Had a good fish and seafood meal in Trogir last night, having just enjoyed another restaurateur’s fuming and exhaustive essay of refutation to a bad TripAdvisor review. These sites have become the ultimate double-edged weapon, as they make so much from the booking fees that it undermines their critical detachment. Most hoteliers loathe the stranglehold Booking.com has on their trade, with the 15% commission and the demand they keep a share of their rooms exclusively for customers coming through that portal. But they dare not be listed due to the astonishing near-monopoly Booking.com now has, and the sophisticated search engine optimisation which ensures that any idle hotel search you make brings you sharply to their site. These listings are vital to business, so the listers can – like a South side protection racket – exact any conditions they want against the threat of being de-listed, becoming a non-hotel.

We are mixing our selection of hotels and rooms, to vary the experience, but the Airbnb apartment, which turned out to be on Trogir’s main pedestrian thoroughfare, still lively up to midnight, was not the best booking. The room was fine, if soulless, but it was a little like staying in an upstairs room in Soho, without the resident French lessons. We were glad to leave these congested streets.

 

 

Croatia’s A1 motorway was busier today than in the week, but nothing compared to British roads. I suspect this is because Saturday is changeover day for holidaymakers, and many were presumably on their way home to addresses all over Europe, as their car national plates indicate. It may be unfair to define national characteristics from a handful of drivers, but they do conform to a surprising degree, just as owners of particular marques seem to inherit behavioural norms from their car’s makers.

When, for instance, did Audi replace BMW as the most aggressively driven brand on the road, both in the UK and here? Today, cruising happily at the limit of 130kph, I was three times nearly rear-ended by a high-end Audi SUV which, when it stormed past, revealed Hungarian plates. Within a few miles, I would pass the (Buda)pest, and then he would do it again, consistency clearly not being a national characteristic.  The Czechs also drive like maniacs, whereas their former co-nationalists, the Slovaks, seem less aggressive. The Poles, however, all seem to be running very late for their dumplings, and are unwilling to take any prisoners.

My memory clearly has more holes than the sponges they sell in the souvenir shops here. One moment I do recall from 1968 around Dubrovnik. Happy to catch a lift with a young German couple in a smart Mercedes of the day, I was earnestly leaning forward to earn my carriage through amiable chat and a shared cigarette when the car hit a bump and my lit ciggie dropped to the seat in front of me, down the female’s back, who was of course wearing a backless dress. Not waiting to locate the appropriate German phrase, I reached down to grab the butt before it burnt her, at which moment the driver turned to see me apparently grabbing her butt. The car screeched to a halt and I was dumped in the dirt. So unfair.

After passing through the five mile tunnel through the Velebit range, you move from a landscape of bare, sheer mountain flanks on the seaward side to a verdant tree-lined vista on the northerly landed side.

Further up the Adriatic coast road, possibly in Crikvenica, I found a cheap attic room – from among the many still offering Apartmani/Camere/Zimmer/Rooms – only to find myself sharing with a family of rats. My compromise was to block the holes at my end of the attic, so that they didn’t scamper over my bed, but had free run of the other end. Otherwise the family was very nice and gave me the address of their older daughter to stay with in Rijeka – the home-owners, not the rats. This time we gave Rijeka a miss and have holed up for the weekend in a fishing village called Volosko, in an Airbnb apartment owned by Josip, a young French literature academic from Rijeka university. We are right on the harbour, above the restaurants, one of which supplied me with first haute cuisine meal I have had in a month. The nearer we approach Western Europe, the more those distinctions appear. Up until now, most restaurants are open all day, equally happy to serve breakfast, lunch or dinner, and coffee or drinks at any time. Here the Western distinction  of restaurant, bar and pizzeria is clear cut.

 

This is the eastern end of the Lungomare, the Franz Joseph I coastal path which runs through Opatijva to Lovan, a nineteenth century promenade connecting the private villas of the Austro-Hungarian nobility who summered here. 

One of the most distinguished was Gyula Andrassy, onetime Prime Minister of Hungary and first Foreign Minister of the combined Austro-Hungarian state, who eventually retired and died here. It is notable that this country has suffered a succession of imposed regimes, many of  Teutonic nature, from the Austro-Hungarians to the Third Reich to the latest, who kindly sponsors bathing tents on the beaches, adorned with maps as to where to find their local emporium.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. One change which has endured is that these bathing platforms, which make up for the lack of beaches on this rocky coastline and which were clearly originally built for the individual villas, still enjoy the impact of Tito’s communism and are freely open to all, even those attached to the Grand Hotel. The only problem is that the locals favour fishing with harpoon guns, whose trident spears could leave an unpleasant impact upon a bather’s body. One can only hope that they are lousy shots.