Chapter 4
Zadar, Venice
and Departure
Nov. 20, 21, 22, (23)
Zadar: still in Croatia
Wednesday, Nov. 20: Zadar, Croatia
Since leaving Dubrovnik, we had sailed Northwest along the coast of Croatia to the relatively small city of Zadar. While Zadar is certainly not a large city, it, and some nearby villages, does have a significant place in the history of Croatia. Today we would be on an excursion that would visit the salt pans of Nin, as well as Nin itself, then stop at a winery for lunch (and wine, of course), followed by a short tour of the Old City of Zadar. The Old City of Zadar is on a small peninsular while the newer parts of Zadar are on the mainline side, just across a harbor. The Star Legend was docked at the very tip of the peninsular in a convenient location for visiting the old city as well as enjoying some very new features of Zadar.
Docked at the very tip of the Zadar Old City peninsular.
First, we’ll get on a small tour bus with about 10 other people for a ride to the village of Nin where we will visit a area of salt pans that are in productive use today. The salt pans were “retired” several hundred years ago, but were put back into production in the 1950s, as a profitable salt making facility, a tribute to some of the traditions of the area, and as a tourist attraction to bring people in. Susan and I are very familiar with the very much larger salt pans on the island of Bonaire but it was interesting to see how the people of Nin had combined many of the traditional ways of harvesting salt with enough new technology to make it practical on a relatively small scale. We could see the salt pans as the bus entered the village and we went to the “Salt Museum” for a brief tour.
Murals on the wall of the Nin Salt Museum
Inside the museum, a host explained the history of the salt pans and how the salt was harvested today, still using some of the traditional methods to collect the finest quality table salt. There were some interesting demonstrations and a short video showing more of the actual processing. After the museum visit, there was, of course, a gift shop with about every form of salt that you could think of, gift wrapped and ready to go.
Getting a lesson on salt processing the traditional way
From the museum, it was a very short ride to the actual village of Nin, located on a “almost island” that was itself, within a large harbor area. The “almost an island” was about circular and less than a half mile in diameter, so the village was not large. We climbed out of the bus and our tour guide showed us around the town. There were several cats that seemed to be keeping an eye on us the whole time.
There were several cats watching us in Nin.
For such a small village, there seemed to be a lot of important historical people who were immortalized with large statues and memorials. The first of these was Grgur Ninski who became known as “Gregory of Nin”
Grgur Ninski, or “Gregory of Nin”, an important Bishop in Nin history
Ninski was a Croatian Catholic who served as a Bishop for Nin in medieval times and who opposed the Pope and other official parts of the Catholic Church. He called for the use of the Croatian language in church services, rather than only Latin.
A small, but important, church among Roman ruins
Although there are several large churches in Nin, the best-known church is probably “The Church of the Holy Cross”. Built in the 9th century and essentially unmodified since that time: it is sometimes called the “smallest cathedral in the world”. The site of the church is in the middle of extensive building foundations from Roman times
Every historical town has to have a tall Bell Tower
We walked through the quiet village: very few people were out and braving the occasional rain showers that were passing through. The streets and pedestrian areas were very well kept with very little trash around. There was one table and benches with several older men sitting, playing dominos, and enjoying some coffee; otherwise, the village seemed almost deserted.
One of the city gates to Nin: Notice the guard cat
As we walked out through one of the city gates, there was a cat guarding the entrance to the village: or was he keeping an eye on us?
Knez Branimir: an important leader of Croatia in the 9th century
We crossed the bridge, taking us out of the “old town” part of Nin, but not away from the statues of important people from Nin. The statue above is of Knez Branimir a ruler of Croatia in the 9th century. Although Nin seems just a small village now, it was an important part of the history of Croatia. At one time it was the capital (or “First Royal Town”) of Croatia. Like many cities in the area, it was overrun and conquered by multiple invading armies and countries, eventually losing most of its political and economic significance.
We piled back into our bus and headed to our next stop, a winery, to taste some wine and enjoy lunch.
The Kraljevski Vineyard: Note the rocky soil – good for making quality wine
Susan and I had discovered that Croatia produces some good wine on a previous WindStar cruise in the area, and we were to confirm that opinion today. This area of Croatia is warm with the moderating influence of the Adriatic Sea combined with rocky limestone infused soil which come together to produce good grapes for wine. For the prior two years there had been some disease impacting the grapes in the area and production was way down. I noticed that there were many clusters of grapes left on the vines we looked at, possibly suggesting that these grapes had not even been harvested because of the disease.
There were a lot of grapes left on the vines.
I tasted a few of the grapes and, other than being a little past ripe, they tasted fine to me, but I am certainly not a winemaker. When we arrived at the vineyard and looked at the vines, the wind was blowing pretty good (probably 20 mph) and the clouds were threatening to turn loose some rain, so we hurried on into the winery
Entrance to the Kraljevski Vinograd (winery) and tasting room
No more than 2 or 3 minutes after we entered the winery, the clouds turned loose and a heavy rain came down for 15 or 20 minutes. I was very glad we were not outside when that hit. The table was all set with glasses and silverware and there was a rose wine in one of the glasses to get us started. Lunch here followed the same pattern as our previous wine lunches: some antipasto, then some pasta with a tomato sauce, and finally a main course of sausage, all accompanied by glasses of appropriate wines. One of the grapes used here is the Crljenak variety, notable because it is actually the “ancestor” of Italian Primitivo and American Zinfandel.
Staying dry, waiting for wine and lunch
After a pleasant lunch and some very good wines, we loaded back into the bus and headed into the Old City of Zadar for a brief tour. It was probably more brief than usual because there was off and on rain showers and a continuing strong wind coming off the sea. As with almost any old town such as this, there were several old churches and one had the required tall bell tower.
Prvastolnica sv Stosijc church on the Zadar Old City
There was a large plaza behind that church, adjacent to the bell tower and another church, with tables and chairs where a cup of coffee (or a class of soda) would have been very nice on a sunny day, but not today! On the other side of the plaza were some fairly extensive roman ruins, the remainder of a Roman Forum here in Zadar. A walkway led through the ruins and down to a wide sidewalk along the waterfront. This was the opposite side of the peninsular from the harbor and faced the open sea, so no boats here.
Some of the ruins of the Roman Forum in Zadar
As we walked along the wide sidewalk and approached the Star Legend at the dock, we started hearing strange musical sounds that turned out to be a product of the “Sea Organ”.
The Sea Organ does not look like much.
The Sea Organ is comprised of 35 pipes of varying lengths with holes at appropriate places and oriented so that waves coming in from the sea forces air into the pipes. This incoming air then acts like the air in a pipe organ, creating musical notes. Each pipe will always produce the same frequency or musical note, but the loudness, the length of the note and the timing between notes depends entirely on the waves. On a calm day with no waves, there is no sound from the Sea Organ at all. On a day like today, it was rather loud and you will get a chance to hear it in a moment.
Another feature right next to the Sea Organ was the Color Circle, or “Monument to the Sun”.
And the Color Circle / Monument to the Sun is rather boring during the day
During the day, the circle is a large solar cell, producing electricity and storing it in a battery. Along with the solar cells, there are hundreds of LED lights that produce light of various colors and controlled by a computer to produce continuously changing light patterns. Some people said that the computer is also tied to the Sea Organ so that the patterns are influenced by the wave action and sounds, but I was unable to confirm that. You will be able to decide for yourself in a moment. Both the Sea Organ and the Color Circle were designed by an Architect, Nikola Basic.
This evening as we went into the Compass Rose for some before-dinner music, we could hear the sounds from the Sea Organ so I went out on the deck outside the Compass Rose and got a couple of videos of the Sea Organ and Color Circle. This was a very unique bonus advantage of where we were docked.
Wednesday, Nov. 21: Venice, Italy
We are in Venice!
When we got up this morning, we were just a little outside of the entry to the Venice Lagune, with just enough time for a quick breakfast before we entered. There was a beautiful red sky on the horizon as the sun was coming up and I hoped that the old “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.” saying did not hold today. We would really have two major activities today: first, we would enter and transit the Venice Lagune (or Lagoon) as a major sight-seeing activity then we would go on an excursion with the Doges Palace as the primary destination.
Red sky in the morning in the northern Adriatic Sea
As we came through the entry in the breakwater, I set up and started my second camera for the time-lapse view of our passage though the lagune. Shortly after coming into the lagune, a tug-boat came up to meet us and soon passed a heavy line to some of the crew in the bow. As the tug tightened the line and exerted some pull on it, the engine in the tug had to go to work and it put out a pretty good puff of diesel smoke which, of course, came directly back onto those of us standing on the open deck.
“Isola Sant’Elena” was the first significant island we passed off to starboard, with many small boats, mostly sailboats in it’s marina.
Passing Sant Elena Island and it’s marina
Relatively few ships can sail through the Lagune these days, so we were a slightly unusual sight; And, it was cold! Did I mention it was cold? Cold and windy, especially on the open front deck of the yacht. The temperature was in the 30s (F) and most of us did not have clothing really appropriate for a windy 35F. I alternated between standing out on the open deck to get the good view/photos, and coming into the Yacht Club lounge for a while to warm up. We soon came to the main walkway along the waterfront and the many bridges across the many canals. It was still early and there were few people out and about at this time. Most of the few people who were out, stopped and watched our progress as we sailed past. In the photo below, you can see the only two people around are in the middle of the bridge, watching us go past.
One of the many canal bridges: notice the two people watching us pass.
Soon we were approaching what most people consider the central part of Venice, the area around St Marks Square. Although there are several similar bell towers around Venice, the bell tower at St Marks Square is the largest and easily recognized. In the photo below, the Doges Palace is the tan colored building in front of the bell tower and would be the primary destination for our excursion later today.
St Marks Square bell tower with the Doges Palace in front of it
Slightly past St Mark’s Square the entrance to this end of the Grand Canal passed by off to starboard. On the left side of the Grand Canal entrance is a low building that used to be the “Customs House” for arriving ships and behind the customs building was the round dome of “Basilica Santa Maria Dekka Salute”
Entrance to Grand Canal on the very right, then the Customs House and Basilica
After passing St Mark’s Square, we could look back and see some of the best known of the churches, the Basilica of St Marco, set behind the Doges Palace. All this time, many small boats and water taxies of different sizes passed by on both sides of our ship, in both directions. I can imagine what it would be like to be in one of the smaller water taxies as it passed by so close to the much larger Star Legend.
Looking back at St Marks Square, the Basilica San Marcos, and the Doges Palace
Although most of the best known buildings were on the right/starboard side of the ship, there were some significant buildings on the left/port side also. Probably most impressive was the Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore (Basilica del Redentore), a 16th Century Roman Catholic church.
The Basilica del Redentore was the most identifiable building on the southern banks of the lagune.
The Legend sailed about a mile past the Grand Canal entrance, came to a stop, and with the help of the tug, spun around 180 degrees. It then moved over to the edge of the waterway and docked there at the edge of the Venice Lagune. Only relatively small ships are allowed to even enter the lagune, much less dock along the edge of it so we considered ourselves rather lucky.
Now, if you want to see the entire Venice Lagune transit in about 90 seconds, you can check this time-lapse video.
It was only about 9:00 when we docked and our excursion didn’t start until 11:00, so we had some time to relax and get a snack to hold us over until we got back from the excursion for a late lunch. At 11:00 we joined our excursion group and walked about 15 minutes along the lagune waterfront to get to a water taxi dock where we boarded a large “water bus” that was to take us close to St Mark’s Square.
A view of the Doges Palace and the “Bridge of Sighs” from the water bus
On the way to our dock a little past St Mark’s Square, we passed the Doges Palace, which we will spend some time in, and had a good view of the “Bridge of Sighs”. There will be more about this bridge in a little while, but you can see from the photo above that this covered/enclosed bridge is different from about all the other canal bridges. About everything in Venice is measured in terms of bridges, so we landed at a dock that was four bridges from St Mark’s Square. We met our local guide for the palace here and he provided some additional information about some of the buildings and sights as we walked toward the square.
At this point we’re about three canal bridges from St Mark’s Square
We took our time on the relatively short walk, enjoying the views of the lagune and the several canals we crossed along the way. The tide was not high enough to flood over into the square, as it does occasionally, but it did occasionally splash over the seawall and get part of the walkway wet, as in the photo above.
A typical canal scene
We crossed the four bridges on the way to the square, stopping to enjoy the classic scenes along the way. The last bridge we crossed included a good view of the Bridge of Sighs. If you have not heard the story of this bridge, I’ll provide the short version.
The Bridge of Sighs, connecting the Doges Palace and the prison
The Bridge of Sighs connects the Doges Palace, where criminal trials were held, to the prison, where the convicted criminals would be imprisoned or executed. It is said that the prisoners would sigh as they crossed that bridge because they then knew that they would never be outside the prison walls again.
In the opposite direction from the Bridge of Sighs, you could get a very classic view of the Venice Lagune, complete with multiple gondolas floating at their moorings and San Giorgio Maggiore church on the other side of the lagune.
A classic view of the gondolas
This was a rather slow tourist season and there were few visitors going for rides in the gondolas so there were many gondolas sitting idle. They did make for picturesque views though.
After crossing that last canal bridge, we were standing in front of the rather imposing Doges Palace, the seat of the powerful Venetian government from the 9th century until 1797. For much of that time, Venice controlled large areas of Italy and much of the lands around the Adriatic Sea, even around to some of the Aegean Sea. The “Doges” were the ruling or governmental people who administered the Venetian Empire, including the judges who presided over trials. The Palace was initially built in 810 but was rebuilt in 1340 and extended and modified during the following centuries.
The front of the Doges Palace: Quite an imposing building
Our guide provided quite a bit of the history of the palace while we stood in front of the building and then we entered the palace grounds. There was essentially no wait to enter: on our other visit to Venice in September, 2021, there was always a long line awaiting access, although that was not a busy tourist time either.
Wait a minute, its hollow!
We quickly realized that the palace is “hollow”. Well, not exactly hollow, as it really was huge, with many rooms, but there is a large courtyard in the middle. This is a common design for when it was built and certainly makes sense as it allows most of the larger rooms to have exposure to the outside via windows and walkways. In the photo above, you can see parts of the St Mark’s Basilica behind the palace: there are connections between the palace and the basilica so the Doges could easily get to the church.
After a brief time in the courtyard, we headed inside and through some of the rather impressive rooms. Our guide provided the names and uses of each of the rooms (sometimes in somewhat excessive detail), but there is no way I can possibly remember many of them. There are a couple of very impressive stairways between levels, such as the one below.
The “Golden Staircase”
The staircase above is generally called “The Golden Staircase” because of the gold-colored decorations in the ceiling and walls. There is at least one other staircase that is almost as decorative as this one. Many of the rooms are just as ornately decorated, such as the one in the photo below.
Every inch is covered with some kind of decoration.
There was not just one room like this one, but we went from room to room to room and they were all decorated about like this. Our guide could (and did) explain the meaning of many of the paintings which had some historical or religious basis. After going through probably 5 or 6 rooms like this, we came to the Chamber of the Grand Council.
The Chamber of the Great Council
This room was the most amazing to me. Notice that there are no interior columns or support in the entire room and this is on the 2nd floor rather than the ground floor. How did the architect and builders do this in the 1300s? While the paintings and decorations on the ceiling and walls are beautiful, I was most impressed by the construction.
After leaving the Great Council Chamber, we made our way to see the Bridge of Sighs from the inside.
Crossing the Bridge of Sighs
The guide led us through the bridge, toward the prison, then a short walk around part of the prison (not a place I’d want to spend much time) and then back across the bridge in the other direction. The bridge was actually divided in half so that each side was only one direction. I assume this was done to keep the prisoners going to and from the courts in the palace from seeing each other. After trying out the bridge, we left the Doges Palace, having spent more than two hours inside.
Our next stop was a demonstration glass blowing shop not far from St Mark’s Square. This was only a small demonstration shop because all the main Venetian Glass production was done on the island of Murano. (After several major fires caused by the glass works, the Venetian Glass companies were forced to relocate to a separate island.)
An expert glass blower demonstrated his skills.
An expert glass blower used a small furnace and workshop to demonstrate making a glass prancing horse, taking less than 5 minutes to complete it. After the demonstration there was a complete sales pitch to encourage the purchase of their glass wares. On our previous trip to Venice, we had visited a full Venetian Glass shop on Murano Island and had seen the sales pitch and their products. While the glassware was beautiful, we didn’t need any so we politely excused ourselves and headed back toward St Mark’s Square.
One last look at St Mark’s Square
We took one last look around and them met up with our group at the designated place and time to head back to the dock (four bridges away) and the water bus that took us back to the yacht. We had a rather late lunch at the Star Grill then rested a bit until the evening activities.
There was a Captain’s farewell reception/cocktail hour before going to dinner in the AmphorA restaurant. After dinner we headed to the Compass Rose to listen to music, dance a little, and to say good-by to our new friends, both other guests and the crew. We made a special point to say good-by to the duo, Laura and Jose, and the Apaloosa band group.
Thursday, Nov. 22: Venice Airport
I will apologize now for the fact that there are no photos to include for this day: I think you will understand why. We had to get up a little early as we were supposed to leave the ship by 8:00 so we quickly got some breakfast and went back to the cabin for final preparation and packing. Then I checked my phone for emails. I had an email from Delta that our flight that day had been cancelled due to “Operational problems” and we had been rebooked on what is essentially the same flight the next day. Talk about a shock! I checked for any other possible ways to get home this day, but nothing looked realistically possible so we were stuck for another day and we had to leave the ship in a few minutes. Someone said that there was a Marriott Courtyard close to the airport and there was a Windstar arranged bus that would take us there, so we started in that direction. Turned out, that was not quite right. There was a Courtyard close to the airport, but we would have to take the bus to the airport (the same one we had planned to ride to the airport) and then get a hotel shuttle from the airport to the Courtyard. By now, the bus was about to leave so we got on with our fingers crossed. While we rode to the airport, I got on my phone and successfully made a reservation at the Courtyard via the internet. (Because this was off-season, I think it was practically empty.) We got to the airport a little before 9:00 but missed the 9:00 Courtyard shuttle and had to wait until the 10:00 shuttle, but we finally got to the hotel and checked in. There was another couple and a single lady doing the same thing as we were.
About noon we looked around for someplace to find lunch and settled on, what else, a pizza restaurant that we could walk to. Well, “restaurant” is probably an overstatement. There was an owner/manager/cook/cashier and a bus-boy/delivery guy. The owner could speak English, so we ordered a pizza and got drinks and had a pretty good meal at a good price. We basically wasted the afternoon resting, reading, and such as there did not appear to be anything close to the hotel worth walking to. We really didn’t want to walk very far in the dark, so we had dinner n the hotel restaurant and it was actually a pretty decent meal: the bottle of a good Italian wine probably helped.
Friday, Nov. 23: Departure & travel home
On Friday, we headed to the airport again, taking the 10:00 shuttle from the Courtyard hotel, heading for the 1:15 PM flight to New York’s JFK airport. This time everything went more or less according to plan. We had to wait a little while for the ticket counters to open (our flight would be the first flight of the day to the US) but once checked in and through security, we just had to relax and wait until time to board. The flight left about on time and was very full, probably because of the number of passengers who, like us, had been delayed from the previous day’s flight. After taking off, the plane made a somewhat unexpected (to me) turn and flew back, almost over Venice, enabling me to get a couple of somewhat distant and unclear photos of the city.
Venice, with the Lagune, the Grand Canal, and even the Star Legend in view.
As we turned more northward, we were soon flying over the Alps and the snow-covered mountains were rather pretty.
Someone said that much of the snow had just fallen the previous week.
The flight was reasonably comfortable with good service. On this segment we were in the “Premium Select” seats: what we used to think of as “First Class” before the lie-flat seats came along but, no matter how good the seats, nine hours is a long time to sit in one place.
But when we got to JFK airport, we did get some exercise. The walk from our arrival gate to the Customs & Immigration area had to be at least a mile, possibly more, as we walked at a good clip, with some moving sidewalks, for about 20 minutes. Then, after clearing customs and rechecking our bags for Atlanta, our departure gate was about two gates over from where we had arrived, so we had that long walk again to our gate. It was almost midnight by the time we got to Atlanta and then home, but it was good to be there.
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