Where was I? Oh yes, we rented a car in Croatia, but we couldn't figure out how to use reverse because it wasn't set up like mine at home. We got trapped at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea, in the middle of a walking path, and couldn't move forward because there were police at the end of the walking path and couldn't turn around because it was too narrow. The old ladies walking on the path were pissed at us. They intentionally walked in front of the car and stared us down, flicking their canes forward menacingly. We briefly considered just abandoning the car and going back to Italy. Too humiliated to call the rental car office and ask how to put the transmission in reverse, we pulled out the driver's manual and flipped through pages until we found a diagram of the clutch. So put the stick in neutral all the way to the left, push down and then slide up for reverse. Previously, I'd only been able to use reverse by gently rolling backwards down hills and slopes. This was much better.
Once we really got moving, we saw loads of beautiful inlets around the coast of the Istrian peninsula. We'd planned to focus on this region because we were only taking a few days in Croatia and the rental car was a last minute idea so we wouldn't have to be slaves to the bus schedule. This was also a good idea because the only bus we rode in Croatia, to get into the country, had a really sick old man on it that made it sound like a TB ward on wheels. Patient Zero made us glad we would only inhale the filth and germs of one another, rather than the filth of foreigners. Also on this bus ride was a kindly college student visiting home from school in Austria who, toward the end of the journey, leaned over and said "I just have to ask, excuse me, but what the fuck are you two doing in the middle of Croatia in the winter?" This is what I would call foreshadowing. As we drove to different cities around the Istrian peninsula, we found entire towns shuttered and shut down for the winter months. Hotels didn't exist, and therefore nowhere to stay, and darkness was looming.
It would have been disappointing, but I could've sucked it up and slept in the car, but not my husband. He had a hissy fit when we grabbed a quick snack at a grocery store in lieu of a restaurant at one point in Venice, so sleeping in the car would have gotten me murdered in my sleep and dumped into the Adriatic. He would've gone back to Italy, seen a few more sites, and then gone home alone and told everyone I left him and ran off with an Italian dude - that is, if I made him sleep in the rental car. When we got to Rovinj, a pretty little beach town with a castle and really old cathedral that people can look at, it was getting dark and we were getting hungry and nervous and maybe a little meltdown-y. We flipped through our guidebook for answers and decided to just drive another 2 hours to the next region and hit Rijeka, a much bigger city. After getting lost no less than four times because the GPS kept saying "You have arrived at your destination" while we were in the middle of a tunnel, we found a decent hotel room with free parking and finally tasted the local specialty for dinner: truffles. They're all over the menus in that part of Croatia and are always described as "a smelly fungus for you to enjoy." Mmmmmm.
The next morning, we spent a few hours in Rijeka enjoying the architecture and bustling nature of a place that wasn't shut down, and decided to drive all the way down the coast to Split in the Dalmatian region. We weren't slaves to the bus schedule, after all, and we totally knew how to use reverse, so why not? We would drive down what I'd already started calling The Croatian PCH. It was a winding narrow road, mostly at the top of a cliff, and we caught gorgeous views of fishing villages and inlets, like this:
We hadn't really consulted a map, because we had the GPS, so when we started cutting back and forth from the coast to tunnels drilled through mountains, it was less scenic. It started to rain and the one lane narrow and curvy Croatian PCH seemed ever so slightly less fun. We began climbing higher and higher in the rain and the road seemed more deserted. A few more tunnels later and we weren't really on the water anymore, but pretty much driving up a mountain. The road got more and more winding and I was making hairpin turns along cliffsides in the rain. There were snowbanks alongside us, but the roads were clear. Then, the rain turned to snow as we continued to climb and I gripped the steering wheel while my husband gripped the door handle and our sphincters clenched in unison. It felt like the equivalent of driving a golf cart through Antarctica and was a bit harrowing. We didn't talk much, except for my husband to occasionally lament that he couldn't be the one to drive. It was a sturdy little car and I had already crashed it into like 4 or 5 things while barely making a scratch, so I felt safe that it would hold up should I veer off the snowy road across a 5 foot snowbank and plummet off a cliff into the sea. We didn't. We climbed and it was harrowing, but then we entered a few more tunnels and it stopped snowing. At the first rest stop, we bought a brick of chocolate and stress ate for lunch. Wow this is a long post. So sorry I have to go, but my new puppy, Truffles Corgstein, is about to arrive any minute and I want to go put on lipstick.
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