Sibenik. Not one fortress but three.

Perhaps indicative of how the Venetians held this coast for so long against the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs. They bought the coast from the Neapolitans around 1400 and held it until the early 1800s when the Hapsburgs, in an unholy alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte, teamed up and took the Venetian Republic out of the game.

All of the historic Venetian towns I have visited along the coast: Split, Trogir, Sibenik, Zadar .. are similar in their construction: local stone buildings and narrow medieval streets.

Of course there is more city here than the old town. But not much. Maybe 40,000 people in the area. The hills rise straight out of the sea and so the city is a narrow strip of houses stacked on top of one another.

Without any real data except looking I think that these coastal areas were de-forested centuries ago and the topsoil lost to erosion. Certainly, they are now just rocky coastal hills of fractured limestone with only scrubby vegetation. The trees do seem to be coming back, but that is of course a very slow process. There are not any fields of “crops” growing beyond some olives and grapes. But they do have the sea.

This city sits on a large river fed bay with a gap in the hills through to the sea.

Just off the coast in this area there are something like 150 islands. Sitting in a warm sunny California type climate this is a yachtie’s dream destination. The main industry of the town looks like repairing, outfitting, provisioning, cleaning, renting, buying and selling boats. And wining and dining the Yachties.

There are boats everywhere, parked and moving about. Little boats.

Big boats.

And ginormous boats. By the hundreds.

This is a nice lively little town right on the water and I have enjoyed my stay. 75 degrees and sunny every day.

There are top quality restaurants where I am living on my usual diet of grilled whole fish and occasional lamb chops. Which, with the weather, is why I travel so much around the Mediterranean. If you travel through Croatia I recommend to you their fine white wines that many producers make from a grape called Debit. I found it to be delicious.

And that ends my quiet holidays on the coast in Croatia. I will soon fly up to Vienna to meet up with CAMarchand who will be travelling with me for some weeks. We will be on roller skates because she likes her travel to be “event filled”.