something like “Kmsthy. Kjilnvm…mhn thanch plafgth.” I took this to mean “sure, it is just a few clicks out of the way and you will have no problem and there are lots of gas stations along the way that are open 24 hours a day for your convenience” or “no, you are screwed”…I must brush up on my Croatian.

We followed the line of cars and a bus on a tour though the hills and dales, one eye on the road and …wait a minute, I only have one eye…so I had to ask Laura to watch the gas gage…that way, if we ran out, I could blame it on her. We eventually wound our way through the hills and came back out on the main road, or what we took to be the main road. To the right or to the left? Hmmm..pull out the map and look…good idea…not knowing where you are on said map…more Hmmming. We turned left. We should have turned right!

We travel through Dubrovnik at night, we drive in a couple of circles, I am starting to sweat. We stop and ask directions…more answers like “mkgfd yhnvhjk ikmlnbcxz”. It is now well past midnight, we are hopelessly lost, we are out of gas and we have no idea where we are going. I am seriously concerned now that we will be spending tonight sleeping in our cram packed Ford Fiesta…you never see that on any of the hip, cool American Idol Ford Fiesta commercials.

Miraculously, we find the main bridge that is our one landmark and we know we are close. As we proceed on fumes, we see the sign for the village where our fabled hotel is presumed to be located. We see a small barely paved road that turns abruptly off the main highway into the darkness of the Croatian night. Out of gas, losing hope and desperate, we turn off the road. It doesn’t look good and I am looking for a way to turn around on the less than one lane trail when Laura sees a light. We press on down the paved ravine to find more lights – a small village looms in the distance.

As we approach, I see the hotel of our dreams. We have found the Hotel Doris. We dance a jig in out seats. At least now we can sleep in our Ford Fiesta in the small gravel parking lot of our hotel as it is now 1:00 AM and the hotel (actually, more of a large house that lets out rooms in the Summer) is completely dark. Undeterred, I park the car and begin to search for the small envelope that I am sure the caring concerned hotelier has left taped to the front door of the main office.

I take Laura’s I-whatever in “flashlight mode” and begin my search for the office. I do not find it. I am about to give up as I have looked in every door, window, bench and table around the entire hotel and do not find the magic envelope. We are screwed and certainly will be sleeping in the car tonight.

I see one more trail leading around the side of the hotel and follow it. In the last darkened doorway a see something hanging from the door…not the fabled envelope but a key…in the door! Hmmm…could be that the concerned Croatian hotelier has conspicuously placed this key in the door so the hapless American tourist family who has arrived late, can open the door and find salvation, safety and a warm dry place to sleep the remaining few hours of the night. Or it could be that a forgetful French tourist family left the keys in door when they went to bed. What to do, what to do?

I quickly developed a plan in my head. I would approach the door with confidence, wiggle the key a bit and then crack the door open. If I heard / saw signs of life, I would quietly close the door and go to sleep in the car. If, by chance, the occupants awakened, I would say in a calm quiet voice “Security, inspecting the perimeter, have a good sleep knowing I am on the job”. But then I thought “Wait a minute, why would security be talking in English?” I moved to a back up plan that would have ma saying “mkbvg thynzxs, plmswth” in my best Croatian accent as the tourist occupants probably wouldn’t know that I wasn’t saying “security” in Croatian.

All ends well for the hapless American family as our concerned hotelier in fact left the key in the door for us.  There were no sleeping French tourists in the room.  We had found our salvation in a cool, dry, safe place to sleep.  Buenos noches from a very small village on the Dalmation Coast of Croatia (formerly known as Yugoslavia).