The first ferry of this trip.
Second island of my travel around the world is not connected by any bridge (as it is for Krk) and then I had the pleasure of go over the sea on a Catamaran for a quick trip since my destination is Preko in the island of Ugljan
I’ve chosen to go there without particular ideas or goals. I saw it was close to Zadar and therefore, since I saw more or less the entire town that was, in addition, invaded by a crowd belonging to a huge Cruise Ship, I thought it could have been a good idea to explore the surroundings.
Even if quite short, crossing of the small straight dividing Zadar from Ugljan, is great because of the exceptional view on Zadar’s skyline. St Donat church is very beautiful from the sea.
Arrived in Preko, my feeling could be recapped by the question “what I’m doing here?”. My impression was of a very quiet little town, in a green island. In short, the perfect place for families wanting to spend a week or two in full relax. But I was eager of things to see or do. No sign of them. Only few meters from Preko’s beach there is a little green island called Galevac. No way to reach it… 🙁
I walked the seaside twice when I then decided to follow the route for apparently the only interesting place to see the Fort Saint Micheal (Tvrđava Sveti Mihovil), on the top of the hill. This way, at least I had the chance to take some nice photo of the coast and of Zadar. When I realised that reaching the fort would have taken too much time to take my ferry back, then I gave up and I went back to Zadar.
Once in Zadar, I decided to take a look at the two modern monuments located on the eastern side of the peninsula. It wasn’t the right time. Sea Organ sound was wiped out by the noise of the multitude of people and the engines of the Cruise Ship, docked very close. Greeting to the Sun during the day is appealing as it could be a set of solar cells within a circle. I promised to myself to come back at night.
Best is in the end of the day.
The evening started with one of the most celebrated show in Zadar, the sunset from the Riva (the seaside boulevard). It seems that in 1964, Alfred Hitchcock was in Zadar and admiring the beautiful sunset, declared it was the world’s most beautiful and incomparably better than in Key West, Florida. Provided that in my opinion, in such kind of things is difficult to do a neutral ranking, for me so far best sunset was in Colonia del Sacramento (Uruguay) in 2009, it should be said that the one here is really great. However to give you some chance to evaluate here is a video, showing the sunset and telling all the story about Hitchcock and Zadar.
After dinner, I decided it was time to go and check the situation with the two ideas of the local architect Nikola Bašić. I started with the most famous one: the sea organ. As someone of you maybe already know, it is a system that use the sea motion to issue sounds from a kind of organ. What can I say? For sure it is something that impress you, especially if you listen to it in the night and when few people are around. About the sounds, it seems to me like something that could be produced by a bunch of cows, starving by one day and kept closed is some huge can. It could also resemble to some signal from outer space in some SciFi B-Movie. However, in the end, I have to say that I like it.
The Greeting to the Sun, is a newer creation (2008) and it is made of solar cells getting energy during the day and releasing it as light in the night. Funny enough but doesn’t move me like the sea organ. Children loved it and they run over it like a crazy Michael Jackson on the illuminated floor of Billy Jean video. Talking about video, here you can find the one I did putting together the lights of the Greeting to the Sun and the sounds of the Sea Organ. Hope you will like it.
After collecting all the material for doing the video, it was finally time to go home since next day is going to be the day of moving to Split.
Before to go, please take a look at the Gallery that contains photos from Zadar, Nin and Preko that I didn’t publish on Facebook.
