Rab, day 1

Driving away from Plitvicka was a happy moment - Rab lay ahead, the greenest island off the coast of Croatia. And better food ahead too, not that that would be too hard. The countryside was kind of unremarkable - could've been anywhere, really, the Catskills, maybe, or upstate New York. Still, it was pretty, and it became more beautiful as we got closer to the coast.

In the countryside: The famous Croatian donkeys.
closer to the coast now - serpentine mountain roads:

Finally, we see the water.....the Adriatic:

It only took a couple of hours to get to the coast. We were headed for this little town where we'd catch the ferry to Rab. It was charming, and we thought we were an hour early but we learned the ferry was leaving before the scheduled time - 10 minutes after we arrived. Just the beginning of today's great luck!

Jablanca, the ferry town:

And here's the ferry we drove onto:

It only took about 15 minutes to get to Rab, and it was a gorgeous sunny day.

Handsome Marc:

and happy me:

As we got closer to Rab, we saw these rock islands jutting out of the water.

Doesn't that look Mediterranean? Adriatic-an? [oh, that reminds me: Marc insists on calling Croatians Crowdaddies. I have no idea why. Just like he called the Hondurans Honduricans.]

So we got onto the island and drove to our hotel, the Hotel Arbiana. It's even better than we thought!

That's our room, on the top floor, all those windows across the middle.
Our view is the harbor, and it's lovely.

This is the view from the end of the promenade - our hotel on the left:

The hotel has a beautiful park out back:

And finally, our room! It's every bit as red as we thought it would be when we saw it on the hotel's website. Hello red:

That's a whole wall of windows, to the right, and they open onto the full balcony spanning the front of the hotel. We sit there and watch people and boats, and it's cool and wonderful.

We stitched together a panorama of our view, from the left end of the balcony all across the harbor, to the right end. Click to see it bigger:

So we got to our room and I crashed. Marc went out for a little walk, and when I got up I had a cappuccino. Finally, after days of bad coffee (dark water, really), I had a great and strong cappuccino. There are chairs and tables out front of our hotel, so I sat and watched people and drank my coffee. Can you tell I was excited about my coffee?

We spent the afternoon walking around the little town, scouting places to eat, and seeing the sights of this little town. We also walked down to the water, which felt so great I wanted to jump in. It's crystal clear - we saw crabs scuttling around, and shrimp jetting back and forth.

Lots of the streets are little alley-like mazes, like this one:

For dinner, we picked a spot Marc had seen - a nice little restaurant with a terrace upstairs, where we could sit and look out at the harbor. Food here isn't nearly as inexpensive as it has been on our other vacations; nothing is, really. But what we got for dinner was so great, and the polar opposite of our meal the night before. We were really really happy.

See? HAPPY. That's the harbor on the right side of the picture, and Marc facing me.
Happy.

and my meal - shrimp and bruschetta, and Dalmatian prosciutto with local olives:

and Marc getting ready for his mixed seafood grill:

This platter included a baby octopus, a huge shrimp, mussels, tuna, squid, a whole fish, and two other small filets of firm fish, one dark and one light. Plus potatoes with chard.

After dinner, we took a short walk, and then some al fresco blogging with another great cappucino (which, by the way, is only 9 kuna, which is less than $2!).

Good night from Rab, Croatia.

p.s. perfect perfect weather. No rain, no clouds.