22 May, Novalja to Zadar

May 22, 2023

https://www.strava.com/activities/9119597572

Today was a lumpy ride as can be seen from the route profile. It was also hot and hotter than any day so far. During the ride I decided it was time to start my rides earlier in order to reduce my exposure to the hottest part of the day. Let's see how that goes.

The route itself was pretty mundane with some repetitive scenery, a small town (coffee and loo stop). The continuous up and down is quite sapping on the legs, maybe even more so than doing the same amount of climbing in one go.

Eventually I got to Zadar which looked to be a lovely city with the old city full of narrow streets, bars and restaurants. Oh, and tourists, more tourists than I have seen so far.

My hostel was slap bang in the middle of the old town and was actually a great hostel. It had the best bunk bed configuration I have seen so far. Designed by architects in Zagreb apparently.

After a shower I headed out for food. I had found a Thai restaurant online which looked good but when I got there it was closed (Monday!). By that time I was set on Asian food. I, more or less, wandered into a Sushi restaurant so I thought I'd give it a go. The young waiter passed me a menu. Light grey font on black background, poor lighting and I didn't have my glasses. I explained that I couldn't read the menu so he said, pleasantly, I can explain it all and then he gave me his iPad. "This is the Georgian menu.....". I will explained I wanted Sushi. "ok", he said. "This is our new sushi menu but it's expensive."

This was not going well. Quickly I chose 2 sets of sushi rolls and said that will do to start. It was mediocre but not that expensive. It was time to give up but I was still hungry. I grabbed a burger which was pretty good. That filled the hole created by 80 lumpy km.

Then it was time for an ice cream.

Copied from FB.

So we (might) have a winner folks. Not in the Best Ice Cream category but in the Let's Rip Off the Tourist category.

Old manny rant ahead. You have been warned.

This was in Zada last night and I decided to leave it 24 hours before posting to allow my feelings dissipate. So this is the toned down version about the robbing bar stewards of Zadar main street.

I spotted this parlour because it wasn't displaying the usual mass produced, swirled into the container stuff. The tubs were covered and the ice cream shown with name labels and photos. It also had Apple Pie flavour which, in Airlie Beach, @Laura Jarvie Girvan declared to be the best ever.

The price card was displayed on the counter and showed 3 sizes. Picolo, Regulare and one bigger than Regulare (I don't remember). The Picolo was priced at 3.50€. The others were not priced.

My experience in EVERY other parlour is that the base price goes up by a Euro or 1.5€ as the size increases.

I ordered a Regulare Apple Pie. She used her palate and deftly swirled it onto a cone and handed it to me.

That will be SEVEN, SEVEN, YES, FECKING SEVEN EUROS!!!!!!

So here we have Apple Pie ice cream. Allegedly, made with the cream from cows pasture fed on the high slopes of the Swiss Alps, apples grown carefully in the Eden valley, vanilla hand picked in Madagascar and served by the hands of a Vestal Virgin.

It was a fine ice cream but nothing more.

Apple Pie, Wrong (and bloody expensive, did I mention the price?), 3/10

Cables exposed in the landslip. There were also pipes exposed.

A landslip closed the route. I just wish that they would put picture signs up at the start of the road and not just one word in Croatian 100m before the blockage. This added 8km to the day.

Today's ride: 132 km (82 miles)
Total: 3,453 km (2,144 miles)

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