on the road

First off, here’s a map of where I went and stayed in Italy this summer.

Back at home now, but more tales to tell. My mother admonished me to end this summer’s series on a happy note, since my last entry didn’t do much but complain about the Eye-talians. I really like complaining, but I can see her point. So instead of further negativity, let’s move on to tales of nude beaches, drunken swimming, and sunrises!

My last entry on the 8th was written from the lovely island of Hvar. While I did like Hvar, I think spending 4 nights there was a bit too much as the island is rather small and I found myself repeating my steps quite a bit. I ended up moving onto Dubrovnik for my last four nights, which was the highlight of Croatia (no surprise here to anyone familiar with Croatia) and one of the best periods of my trip. Dubrovnik was absolutely slammed with tourists, yet I loved it anyway. I can’t imagine the charm the place must have in the shoulder season. Then again, the water is cool enough in August that I’m not sure I’d want to visit in May or October, swimming would be out of the question then. But enough chronicling, let’s get to the raunch!

Such as my first nude beach experience. One day I took a daytrip out to the little island of Lokrum, which sits just off Dubrovnik by about a 30 minute boat ride. I was walking around randomly through the island’s trails, when I found one that ran across to the cliff edge and had a view down to the sea. I walked over, looked down, and noticed an extremely beautiful inlet, a V-shaped gash into the island with 40-50 foot high cliff walls and aquamarine water. I immediately thought “must go there” and then “Ok, how?” and proceeded to look to the left and noticed naked people. The only way into this marine bliss was walking and rockhopping all the way down the nude beach until the very end. Unless I wanted to jump the 50 feet off the cliff, but I wasn’t feeling particularly Australian and decided to pass. Now I knew Croatia’s strict nude beach policy - you enter, you get naked. I weighed the situation mentally. I came to the conclusion that my inhibitions were silly, that I’m on vacation and don’t really care, and figured it was worth letting 50 people see my white ass. Plus it’d be an adventure, and my trip had thusfar been short on adventure (long on relaxation).

So I find the trail to the beach entrance, passing by the No Clothes and No Cameras sign, and clamber to the end of the beach. The term “beach” in Croatia does not have anything to do with strips of sand. It really refers to anyplace near the sea where people can lay out or go swimming. All of Croatia’s shoreline is rock or some variation thereof. This partiuclar “beach” was really nice by Croatia’s standards, with lots of broad flat rocks that stepped up from the water up the hillside. Anyway, I get to my target destination, the End of the Nude Beach. I take a deep breath, bend over, and woosh, off goes my swimsuit. I then peer off into the distance, junk to the wind, inhale and shout “I am Adam reincarnate!” Ok, not really. Instead I rockhopped buck naked to the jumping off point (rockhopping while nude might be one of the least attractive sights on earth, well, if you have my skinny pale body anyway) and threw myself into the choppy azure water. Swimming naked in the sea is a surprisingly nice sensation. You feel like a fish or something, like you belong there.

That wasn’t the only nudie experience for me. The following occasion was a lot less dramatic. A group of us were at the beach a couple days later, one girl noticed that the other half of the beach was nude, and wanted to go do it. It was my last day in Croatia, and she was somewhat attractive, so I said what the hell and went with.

Dubrovnik was also a good night out. In four nights there I saw the sun rise twice, partly a product of the buses not running between 1 and 5:30 am and the hostel being a 40 minute walk from the downtown/castle area. The hostel had a great group of people so it was quite fun hitting up the clubs. The best evening ended with us walking past the old town harbor on our way back. I peered into the harbor, saw a boat tied up off by itself, and immediately fashioned myself Jack Sparrow. “Let’s pirate the boat!” I yelled as I ran into the harbor and jumped on. No one else in my little group found the idea as cool as me, instead someone offered a suggestion: no, let’s go swimming instead! Now, despite Dubrovnik having pure waters all around it, inside the harbor the water might give a Venetian canal a run for its money. The water is still clear, but has random trash floating about it and god knows what invisible liquids tossed off the boats. So the decision was Pirates vs. Swimmers and swimming won. We got down to our undies and hurled ourselves in. The water was gross, I knew it’d be gross, but when you’re drunk you don’t care. We got out when some old Croatian codger yelled at us that the police were coming and we’d better clear the area. I didn’t really believe him, besides it isn’t illegal to go swimming, but the girls freaked out and we had to leave.

It was nice having a few solid nights out to end the trip, considering I spent a lot of my trip in places where partying is a glass of Vin Santo after a meal. Out of 82 nights I probably only had 4-5 proper all nighters. Nice to end the trip on an upswing!

So my Croatian adventure ended with me sleeping on the deck of the Jadrolinja ferry into Bari, followed by 7 hours of trains the next day into Rome. My last meal in Italy was cacio e pepe followed by a pizza with prosciutto and rucola at Da Francesco, which I think has the best atmosphere of any restaurant in Rome. I followed that up with gelato at Giolitti, where I asked for mora and pistacchio, and was promptly told that they didn’t have mora (blackberry) but mirtillo (blueberry) was the same thing. I took the insult to my intelligence lightly, and with a smile admonished the young gelato scooper that they are two entirely different fruits. He probably was surprised to get a rebuttal in Italian from a guy wearing a baseball hat and T-shirt. I got the blueberry anyway, but it wasn’t as good. Blackberry is my favorite. Next time, Rome, next time.